Content Warning: This episode contains themes that some listeners may find upsetting. In this special episode, we're doing something different. Instead of featuring a guest, we're focusing on a theme that keeps coming up in our episodes: family. It seems like everyone we talk to mentions their family. Family experiences undoubtedly shape the entrepreneurial journey. Our family leaves lasting marks on us as we grow up. They can influence us in ways we don't always see right away. Often, it's only when we look back that we understand how much they mattered. In this episode, we're doing just that: looking back. You might have heard some of the stories we're about to share before. We encourage you to listen to them again, and think about your own family while you do. This Sunday, we're also releasing a discussion episode where you'll hear what we think about these stories. We hope you enjoy. The guests featured in this week's episode are: Margery Kraus (Founder & Executive Chairman - APCO Worldwide), Sabrina Fiorellino (Founder & CEO - Fero International Inc.), Jackie & Cassie Collier (Co-Founders - Bundle), Stacey Tisdale (President & CEO - Mind Money Media), Surabhi Yadav (Founder & CEO - Sajhe Sapne), Vivian Chen (Founder & CEO - Heyo, Rise), Jessie Frances (Preloved Luxury Fashion Expert), Thilde Peterson (Founder - Clock School), Nadine Kenney Johnstone (Author & Writing Coach - WriteWELL).
In this special episode, we're doing something different.
Instead of featuring a guest, we're focusing on a theme that keeps coming up in our episodes: family.
It seems like everyone we talk to mentions their family. Family experiences undoubtedly shape the entrepreneurial journey.
Our family leaves lasting marks on us as we grow up. They can influence us in ways we don't always see right away. Often, it's only when we look back that we understand how much they mattered.
In this episode, we're doing just that: looking back. You might have heard some of the stories we're about to share before. We encourage you to listen to them again, and think about your own family while you do.
This Sunday, we're also releasing a discussion episode where you'll hear what we think about these stories.
We hope you enjoy.
Why Are We Shouting? with Jill Salzman tackles the answers to every mom entrepreneur’s questions about running a company. Jill's always delivers plenty of humor and personality, and each episode is an incredibly engaging experience. If you enjoy And So, She Left, we highly encourage you to rate, review, and subscribe to Jill's podcast wherever you listen, or visit JillSalzman.Substack.com.
We would love to hear your feedback! Here's a quick 5 question survey. Your answers will help us to make the show even better: https://forms.gle/5JnfCUWbgLRw1NTa8
Here are the guests featured in this week's episode, along with links to their original interviews:
01:55 - Margery Kraus (Founder & Executive Chairman - APCO Worldwide)
08:53 - Sabrina Fiorellino (Founder & CEO - Fero International Inc.)
19:25 - Jackie & Cassie Collier (Co-Founders - Bundle)
25:29 - Stacey Tisdale (President & CEO - Mind Money Media)
30:04 - Surabhi Yadav (Founder & CEO - Sajhe Sapne)
39:48 - Vivian Chen (Founder & CEO - Heyo, Rise)
41:40 - Jessie Frances (Preloved Luxury Fashion Expert)
45:11 - Thilde Peterson (Founder - Clock School)
51:14 - Nadine Kenney Johnstone (Author & Writing Coach - WriteWELL)
Hosted by Katherin Vasilopoulos. Made by Cansulta and Ethan Lee.
Music by © Chris Zabriskie, published by You've Been a Wonderful Laugh Track (ASCAP).
Songs used in this episode include: "Air Hockey Saloon," "Virtues Inherited, Vices Passed On," "It Takes a Lot to Keep a Figure Like This," "Cylinder Five," "I Am a Man Who Will Fight For Your Honour," "You Fiddle, I'll Burn Rome," "Your Mother's Daughter," "Short Song 011123," "Short Song 011223," "Short Song 012823," "Short Song 022123," "Short Song 030823."
Used under the Creative Commons 4.0 International License
[00:00:00.120] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Hi, I'm Katherin Vasilopoulos. Starting my own venture wasn't easy. After a decade working in the corporate world, I realized that so many things were out of my control, like layoffs and changes in direction. I didn't like the instability. I didn't want that to define my whole career and professional story. And so I left. I started my own company and achieved more than I ever imagined. Now I'm on a mission to share stories from extraordinary entrepreneurs who are changing the world and who never gave up on their vision.
[00:00:39.760] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
This episode, we wanted to do something special. As you can probably tell, there's no guest on the show this week. Instead, we wanted to focus on something that's come up repeatedly in our episodes so far, the importance of family. The team behind the podcast and I have been talking about how often our guests bring up stories about their families. It's almost unanimous, and it's clearly a huge part of the entrepreneurial journey. Our family experiences leave imprints on us as we get older and influence us in ways that we can't always recognize in the moment. It's only when we look back that we realize their impact.
[00:01:19.940] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
So in this episode, we're looking back. You may have already heard some of the stories you're about to hear. We urge you to listen to them again as they're arranged and reflect on your own family while you do so. We promise it's a powerful experience. On Sunday, we'll be releasing a conversational episode where you'll get to hear our thoughts on these stories as well. I'll be joined by our showrunner and Cansulta CEO Alex Kapelos Peters along with show creator and producer Ethan Lee. We're so excited to share something different with you. Thanks and enjoy the episode.
[00:01:54.330] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
You started working in the 1960s and you were already a mom, and you were working at a time where it wasn't necessarily popular, or people were telling you things about the fact that you were a mom and you were also working. Was that difficult for you?
[00:02:10.490] - Margery Kraus
That might be an understatement. There were a few things that were hard. I think one was that society wasn't ready for any change in roles, I guess you'd say, between men and women. And I'm married to the same person for 57 years. So he was very self confident. So if he went to the parent teacher conference and he was the only guy in the room, it didn't bother him. If he ended up doing the food shopping and helping out, it didn't bother him really. And it was a partnership. And I think he got a lot out of it because the children certainly at that time saw him. We were interchangeable, except for certain things that your kids wanted to discuss. Some were better for him, some were better for me. The pressure that was external to this did not help people asking why I never did car pools or things of that sort, which made them feel badly. But I think in general, what it did is it brought us much closer as a family. And we were each other's support system. I couldn't have done this without my kids and my husband. And the kids learned to be very independent so that when they left the house, they were actually a lot more competent to be on their own, which was a gift that I didn't realize.
