The topics and opinions expressed on the following show are solely those of the hosts
and their guests, and not those of W four w N Radio It's employees
or affiliates. We make no recommendations or endorsements for radio show programs, services,
or products mentioned on air or on our web. No liability explicit or
implies shall be extended to W four w N Radio It's employees or affiliates.
Any questions or comments should be directed to those show hosts. Thank you for
choosing W four w N Radio. Well, hello and welcome to Fearless Fabulous.
You. I am your host, Melanie Young, and I am so
happy you're joining me this beautiful September twenty twenty three. This is the first
airing of this show. You can listen to it, of course on W
four w N Radio, but on about thirty five podcasts anytime anywhere as you
desire, So check it out on iHeart, Spotify, and follow me at
Melanie Young dot com and Melanie Fabulous on Instagram. So if you follow me
a lot, you'll know that I've been doing a lot of solo shows,
and a lot of it's based on the fact that for the past year,
well more than a year, but in the past year I had been relocated
back to my hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee, where for a period of time
I was caring for my mother who had fallen and broken her femur and refused
to get up like she refused to get up and do any kind of physical
therapy and just decided that she wanted to will herself to die. So I
became the accidental caregiver, probably not the best caregiver, but I did my
best in the capacity of what I can do. And then after she died,
I inherited a house that does sound exciting, doesn't it, But it's
a house filled of things because she was a bit of a hoarder. And
my husband David and I are working very hard and I'm documenting it quite a
bit on Melanie Fabulous, the process of decluttering and un doing somebody's life,
which leads me to the theme of today's show. Because I have to be
really blunt doing this and there is no one else who can help me because
I'm an only child. And I think saying an only child when you're sixty
four is kind of funny, but that's really what it is, and speaking
of child this whole experience is taking me down the rabbit hole of going back
to my childhood. Because my mother and father kept everything that I ever wrote
did war they documented my whole life. I didn't realize how many times I
appeared in the local newspaper. And when I got my vaccinations, I was
in the local newspaper. When my dogs got their vaccinations, I was in
the paper with my dog. When my dogs had puppies, I was in
the newspaper with my dogs and they're puppies. When I went to the local
museum, the Hunter Museum, with my grandmother, I ended up being not
only in the newspaper, but then the museum's brochure, which I'm looking at
right now, and there's me all dressed up in a pretty little dress with
white gloves, and my grandmother and her pearls and gloves, staring at an
exhibit. When I first appeared as Tricksie the Noneck Monster in catt on the
hot ten Roof and the Chattanooga Theater Center production of Cat on the hot ten
Roof at age five, I ended up in the paper and on the wall
of the Theater Center when I when I drew my thought of what the pilgrims
looked like coming over to Plymouth Rock. That ended up in the newspaper,
as did my turkey drawing, et cetera, et cetera. I think you
get the drift. They kept it all and I'm finding it all. And
there's some recurring themes through all of this writing and photos and newspaper clips that
I have learned about my childhood and life, and it's this all my life.
I was groomed to be an overachiever with success as my ultimate goal.
I was never given you baby dolls, never was encouraged to be a baby
doll caregiver and take care of babies. I wanted the barbie. I was
given the barbies because barbies could have success. I was given diaries and told
to write in diaries, and I did. From age five. I was
told to keep scrapbooks of everywhere I went, to document all my journeys and
report back on them to my parents. I learned how to read at age
three because my mother was a speech therapist and she had me sit in with
the class with her students, most of whom con speech because they had they
had speech deficits like me. Almost and I learned to read phonetically. When
I was on Halloween, I didn't dress up as a witch. I dressed
up as a nurse, or a famous dancer, or a newspaper reporter.
You get the draft. I was always on the road to be successful.
I didn't know what it was to be anything but that. Now, where
did that all come from? Well, digging deep into the chronicles of the
basement, I have uncovered boxes and scrap books and more scrap books from my
mother and my father. Apparently they were big scrap bookers and letter writers also,
and they were very successful. So my mother was giving speeches as a
teenager to local civic groups. She was raising money for the Daughters of a
Confederacy. Yeah, that's right, a teenager. She was on the honor
board, the honor roll, had millions of dates to all the proms.
She documented all of this, as well as all of her children's plays,
children's stories, and speeches that she was writing as a young teen. Actually
she was writing as a young little girl, because I even found letters she
wrote is a grammar school student, So the apple didn't fall too far from
the tree. She was doing it, and she encouraged me to do the
same. On the flip side, my father was an avid letter writer too.