[00:03:36.160] - Margery Kraus
All those years of feeling guilty, I never realized I was actually helping.
[00:03:40.070] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
And it seems to me that it would ground children in some reality that mom or dad aren't always going to do exactly what you expect them to do. And they're human. They have priorities and obligations, too. And it helps your children grow up in a more realistic way, I guess.
[00:03:58.480] - Margery Kraus
I think it also lets them know maybe that you have to be responsible and accountable for certain things in life. And it's not always convenient. But I think they're all life lessons. And I think I'm... Grandchildren... The kids have a sign on the wall that it's your gift for not killing your kids. But I think it's more than that. And I think that you're more relaxed with your grandchildren. So you get to enjoy it more. And I think some of my greatest joys in my working life, too, have been to be able to include them in things that I've done. With my family, we would have family meetings. Communication was really the center of this. And I would do things that we would think of together. And one of those things ended up being that when my kids were 10, I took them on a business trip. And I did it. I used 10 years old because then I could take... I had an excuse to take one at a time, knowing the other two wouldn't know their time would come. And so we went to Colorado and they saw the Rocky Mountains and they went to work with me. And I think they learned that work was work. And they were very proud. In fact, at one point, my son, who was the middle child, I had to give a speech. And at the end of his speech, he was in the front row, he jumped up in his chair and he starts applauding.
[00:05:39.790] - Margery Kraus
It was cute but it was really embarrassing too. But it really I think gave them a sense that I was doing things that people appreciated and were important. And I think it was a good life lesson.
[00:05:52.120] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Absolutely. When you're a child and an adult takes you on a journey somewhere, if you're at an age where you can remember, those memories have been formed, you'll never forget that trip, ever. My parents took us to Greece when we were 11, and I still remember the smells in the village. It's the combination of jasmantries and goat poop. I don't know how else to explain it.
[00:06:13.770] - Margery Kraus
But you know, that's so true because when my youngest grandchild was nine, my oldest grandchild was nine, her name is Nina, she called me and she said, I'm going to be 10 on my next birthday. And it had been 31 years since her mother's 10 year old trip. And her mother was never the person that would say, That was fantastic. She just absorbed it, I guess. And so she said, I'm going to be 10 on my next birthday. I said, Well, Nina, that's what happens after you're nine. And she goes, No, it's time for my 10 year old trip. And I was so taken aback that I was speechless. And she said, And I can't decide if I want to go to Russia or China. That's because that's what I was doing at the time. And so I said, Your mother went to Colorado. And she said that times had changed.
[00:07:05.170] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
There are lessons that we learn through our family life that we can then transpose onto work life. And what you were saying about your son, does it go full circle from what you experienced with your father working with him?
[00:07:19.500] - Margery Kraus
My parents had... We lived in a town of 3,000 people. In fact, my school was K through 12 in one building. What I learned from my father is he had a had the general store in town. So it was like a mini department store, really small. But it's where everybody shopped. And there were relationships that were built because my dad... That was before credit cards. My dad did a lot of things on a handshake, where we'd have this file with what everybody owed and you'd add to it and then you'd take away from it or whatever. And it wasn't until he died, I think, that this lesson was driven home. And maybe I was intuitive. I just took it for granted. But people would say, I would never have gotten married if it wasn't for your dad. I said, What do you mean? I said, Well, I needed to buy an engagement ring and I had no money. And yeah, things like that. And you just, you know, they bring tears through your eyes because you never realized the power of relationships. And I think that was the most important lesson I learned from my dad because the business was different and hard work.
[00:08:31.050] - Margery Kraus
I mean, that business was open six days a week for 12 hours a day. And that's why we all participated in working in the store from the time we could see over the counter. That was an important part of my life, an important part of my experience.
[00:08:52.280] - Sabrina Fiorellino
So we're a small family. My mom was a single mom growing up, but we have a very interesting family in that I grew up in a house with four generations. So it was me and my brother, my mom, my grandparents, and my great grandparents in the same house. You can imagine the diversity of thought in that household. So you had people who were born in the early 1900s and then all the way up to us, me and my brother being born in the 80s. According to my great grandmother, I was not desirable because I was 17 and unmarried. So it was a completely, I would say, different thought process than what you or I would think today. And then obviously then my grandparents generation different than my mom, a little bit on the old school side, so different than us. So it was interesting to grow up. And then a lot of members of my family have autoimmune conditions. And my mom eventually got sick and needed a double lung transplant very close to the time that my grandfather also got sick. And so they had quite complex health issues at the same time.
[00:10:07.920] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
I totally relate to what you're saying about the multi generational. I did the same thing. I grew up in a household with my parents and my grandmother, and they all came here and I was born here, first generation. My grandmother, when you consider it, she was born in 1912. And so you're being raised by the mentality of people who lived in another land. They bring all that here to the new world world, so to speak. And it forms a very strong bond as well because that is your nucleus. These are the people that you can rely on the most. Tell me more about your relationship with your mom and your granddad and their health struggles as well.
[00:10:44.140] - Sabrina Fiorellino
Yeah. So I would say for me, my mom's a mentor. She was a woman in construction at a time when it was impossible to be a woman in construction. And so I think about my struggles today, and they probably pale in comparison to what she went through. And so when I told her I was leaving law to be an entrepreneur, I think she wanted to kill me. I think that was part of her thought process was, are you crazy? Like, no, you're not doing this. And at the time, I didn't understand. And again, being old school, she maybe didn't want to speak about things openly, like our generation is much more open, I think, than previous generations before us. I think previous generations are more, Oh, don't say anything. People don't need to know anything about you, etc.
[00:11:31.700] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Don't share what's happening at home with others.
[00:11:34.400] - Sabrina Fiorellino
Yes, that's the common theme there. And I think she did a good job raising us, a great job raising us. She's a single mom. We beat all statistics for children of single mothers. And so I think, well, she did it. And she had a lot less resources, a lot less help. It was a lot more difficult time. Really, she was trying to protect me from what she had suffered, but she never communicated communicated that to me. So at the time that I left, I was so confused as to why she bothered me so much. I'm doing the same thing that she did in another field. I'm an entrepreneur, she's an entrepreneur, she's my inspiration and she's mad at me. So it took a lot of years of reflection to understand that without her communicating that to me. But I always look up to her and I always think, I don't know how she made it at the time she made it. And so when she got sick, it was a big blow for me. She had stage 4 sarcoid in her heart and lungs, and so was on high flow oxygen for quite a long time.
[00:12:38.560] - Sabrina Fiorellino
And like I said, she ended up needing a transplant. She actually went into respiratory arrest, flatlined, was on life support. And in a lot of ways, a lot of the hospital staff who were with her call her a miracle that from a statistical probability, she shouldn't be alive, but she is. My grandfather also had an autoimmune condition. My grandfather was my best friend. I was around him all the time. He would sit with me even in university while I was doing my homework and tell me, Oh, I know more than any other lawyer. My brother's a doctor, so any other lawyer, doctor in Toronto because I read your textbooks. But really, really.
[00:13:16.180] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Oh, that's beautiful.
[00:13:17.690] - Sabrina Fiorellino
Really, he would sit next to me just for company and fall asleep. But it was someone there who I know was supporting me. I felt good no matter what, that there was somebody there who I knew cared enough to sit with me while I was up all night studying.
[00:13:33.450] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
And that's a very special relationship with a grandparent who helped raise you. It's completely different than the parental one, for sure. They can be your friend. They can have little inside jokes with you and make you feel better when you need that extra support.
[00:13:47.860] - Sabrina Fiorellino
Yeah, I totally agree. My grandfather, it was unconditional love. It didn't matter. My mom was a parent, for sure. She was strict and she was a parent and I loved her, but she was really strict. My grandfather, while he expected us to behave properly, he would go above and beyond for us. He knew I was studying and he would just put food in front of me. It wasn't an expectation that he was going to do that, but he knew, Oh, she's going to eat in another three hours, so really, I should help her now. And so, he was a very, very kind soul.
[00:14:19.390] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
What did he...In his mind, did he even care what career you were going to go for?
[00:14:25.560] - Sabrina Fiorellino
I don't think so. I don't know that he really understood what we were doing or how or what it meant, the ins and outs of it, but he just wanted us to be happy. And for him, he always put the family first. No matter how difficult things were or how hard his career was or how hard he worked, he always made time for us and always put the family above all else. And that was a lesson that stuck with me. That and the fact that he worked so hard. There was a period of time where he was working three jobs. He would tell us, You don't skip school and pretend you're sick. You don't call in sick at work. You have to dedicate yourself and work hard. And that's how you succeed. Working hard is the answer. There's no magic here.
[00:15:13.400] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Yes, I would have loved to meet him. He sounds amazing. Right up my alley. That hardworking ethic that comes from the previous generations who always woke up and showed up. That's what I remember. They woke up and they showed up and they did what they had to do. There was no complaining. They just really worked hard and they showed us by example. Unfortunately, things took a turn with his health and then you saw firsthand what happened in the Canadian health care system where you were. I completely understand that you're not complaining about the health care system because God knows how difficult it was during COVID for everyone to withstand that level of pressure constantly for all the health care workers. But you saw stuff and your family went through things, and I want you to tell me more about that experience.
[00:16:03.540] - Sabrina Fiorellino
Yeah, sure. I always say I love the Canadian health care system. At the end of the day, the Canadian health care system saved my mom's life, and I'm treated by the Canadian health care system, so is the rest of my family. I believe in accessible health care. In my grandfather's case, I stayed with him during every one of his hospital admissions until COVID. Then COVID hit and I couldn't stay with him. I obviously got worried. He wasn't a great advocate for himself. English was a second language for him. And while he was fluent, he just didn't understand some medical things, and he wasn't a good communicator when he was in the hospital. So obviously, he's not well. So I would stay in hospital with him and help advocate for him or take care of him. And so when COVID hit, you couldn't visit. But my brother, being a doctor, had access in some ways to some of his charts. And so the doctors at the hospital where he was at were telling us he was fine. And my brother was looking at the chart saying, Look, I don't think he's going to make it based on the numbers and stats I'm seeing.
[00:17:13.850] - Sabrina Fiorellino
We'd like to come see him just in case. When we showed up there, I think I had a meltdown. I'm not going to lie. He didn't even remember me. He didn't know my name. He didn't know anything about me. A few weeks earlier, we were sitting in the same house talking to each other. It was a big blow for me. Then what we had discovered is he hadn't been fed or given water, or no one brushed his teeth for several days. Even for my brother as a health care professional, I think both of us were really thrown off and it was really hard for us. We got a liter and a half watered down and then all of a sudden he remembered me and things were fine and he was a little bit more conscious of what was happening around him. But I FaceTime'd my mom and I said, Mom, you got to say goodbye because he's not going to make it. It's not going to work here and we are not here and we can't help this or fix this week. They're not going to let us stay here, so I don't see it.