I found letters he wrote to his parents while he was stationed overseas in
Asia as a soldier. I found honor rolls from him at the United States
Military Academy, and letters and letters and letters. They both wrote books.
My father wrote four books on the Civil War. My mother wrote a children's
book, two children's plays, and I have said she had three newspaper columns.
They both wrote book reviews, and the growing up with a pen and
paper in my hand was just as natural as a fork and spoon. So
when you're a little kid, you really don't know what you want to be
when you grow up. In fact, when I was five, I just
assumed I was going to fall in love and have a big wedding and live
happily ever after. And that's the pictures I drew until and I documented every
boy I met in my diaries and analyze each one to see if it was
going to be a proper husband or not. Mind I was five, but
my mom had a career. She got her master's degree in psychology while I
was still that little girl writing in her diary dreaming of marriage and She worked
as a speech therapist, as I mentioned earlier, and that's where I learned
to read. Sitting in the nursery with the children who were hard of hearing,
learning to speak phonetically. I learned to read phonetically. And she wrote
articles for the local newspaper and actually had a column called the Pen the Purple
Lady, and they both wrote book reviews. So I started writing, and
I started writing and pretending I was a newspaper writer. So to that effect,
I looked at the handwriting. I found all these diaries, I found
all these letters. I had written letters upon letters. They never threw any
of them out because they so believed that I would become a famous writer.
That also didn't throw my baby teeth. But that's a whole another story.
So over time, when I was five, all of a sudden things changed,
and this is what happened. There was a show called I Love Lucy.
Everybody remembers Lucille Ball. She was just the redheaded comedian. She had
the Lucy and Desi show. And then Lucy and Dezzi broke up. And
about the time I was six and in first grade, Lucy, Lucy,
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnez had had their babies broken up, and she was
now a solo television star, and I became fixated on her because Lucy was
the independent career woman, and suddenly I wanted to model my life on Lucy.
I watched every show. I watched how she managed herself in the office,
and when she went to London to go to Carnebie Street and the swinging
sixties. I wanted to dress like her. In fact, I wanted to
dress. I wanted a miniskirt. I was six and my mother was dressing
me in Winnie the Pooh and his mother daughter outfits. By the way,
I have found so many photos of my mother and my mother and I wearing
the same outfit, whether we're you know, Yankee doodle dandy, or we're
wearing matching shifts or kimonas or mumus. You can't even believe it. But
suddenly I just said. I just sat there and I stomped my feet and
I crossed my arms. I looked at my parents and I said, that's
it. I wanted miniskirt and go go boots, and I'm going to be
a writer and I'm going to write about fashion and luxury lifestyle. And travel,
and my parents looked to me and they nodded and nodded, and guess
what, I have this amazing photo of me going to school in first grade
wearing a multi color, all horizontal dress, a mini skirt, with my
white go go boots and my pink pointy glasses because I had started wearing glasses
and I wanted pink pointy wines. And I had long hair and big bangs
and it hung down like Carneby Street. And I sauntered into my first grade
and everybody just stopped what they are doing and stared at me, and I
gave them a wink and I said, I am going to write about this.
That was six and it never ended from there. I never thought I
never looked back and thought that anything else was going to change. You know.
I continued to write in grammar school, and then as a high school
teenager, my focus was I'm going to leave this dumpy out of Chatooga,
Tennessee, and I'm going to go to the big time and become a famous
magazine editor. And my role model was no longer my mom or Lucy.
It was Helen Gurley Brown, the founder and publisher and managing editor. Because
she had three titles, because why not of Cosmopolitan Magazine. I became fixcited
on Cosmopolitan Magazine. I read it cover to cover. I tried to create
cleavage out of breast that didn't exist, just like the models on the cover
of Cosmotolito magazine. I had no idea what sex was, but I kind
of glossed over that to read about becoming an independent career women because this was
the early seventies and the women's liberation movement was well underway and it was time
to have a good career. So for me, that was running a magazine,
having a high level role somewhere in publishing. I have long launches with
famous people and travel the world. In New York City. To that effect,
I convinced my matching of my local hometown newspaper, the Chat Niga Free
Press, to let me write articles. Now this is where it gets kind
of funny. I ended up. I have uncovered here as I unpacked my
life and unpacked my parent's life and apparently unpacked my grandparents life and great grandparents'
life. So four generations of letters and clips and photos I'm unpacking. I
found all my articles that I wrote for the Chat Nigga News Free Press starting
at sixteen, when I was able to have a driver's license and able to
go out interview people. And I'm astounded what I actually wrote because half the
time I didn't know anything about anything. I was busy, you know,
cheering on the local high school team the boys I was trying to date.