[00:18:19.170] - Sabrina Fiorellino
And it was the first time I really believed he wasn't going to make it. My grandfather was another miracle patient in that he'd be at the brink and somehow make a full recovery the next day. And people couldn't understand how he kept doing that. And we all knew it was a matter of time because you can't do that forever. But when I saw him in that moment, I knew. And he did pass away a few days later. He was one of the most social people I know. I'm sorry for your loss. Thank you. Yeah, he was one of the most social people I know, probably one of the most loved people I know. And so for me, the biggest tragedy was he died alone. He died alone. And for me, that was a tragedy that there was no one around him when that happened. So really sad. The only thing that gives me some comfort is I think he probably didn't know. He was sick enough that he wasn't fully aware of his surroundings. And so I hope that he didn't feel alone when he passed.
[00:19:29.070] - Cassie Collier
I've done so many random jobs in New York City.
[00:19:36.500] - Jackie Collier
And honestly, I've enjoyed them all, really. And I love being an actor. I'm a kid's acting coach. For me, having multiple income streams and multiple jobs is like, I can't imagine a life without it. But I did feel like I didn't really have anything to ground me in terms of my professional life. And having bundle, which is this, even though it's entrepreneurship and it feels like it can be scary and not consistent, for me, it's probably the most consistent thing in my life. And that consistency but also balancing it with the fun and getting to do it with my sister, who's also my best friend, was really like, Oh, yeah, of course, I'm going to do that.
[00:20:24.810] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
And Cassie, was it the same for you in terms of... Describe what you did before.
[00:20:29.620] - Cassie Collier
I think I always knew I wanted to start my own business. It was always something I knew, but it felt so scary. I was working at a bank in spreadsheets all day while there were a lot of pro s to the job. I was stable, I was learning good skills, I had to do spreadsheets and financial analysis. There was a part of me that felt such a void. And so a year or two into that job is when I thought, Okay, now is the time to take the punch, it feels right. I'm definitely more of that type of person. I want to have all my ducks in a row. I want to have a blueprint for how I need to do certain things. And being an entrepreneur, you're literally building the plane as you fly it. Flipping that script for myself, I think, took a lot of time. I think the only way I was able to do it, frankly, was because of Jackie, who operates differently in the best way. That it's like, especially as an actor, it's like you put yourself out there all the time. Sometimes you book a role, other times you don't.
[00:21:42.230] - Cassie Collier
And it's simply being okay with putting yourself out there, being rejected and moving on. And as an entrepreneur, that happens so much. And so for me, I've learned a lot. So for me, that that partnership of having her alongside the journey was really key for me.
[00:22:00.150] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Amazing. Jackie, what did you learn from your sister?
[00:22:03.210] - Jackie Collier
It's the exact opposite of that in the sense that I learned from Cassie what it's like to show up every day and be consistently working towards the same goal and the same vision and essentially the same project. And I think it's so great to see how, for me, the instability in my career as an actor was actually something I always valued. And rejection doesn't really bug me, and I can shrug it off. But something that is difficult for me is actually consistency and having a set schedule. Cassie and I working together, it's something that she's had a lot of grace and flexibility, but also we found a happy medium and a common ground of how we can actually get a consistent schedule and be grounded in that way. So, yeah, I've learned a lot from her. But some things I don't want to learn, like how to do our taxes or spreadsheets or anything like that. And she's graciously continued to do that for us.
[00:23:07.320] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
She's so nice.
[00:23:09.060] - Jackie Collier
She is.
[00:23:11.970] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
No, it's cool because I know that there's a saying that don't get into business with family. And a lot of people swear by that. That's their... I will never get into business with family. They don't want to deal with it. They don't want to muddy the relationship or even lose the relationship. So was that ever a concern for you?
[00:23:29.790] - Cassie Collier
Yeah, I think you're right, Katherin. The stakes are higher when you're running a business with your sibling. If you're running it with a stranger, the business falls apart, even the business relationship falls apart. It's like, it's okay if this one relationship is tarnished. But when you're running a business with a sibling, everything is on the line. And so that, of course, for me, it's how do we always maintain our sister relationship and our bond? How do we draw boundaries? If we're going away for, say, a weekend with our cousins, we're cognizant that this is family time and we're not constantly talking about work either. We're also building and maintaining our relationship as sisters. And for that, finding that balance and the cadence, I think, was really key for both our sister relationship but also our relationship as business partners, too.
[00:24:24.490] - Jackie Collier
Actually, that's another thing that Cassie's taught me out of, I think, anyone I've worked with. Cassie does a really great job of respecting and modeling how to set healthy boundaries. It's not something I was great at in my life and still continuing to work on. But Cassie is very good at it. It really gives me such a sense of comfort because I think also in the acting industry and freelance life, boundaries can get really messy.
[00:24:54.590] - Jackie Collier
And Cassie has really shown how you can get a lot of work done but still be respectful of people's time.
[00:25:06.350] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
And So, She Left, we'll be back right after this.
[00:25:13.060] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Jill Salzman can't stop shouting, especially when it comes to business advice. She hosts the Why Are We Shouting? Podcast, where she tackles the answers to every mom entrepreneur's questions about running a company. Questions like, how can I grow my business without losing my mind? Why can't my kids stop whining when I'm on an important call? Will I ever be able to end a Zoom call without waving goodbye? Above all else, she's certain of one thing, she never knows what she's doing. If you feel like you don't either, head over to jillsalsman.substack.com, or look for the Why Are We Shouting podcast wherever you listen.
[00:25:57.580] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
All right, back to the show.
[00:25:59.590] - Stacey Tisdale
The human brain actually gives the way you feel inside your own skin, the way you feel about yourself. The human brain gives you that sense by comparing you to what's around you. So when you hear people say, Oh, she's just spending that money because she's trying to keep up with the Joneses. That's just what our brains do. And I remember my mother was a great educator, a great principal, and she went to a school in a community. The whole community would change. She'd walk in there and keep my school open for seven days. I'm doing this, I'm doing that. Then I remember every year she'd do a Christmas thing where she would make her name was Jetty, Jetty dollars. She'd get lots of donations of toys and everything and she'd have the shopping event and let some of the parents, some of them had nothing, come in and shop and buy toys with these fake dollars. Then there was a giveaway. I think the giveaway was for like $500 or something. And I remember the woman who won the giveaway, they're like, Oh, what are you going to do with the money? And the first thing that she did was say, I'm going to go buy my son a Nintendo or something like that.