I was in school. But my first article, believe it or not,
was based on a teen trip I went on to Israel because my parents,
they were fairly developed Jews, and they really wanted me to find religion,
which I hadn't found yet because I was too busy searching for the cute boys,
because that really was boy crazy. So they sent me. They sent
me on this team toward Israel, and I was told to write letters back.
I was given a quota of letters I had to write who to write
to document this trip, because remember I'm supposed to be a writer and my
parents were encouraging me. So I also found not only the diaries from this
team trip, but also the letters which basically documented every boy I met in
Israel and evaluated them back to my parents and how I ran away from the
kibbutz. And one of the letters had a dollar sign for every s because
I was running out of money. So it was a carefully written and composed
longhand written letter in my loop de loop writing with circles for eyes and hearts
and flowers for dots, and it had a dollar sign for every s saying
I needed money. And then the next letter was my evaluation of the trip,
because I was reviewing the trip for them, and I decided that nobody
really cared about seeing old stuff, that we really needed to focus on modern
and today. Now this is after I had gone to the Massada and the
birthplace of the guests to me and where the last summer was held. I
was tired of old relics. I want to see the new of the matter.
Somehow my parents and grandparents kept every letter and I read them and I
was like, Wow, what a snotty kid. She really had an attitude
about her. But to her credit, this teenager had opinions and was fearless
about expressing them. Even at that time. I ended up writing my first
article for the chat Nico paper for the measly amount of money of twenty five
dollars for about two thousand words, which should day they pay my current editor
at The Mountain Mirror newspaper pays me sixty five dollars for about a thousand words,
So from twenty five dollars in nineteen seventy six to sixty five dollars in
twenty twenty three, it just he shows you the shoddy state of journalism,
Bingo. My first article was documenting a hostage release. Now I am sixteen.
I just wanted a boy crazy trip looking for the cutest guise in Israel
and documenting them instead of all the historic places I was going. I didn't
find religion. I found boys, and I somehow ended up in Jerusalem when
a major international crisis at unfurled in Uganda. Right Uganda, I had a
look up where Uganda was in Africa, but there were some Israeli hostages there
and they had been released, and they were brought back to Jerusalem, and
for whatever reason, I ended up documenting what it was like to be an
American on the ground during a hostage release, and that was my first article.
From there, I wrote about skateboarding, I wrote about I wrote about
some continuing in the Jewish theme. I interviewed this woman who was head of
Hadassa, which is a big you know, philanthropic Jewish women's organization. I
wrote about to the trend towards skate pingting tennis, collecting unusual collectors. I
wrote about what it's like to travel abroad by yourself. I wrote about how
to get an intern in Washington DC. I wrote so many articles that as
I looked through them, I was like, Wow, why was it so
hard to get a job as a journalist When I graduated college, which brings
me to I graduated high school with my career set on becoming a journalist.
I had made twenty five dollars an article and written probably fifty articles. I
thought that was pretty good, and it certainly beat it hostessing at the Laff
restaurant, which I also did to earn some money, and waitressing at Mister
Stake, which I did for about a year and then my parents said no
more of that. My father used to drive to the restaurant and follow me
home at night, just to make sure I got home safely from mister Steak,
and I only found that out after he died in two thousand and nine,
that he would do that every night I worked, and I thought that
was so sweet. I ended up attending Sophie newcham College in New Orleans,
which is now Tulane University. I was a legacy early admission. My mom
went there, and my cousins went there. Everybody just assumed I would follow
the family footsteps to Tulane, even though I said I wanted to go to
Georgetown School of Foreign Service into Radcliffe because that was where A love story was
filmed, and I just thought i'd be cool like Ellie McGraw. But no
one really encouraged me to go north and offered me trips to go visit those
schools. But they did take me to New Orleans on a feeding frenzy when
I was a teenager and said you're gonna love the city and you're gonna want
to go to school there. And after they took me to all the finest
restaurants and I had my first raw oyster, my first fresh crab, my
first fresh shrip, and any kind of seafood because all I've ever had in
Chantago was fish sticks. I was hooked and convinced I was going to move
to New Orleans and take the town by storm and the college of Tulane University.