[00:27:13.310] - Stacey Tisdale
And of course, everyone was like, Oh, horrified. If you think every message from every aspect of society is telling this woman normal kids have this thing, normal kids have this thing, normal kids have this thing. What did she want? She just wanted her kid to be normal. So if you really understand what's really going on, you can look at it from a different perspective and bring compassion into how you look at yourself and how you look at others. And that tamps down some of all that judgment, financial stress, impacts decision making. So the more you can reduce that and just get to the deeper aspects of yourself where you can see things a little more clearly, the more better decisions you'll make.
[00:28:00.150] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
I have another question for you. The audience can't see you, but I can see you. I see your eyes light up when you talk about certain things, but the question is, what has made you the happiest in all the things that you've done in the last few decades?
[00:28:14.980] - Stacey Tisdale
My son. Having my buddy who's getting ready to leave me because I'm going to college, but that's okay.
[00:28:25.300] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
That's good news. That's very good news.
[00:28:28.120] - Stacey Tisdale
Sometimes we get so caught up in our life situations that we don't realize that the real gift is life, that aliveness, consciousness, and him. I went through a period, I got laid off. I lost my job at CNN. Three weeks later, my mother passed. Three weeks later, my grandmother passed. And three weeks later, I found out I was pregnant. And then my mother and my grandmother were such big figures within our... I'm an only child, but I come from a big family. And they were such pillars in those families that there was just so much grief and confusion and loss when they passed like that. And then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, I was pregnant. My son is like my mother from somewhere, but it was the perfection of that. The gift of that was awe is the only word that I can use. And that it's continued to be that a gift. And then you see, this is nothing about religious beliefs at all. It's just an appropriate word, like resurrection. That's why I'm saying get in touch with what you really are, what human beings really are, and all the constant ourselves and our essence and our being and all of these miracles that are just a gift from somewhere that happen in us constantly.
[00:29:53.120] - Stacey Tisdale
Get with that. That can manage any money problem you got.
[00:29:59.340] - Surabhi Yadav
I am a gender and Rural Development Practitioner. The nonprofit, Sajhe Sapne, literally means shared dreams. It's addressing a key problem in India that after 12 standard or after school, young rural women don't have real tangible options for professional growth. Girls are not being raised with the idea that you're going to earn and someone else is going to be dependent on you. No, you're raised with an idea that you have to get married and you have to be so good at being daughter in law. And that training begins right from age two and age three because you're seeing all the rewards and all the punishments are centered and anchored around you being an amazing daughter in law.
[00:30:47.820] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Is that what happened with you in your case? Did you have that same mentality driven into you as soon as you were old enough to...
[00:30:56.960] - Surabhi Yadav
Not at all. I think, thankfully, I cannot thank my parents enough. I don't know how did they become so... They were amazing. So what they did is I had cross eyes as I was growing up, massive cross eyes. One eye looking in one direction, the other eye looking in other direction. And of course, children being children, they bully you. They're like, Oh, you have bad eyes, and these are not good, and these are not bad. So I'd come back and I would fight with my father. And I would tell him, That get me operated. Why don't you get me operated? A simple operation can fix it. And everybody even hates me. And he would say, And that I don't look beautiful. And he would say, Again, I think my father and my mother were amazing storytellers. So my father would say two things. One, he would say, Your eyes are God gift. And second, he would say, he would mention some amazing women's name, women leaders' name. One is Rani Lakshmi Bhai and Kiran Bedi. And he would say, Look at them. Their work is so amazing that people don't even dare to look into their eyes.
[00:31:58.570] - Surabhi Yadav
So now I bought these two stories. So I internalized, my eyes are gift of nature. And I would go to my classrooms and yell back to my classmates. This is God's gift. I have got God's gift.
[00:32:21.140] - Surabhi Yadav
I'm glad you mentioned the term self esteem. I was five or seven, and we were back in our native village, Madhapurabuddelkhand. In our village, the rituals of the culture is that women and girls do not attend the wedding procession of the guys in the house. In Hindu marriages, wedding procession goes from the groom's house to the bride's house, usually in a different village, and get married there and bring the bride back home. On the wedding card... So it was my cousin's wedding. It was my first cousin's wedding that I remember, and she was my older sister. On the wedding cards, usually, they write each and every man's and boy's name as a welcoming party in the house. So we have four siblings and I have an elder brother who's two years older than me and his name was on it and my name was not on it. I remember creating a big scene about it that why is my name not on it?
[00:33:15.230] - Surabhi Yadav
I go to my mother who is in a veil and is not supposed to talk to men in the household because she's a daughter in law in the household. So she nudges me to go and talk to the Papa. She didn't stop me. She didn't justify it like everyone else did, that, shut up. What do you know? I go to my father and my father got like thousand cards reprinted with a special line written at the end of a wedding card. Special request, our daughter, the other, welcomes you to this wedding. So I became this first person in the entire village to actually get her name on a wedding card and then also go to all the rituals that are involved in the process. Fast forward to the 20, 25 years later, my father recently sent me another wedding card from the family. This time my niece, who is actually 19 and she's getting married, and her wedding card, which not only mentioned my name, but also mentioned daughter in law's name, with their education listed next to their names.
[00:34:20.310] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
So you were the pioneer and the trend setter back then.
[00:34:24.500] - Surabhi Yadav
I think my parents were. I used to joke with my father that either you were really progress of amazing thinkers, or you were just care less parents that you didn't care whatever is happening to your children because you just gave us so much freedom. So my parents, what they did is they put us in convent school and we studied in English education, or whatever, the most prestigious school that was possible in that town. And even if that world was very far away from their own education and upbringing, they just didn't stop us. So we tried a lot of new things. They just didn't come in the way. So big part of our work is around giving the wider range of exposure, both inside and outside. What all is possible for yourself? What are your interests? What are your thoughts? What are your questions for the world? What is it that you want to create for the world and for yourself? And then, of course, showing this exposure of... There are different kinds of people doing all kinds of interesting things. But in the beginning, that's not the ambition. With my students, I used two terms, like, Atyachar and Bahaar.