And what did I do. I signed up to write for the local
Hulliblulu newspaper and become a journalist. I didn't major in journalism or communications,
instead of major to international relations, with the strategy that by majoring in international
relations, I would become more desirable as a foreign correspondent, which is what
I decided I wanted to do. I want to either be ambassador, cultural
astiche or foreign correspondent, so my majoring in international relations that would prepare me
to do that, which it actually didn't because all I seemed to do is
study philosophers and economics, and I couldn't understand economics unless it involves shoes and
philosophers. I kind of got, but I didn't see how again, these
ancient people were going to apply to modern times. So I wrote for the
local newspaper. I also got a job selling cosmetics and became a master salesperson
and won all sorts of awards for learning to sell cosmetics and did okay.
I even went to work in Washington, DC, convinced that that's where I
needed to be because I wanted to be there because all the president's men had
just come out, and I wanted to be a famous journalist like the book's
authors. And I became an intern on Capitol Hill from my local districts Congresswoman
Marilyn Lloyd, and I spent the days in her office opening mail, and
my relating assignment was responding to letters written to Congresswoman Lloyd. Of course,
somebody had to supervise everything I wrote, but that was my job as a
writer, writing letters back to her constituents and opening the mail. So I
was attending Georgetown University School of Foreign Service as a summer student. My parents
let me do that because I pushed and said I really wanted to be in
Washington, and they liked the idea of my going to Washington and working on
Capitol Hill, and they were supporters of Marilyn Lloyd, so it all just
seemed right. So my thesis, I had to write a thesis, So
I decided I was going to write about the fourth of the state because in
the government, there's the judicial branch, executive branch, the congressional branch,
and then there's the media. The media is called the fourth of the state
because they are the watchdog on those three other branches to make sure nothing goes
awry. Been a little difficult in the recent years with that, particularly with
the march on the Capitol. It's getting harder for the fourth of State to,
you know, keep those other branches in tune. But I wanted to
be a journalist, so I would roam the halls of Congress. After opening
all that mail and writing back some letters and submitting them for approval, I
would then take the afternoon off and roam the halls of Congress tracking down journalists
to interview. And I did a pretty good job of it, and did
a great thesis, and I was convinced that that was my future. So
upon graduation, I planted myself in Washington, DC. My father agreed to
pay my apartment for a year in Georgetown because I was convinced that's where all
journalists needed to live, even though it's the most expensive part of town at
the time. And I set to work with my carefully crafted resume and cover
letter and all the clips, lists of clips from the Hullabaloo newspaper in New
Orleans Sophie Newkham, and all my clips in the Chenigo Free Press, convinced
that I was going to take Washington, DC by storm and become the next
hot journalists. Well, everybody else wanted to do the same thing, and
I could not get in a foot in the door working in the media back
then, and even now it's tough. The jobs are scarce to pay us
boultry. You have to know someone or know someone who knows someone to even
get a foot in the door. I would go to the National Press League
building and I would see stacks of resumes just lying on the ground like newspapers,
but they were resumes. So I couldn't get a job. I tried,
you know, I ended up. You know, everyone wanted me to
type. I couldn't type. I was very slow typer. For a brief
time, a very brief time, I took a job at a law office
as a secretary because I needed money. I was running out and my parents
were threatening to They were telling me, you know, when the at least
is over, you're coming home, and that meant going back to Dallas,
vil Chadnooga, and that was not going to happen. So I took a
job as a law firm and I got fired because I rewrote everybody's briefs because
I felt they were too wordy, and I didn't realize that the lawyers are
paid by the words. So I would go to my boss and say,
you know, I noticed that you just seemed to be very redundant and everything
are writing. So if I took the liberty to edit it, I hope
you don't mind. Well, of course they minded, so that they fired
me, but they gave me a big bouquet of flowers and said, you
definitely want to be a journalist, because you've told everybody in the office,
and you clearly want to be because you've rewritten all of our stuff even without
our consent. So good luck. Well, long story short, I ended
up nailing a job because of my writing for a public relations consultant, which
I decided was the next glamorous step in my life because his name was well,
he's dead, so I can say it ed Van Kloburg, and he
was an interesting guy. He was a consultant and seemed to be a professional
escort for many wealthy women in Washington whose husband seemed to have lots of money,
and we're never around. So he would have these salons with them,
and I would sit there and he would plan fundraisers for them, and I
would sit there and write down all the plans for the fundraiser and all the
plans for the press release, and then he would tell me what to go
do, and I did whatever I could because it was all very glamorous,
and I was helping you with these very wealthy women and going to you know,