[00:35:29.940] - Surabhi Yadav
Attyachar literally means oppression and Bahaar means spring. So there are two ways you can look at the world. You can look at it from the lens of oppression, what all is wrong with the world. That lens is really required. And then there is the spring lens. What is beautiful right now and what all other flowers that can blossom in the spring? At least in the last few years, I have learned how to channel everything towards the springs. All my work, springs. I live in the world of possibilities for myself and for people in my life. Now my students, and the springs that I see in them is they're very hard working, they're very committed, they're relentless in many ways, and they are just hungry for learning. So big part of it is just channeling that grief and guilt of not knowing my mother as a person into something beautiful. One of the things I remember, my mother used to not let us wear sleeveless clothes when we were young. I hated my mother for that, honestly. I was like, She's not forward thinking and she doesn't care what I want. After her death, my sister and I were sitting and just sitting and chatting and remembering her.
[00:36:35.580] - Surabhi Yadav
And I was laughing about, do you remember that how she would really protest of me wearing sleeveless clothes? And that was so weird. And my sister, who is six years older than me and she was much closer to my mother, she said the reason she said that is because there had been cases within family, someone making sexual advances on the girls. She was trying to protect us, both of us, me and her. That moment, I felt, Oh, my God. I misunderstood my mother to such deep extent. Here she is trying to protect me in the way she understood. How can you not feel the rage and the grief of not knowing women in your life enough because the way world is designed?
[00:37:30.810] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
I think that's amazing. Sorry, you're making me cry because I'm listening to this story because we don't understand the motivation behind our parents' actions sometimes, and they're just trying to protect us. But when you're young, you don't see the predators, you don't see what could potentially go wrong. You just believe everyone is good. You believe everyone in your environment is good.
[00:37:51.280] - Surabhi Yadav
Think about it, Catherine, that she managed to protect my positive worldview. Think about the cost that she paid so that I have an abundant sense of worldview because it's so beyond my mind that you could live in the same house where you know that your children are not completely safe. What would it like to live like? Because I never felt it. She did. And she protected me. I feel that I now have so much language about how neuroscience function, how our brain functions under traumatic incidences, all of that. I have the language now. My mother did not have that language. My mother did not have that framework. And yet her feminism was so solid. I don't know. I just feel, how did this happen? I wonder, what did my mother think about this world? What politics did she have? I have no idea. And what a loss. I don't know enough about my own creator. I did not know my mother enough. I started interviewing people in her life who knew her, and I wanted to know more about her. And...I can stop, Katherin.
[00:38:56.770] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
I don't know why this is so emotional. I thought we were going to talk about our entrepreneurship, and instead it's turning into this.
[00:39:05.010] - Surabhi Yadav
You asked me, why rage? It is. And the reason I'm continuing to talk...
[00:39:10.870] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
It's a deep question. It's an important question. The rage question is at the root of everything that moves us to change the world.
[00:39:18.490] - Surabhi Yadav
And the reason I'm continuing to talk is because I know if I start crying, thinking about my mother, this recording is not going to be finished. So I'll have to keep talking. I know myself, but I want to hug you. Right now, sister to sister, I want to hug you. Yeah.
[00:39:38.080] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Let me go back to that moment where you were applying for about 150 jobs, and then you're not hearing from people. At that moment, did you have this thing inside of you that said, Okay, I really do need to succeed. There's this urgency right now. Can you talk a bit more about that?
[00:40:03.440] - Vivian Chen
I kept on repeating this thing in my head, which is you just need one. You just need one job, one company, one person to believe in you. You don't have to find a million, you just need to find one. I think that urgency is always in me. Growing up as an immigrant with parents who gave up pretty much everything to come to this country, that sense of achievement was instilled in me. And in some ways, the pressure is there because I didn't really have a safety net figuring out how to navigate the career ecosystem, how to create a resume, how to write a cover letter, all these things are things that my parents couldn't share much with me, so I really had to explore by myself.
[00:40:41.720] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
I very much relate to that same situation. Child of immigrant, did homework by myself, didn't have bedtime stories, didn't have any of that. For me personally, I just felt like I had to make it count. I had to make sure that my parents felt like, Okay, it was worth it for us to come to another country. For me, the pressure was incredible to please them and to make sure that I did well and that I represented well and made sure I never embarrassed my parents. It's a very huge, huge driving force. Even today, I still want to be able to impress them with anything that comes up.
[00:41:17.240] - Vivian Chen
What you mentioned about making it worth the sacrifices and the sufferings is something that I think about every day. This idea of knowing that they had given up so much, how can I make it worthwhile for our family so that we come out ahead despite the suffering, despite the circumstances?
[00:41:39.820] - Jessie Frances
I grew up in Southeast DC. If you are not familiar with DC, that is one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in the nation capital. Although we did not have much, my mother instilled so much into us that you could not not pay for. I just think back at times when I referred to her as a Mameyre, when my Mameyre would take me thrifting. That started my passion for preloved goods. She would take me to thrift stores and give me a dollar or two. That meant so much to me. Just having two dollars to spend on whatever it is that I wanted and growing up and now becoming a mother and knowing just how much she sacrificed for those two dollars, whether it was $5, it meant so much to me to make what seemed to me as just a little bit of money. I just cannot thank her enough for all that she did for my siblings and I.
[00:42:50.260] - Jessie Frances
My mother was an amazing, amazing woman. I know that's something that a lot of people say about their mothers, but my mother was amazing. I just remember her work ethic and I remember how no matter what was going on in her life and now that I am a mother, I am an adult, I don't see how she did it. As a child, so many things I just did not understand. I look at her strength now and it's unmatched. There has to be something biological that was just passed on to me. I watched her work multiple jobs. I watched her be a mother to not only my siblings and I, but even to her spouses at certain times in our lives. It. And she did it with such grit and such grace that I still can't process just how she was able to do it. I cannot recall anytime that my mother complained. She always saw the brighter side of things, and she always knew that things would get better.
[00:44:04.530] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Well, she sounds fantastic. Thanks, mom.
[00:44:07.750] - Jessie Frances
Yes, I know. And sadly, I just lost her recently. So that has been... Yeah, that has been...
[00:44:14.860] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
I'm so sorry.
[00:44:15.770] - Jessie Frances
Yeah, it's been a challenge, but I use that strength and I'm so glad that she was here to see some of the evolution of Cappuccinos and Consignment. I'll never forget one of the things she said to me shortly before passing is that, you are the woman I was always afraid to be.
[00:44:35.790] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Oh, wow.
[00:44:37.760] - Jessie Frances
Yes.
[00:44:38.880] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
That's an incredible statement to hear from your mother.
[00:44:42.170] - Jessie Frances
I have chills now just repeating that. But because I know that through her life, just so many times, there were things that she wanted to do, but she felt that she couldn't. Whether that was internally or just society telling you that you're a mother now, you have to sacrifice your wants and you have to sacrifice your need to provide for your children.
[00:45:10.970] - Thilde Peterson
We came from a family where there had been a pregnancies and only four surviving children. My mother lost a baby before me, a baby after me, and another child towards the end of the time that she was able to have children. But the third child to come was Pamela, and she was born with something called Spina Bifida. She had an open spine. When they tried to close it over in 1956, it created something called water on the brain, hydrocephalic. Children's Hospital in Philadelphia was a groundbreaking institution that had just taken the design of a shunt, a piece of plastic that they put down the jugular vein to help ward off all of this fluid that would build up on a baby's head. And my sister was one of the first patients in a trial, clinical trial.
[00:46:07.220] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Oh, wow. Okay.
[00:46:08.240] - Thilde Peterson
And out of the 13 children that were in her cohort, she was the only one who survived. Wow. So she lived to be 62 years old, going on 63.
[00:46:20.140] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
That's incredible. Incredible. And how did that affect your family, the family unit?
[00:46:27.420] - Thilde Peterson
Well, I would say it to you this way, she was it. She was the focus. She was the heart of the family. It wasn't easy. It was hard. I'm not going to lie. But I never meant a human being with more moxie than my sister. My sister was friends with Frank Sinatra. Not a joke. He's telling you. Yeah, he used to come to Atlantic City to play at the hotels, and he would come to the special school that was there that my sister was in for a while. And she was on the front cover of the charitable night that he sang. They became pen pals until he died.
[00:47:07.440] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
That's amazing. I love this. Yeah.
[00:47:09.940] - Thilde Peterson
She was a pistol. She really was.
[00:47:14.110] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
It sounds like it was a really nice gift to each other. You guys had a nice relationship and it brings you closer to the family when one person needs more care than others. I'm sure your father, your mother, everybody had a shared role as a caregiver as well. What values did that bring up?
[00:47:32.140] - Thilde Peterson
Well, it started before that. So if you go back to... She was born in 1956. Go back 10 years before, our grandmother bought a house that was owned by two eccentric brothers that was huge. I mean, they used to call it a mansion. But my grandmother was a nurse and she opened a nursing home for people coming back from the war. And so we were steeped in servant leadership and in caregiving as a family. Most of her sisters, most of her sisters, my grandmother's sisters were nurses. My mother and dad were both nurses after my dad left the army. So we grew up in this incredible, crazy atmosphere of care.
[00:48:10.300] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
It was just part of the fabric of your family. Everybody is in it. And when you were a child, how did you watch your parents deal with what was happening in the family? And what values did you adopt from that?
[00:48:25.920] - Thilde Peterson
My father was a military officer. He landed in South Korea about three days after the armistice was signed, but it was not yet ratified. So he was considered to be a veteran of the war. And that really had an indelible mark on him. Even though the shooting had stopped, he saw the devastation firsthand. And we were raised like we were in his battalion. Now, some people would say that's abusive leadership, or that's an abusive parent. No, not at all. When your parents teach you to make your bed and how to balance a checkbook, and how to follow the golden rule, I think that's cool.
[00:49:06.890] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
People come back from war in all sorts of states. And in your father's case, it sounds like he made the best of it. As children, did you ever ask to hear war stories, or this was not something we talked about?
[00:49:21.520] - Thilde Peterson
No. I mean, we had a taste of it, Katherin. I mean, we lived here in France for about two and a half years. We were part of a great group of army officers and battalion members that were protecting NATO oil outside of Paris. And then we were assigned for two and a half years to Frankfurt, Germany, just as the Berlin Wall went up. So you'd be laying in bed at night and the phone would ring and they would practice evacuation. So you had to be ready in 30 minutes with a little suitcase with enough clothes for two days. And an army private would be driving an ambulance with my sisters and I and my mother towards a Coast, either the Coast of France, the Coast of Holland, just in case World War III started. So I didn't have to talk too much about it. We were actually in the middle of it in a way in the Cold War.
[00:50:19.480] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Were you ever affected by what your father came back from the war with?
[00:50:25.150] - Thilde Peterson
No, because the shooting had pretty much stopped at that point. What I was struck by when dad came home was the incredible relationship he made with the Korean family he lived with. They ran out of army housing and they were paying Korean families if they had an extra bedroom. And until the day my father died, he was still friendly with the family that he stayed with. We wrote letters back and forth and exchanged gifts for his entire life. He was a great guy. Got out of the service just as this, Vietnam got really bad because somewhere along the line, he realized that he couldn't leave my mother with four children.
[00:51:14.930] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
I learned so much more about my writing from the other stories that I heard from the individuals in that cohort. There were incredible individuals in that cohort like Ingrid Rohas, she just wrote a book about maybe a year or two ago that has won incredible awards. And the professors that I studied under were stellar. So it was honestly more about what was being modeled before me than even about my own work. I learned so much from the other people there.
[00:51:51.440] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Can you describe maybe what your parents' influence was on your writing and your love of reading?
[00:51:58.700] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Yeah. I think a few different things. One, I think it might have been my mom, but them getting me a library card was I don't even think they understood how pivotal that would be for me. It gave me a sense of...
[00:52:14.760] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
That's the best. That's the best as a kid.
[00:52:16.220] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Yes. It gave me such a sense of agency. And that I loved reading, though, neither of them, and I should say, my parents are divorced. And so my mom and father divorced when I was very young, one years old. I was actually born in Hawaii. My father was in the military there. My parents got divorced and we ended up moving back to Chicago, where they're from. And my mom remarried. And so I grew up with my mom and my step dad, whom I called dad and then my sister. So my mom and dad, really, neither of them were readers. And so I never ever really saw it modeled, but I had this deep love of books. Well, my father, whom I spent Sundays with him, he was a big reader, but of more technical books. And so computer software books. And so our bonding thing that we would do together is go to bookstores. That was how we learned to navigate our relationship, even though we didn't have a ton of time together. And so there was that. And then I was growing up, my mom and step dad, they really encouraged whatever I wanted to do.
[00:53:41.190] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
And I never had the, you can't do that, or you have to go for a more practical, lucrative career. That pressure was never on me because they didn't grow up in that environment. They both grew up very hard working, just make your own way. And then I think that they were just excited for me to be in an area of knowledge and learning that I loved. So when they saw my report card that freshman year of college and saw that chemistry and my other nutrition classes were not going so well, they told me really quickly that I had to turn things around because they weren't going to pay tuition for me to waste time and party my behind off. And so when I switched to an English major, I think they were all just relieved because they knew that was an area that I loved. And then when I went to grad school, my mom was the one who said, someone I know has a daughter who's an intern at Chicago magazine, you should really apply for an internship there. You should, you should, you should. And after her eighth urging, I finally did. So all along, they have been incredibly supportive of me as a writer.
[00:55:09.410] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
And when I recently left my full-time professor job a couple of years ago, I was self conscious about how maybe my mom would feel about that because I knew it was a great sense of pride that I was a professor given that most of the people in our family, well, none of them had ever been professors. And like I said, I was the first to go to college. And so when I said, mom, I'm leaving my professor job and I'm starting my own business, I didn't know if there would be a pinch of let down. And we just talked about it the other day. And she said, I couldn't be more proud that you left something stable in order to follow your heart, essentially.
[00:55:56.200] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
I love that they are supportive of the creativity and the imagination that comes with writing and being in the creative arts, and that they didn't push you into some business endeavor or anything that didn't resonate with you.
[00:56:14.200] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Yeah. And I think that because my mom, my dad, and my father, they all had to follow a nonconventional path, or they at least all chose to follow a nonconventional path. So we think that's why they had more tolerance for it. So my mom went from being a bank teller to a bank manager and then left that and now is a massage therapist at a hospital and helps women basically rehabilitate after they've given birth. It's a job she loves, loves, loves. And when I was going into grad school, my dad was basically taking night classes to get get a bachelor's degree. And then my biological father, he did a bunch of night classes and then got a million different kinds of certificates. And his focus was software and a lot of work with computers. But it's like each of them had to make their own way without having any models because my grandparents, all of them on all sides were really blue collar workers, truck drivers. My other grandfather worked for the railroad. N one of my parents had this road modeled for them, and they had to go their own way. I think they encouraged that.
[00:57:45.570] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
It sounds like there's a lot of determination involved in taking your faith in your own hands. It just shows that you don't stay in the same place for too long if that's not what makes you happy. Your family has that thread in it, I think, based on what you're telling me. And so do you find that you also have that ability to change directions, to take decisions, or to make decisions quickly in order to satisfy what's happening in your life at any given moment?
[00:58:16.160] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Yeah. I think what I've learned is that nothing has to be permanent. You can change your situational setup. You don't have to stay in something that makes you unhappy. Even if it's a great thing and even if it's something that you worked really, really hard at, leaving it doesn't have to mean failure. It doesn't have to mean anything. It means that it was a period of your life that was successful and satisfying for what it was. And then you changed and it changed and it was time to move on to something else. So it helped erase this stigma around leaving, truly. I think that's really what it is, is that there wasn't a sense of, Oh, if you don't stick this out, then there's failure or you're betraying the industry or what have you. So it was that. It was a fostering a trust in myself. They modeled that for sure about how do we take leaps that might seem impractical to other people. And they were all very innovative, like we didn't come from means. And yet if my grandmother would always say, when there's a will, there's a way. And if you want something, you figure out a way to make it happen.
[00:59:41.670] - Nadine Kenney Johnstone
Like when money was tight, right. If you grew out of your winter boots and you didn't have new winter boots, then what you do is you put plastic bags over your socked foot and then you put that foot into a gym shoe. And now it's a waterproof shoe. And just stuff like that you make it happen.
[01:00:11.110] - Katherin Vasilopoulos
Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed these stories, we would love it if you could please rate, review, and subscribe to And So, She Left wherever you listen. Your feedback helps us to better serve current listeners and reach new ones. To make it even easier, we're launching a quick feedback form. It's just five questions long, and it would help us immensely if you could please take a few minutes to fill it out. Your responses directly impact the creation of the show, and we want to make the show that you want to hear. And So, She Left is made by Cansulta and Ethan Lee. We'll be back on Sunday for a discussion about family and next Wednesday with a new episode. Our music is by Chris Zabriskie, edited for your enjoyment. You can find a list of all the songs you heard here in the Episode Notes. I'm Katherin Vasilopoulos, and thanks for listening.