they came from like Woolworth and famous names like that. And we did
this giant fundraiser at the Organization of American States, and I did all the
press outreach and helped him. I was his assistant. And guess what turned
out. We were doing the fundraiser at the Organization of America's States for Planned
parenthood. While planned parenthood is for family management, as they say politely,
and the Organization of American Streets is a highly Catholic organization. It's an organization
of mainly countries that are Catholic. So the night of our big fundraiser,
there were huge protests outside and we had a little crisis on our hand,
and I had to help with that. But at the end of the day
he realized that that's really wasn't that. You know, he was in trouble
for organizing that event. He lost a lot of business and I lost my
job. Years later, I read that this same man got in trouble for
other things in politics and mismanagement and leaped off the turret of a castle in
Italy into the sea, the Geranean Sea, the end of him. But
I took all my vast experience at the age of twenty two. Now my
my hullabaloo clips from Tulane University, my newspaper articles from Chanaga Free Press,
and all my press releases and whatnot from Washington DC. I wrote a press
release saying, a new girl in town has a new girl in town has
arrived in Atlanta, joiner looking Atlanta, Georgia, looking for public relations work
at Her name is Melana Young. And I parked myself in Atlanta because I
had convinced my parents Atlanta was the next best thing to Chadnooga and there was
promise an opportunity there. And I hit the streets. Thank goodness, I
had learned salesmanship while selling cosmetics behind the counter in New Orleans. Because I
just hit the pavement and had lots of interviews and was fearless. I even
created copyright. I created writing. I had portfolios of every kind of writing.
A management they practically read my diaries, ended up getting a job.
I had a great public relations agents, one of the best and one of
my greatest mentors. Ever worked there. It was called Conan Wolf. The
late Bob Cone died in twenty twenty three, and he was really one of
the greatest. He was an award winning photo journalist and showman like P.
T. Barnum and his sidekick, Norman Wolf was the studious, sedate,
serious newspaper man. So together we had P. T. Barnum and the
serious side, and they both taught me a lot about journalism. Looking for
visuals coming up with the stick. He would say, walk carefully and carry
a big stick in pr which meant whenever we came up with a crazy idea,
that was the stick. We ended up working for Coca Cola we did.
I did the tab Fitness Invasion in Arizona. I'd never been to Arizona
or west of the Mississippi River. And on the second day, when I
marched into Conan Wolf in my blue career suit, my boss, Jim Overstreet
said, have you ever been to Arizona? And I said no, I've
never been west of the Mississippi, but I've been to Israel. He said,
well, you're going to Arizona for three months and you're going to produce
the tab Fitness Invasion. Wow. So my Mom was very helpful. She
kind of coached me on how to plan an event because I'd never planned an
event of that size, much less a fitness event. But somehow, somehow,
because I was fearless, I managed to do it with great success.
And I went on to have a very successful career at Conan Wolf and won
some awards for my work on a local radio station, and then decided I
was going to finally pursue my dream of living in New York. My roommate,
whose name was Melanie, had already moved to New York and gotten a
job an advertising agency for Coca Cola. She'd work at Coca Cola in Atlanta.
Coca Cola was our clan and our pr agency, So I thought,
there's got a way to get connections to move to New York. So I
started interviewing in New York. I took the prize money that my radio station
had won for winning Broadcaster of the Year. They gave me the prize money
and said, don't tell your boss, but we know you want to move
to New York and we're going to support it. And I flew to New
York and interview for jobs. Interestingly, the company that bought my agency and
started Conenwolf. New York interviewed me and they've all turned me down. They
all not only did they turned me down, but they said I wasn't even
New York material. I still have that letter. They said they don't think
I'm going to cut it new York, that I was too flaky and I
needed to stay in Atlanta. When I found out that I was rejected not
only by my New York branch but the parent company, I cried and then
I got pissed, and I said, I'm going to New York and I'm
going to be more successfull thanly ever dreamed of. And long story short,
I ended up getting a job at a wonderful agency. Another great mentor for
me, David Finn. The company was Ruter, Finn and Rotten Ruter Finn
and Rottman and became Ruter Finn and David Finn was one of the greats and
taught me about creating programs that supported social impact and the arts and research based
public relations. And I became very successful there and stay there for many years
and won some awards for my work for I can't believe it's yogurt now.
This is where I stop for one minute and mentioned something that I neglected to,
and that is that in high school I was voted most likely to succeed
and that title followed me through Chattanooga to New Orleans, Washington DC, Atlanta,
back to Washington, DC, back to Atlanta, and then to New
York. So failure was not an option ever because I had this title most
likely to succeed, which brings me to the day I decided to start my
own company. I was working for an agency. Okay, I was working
for the agency that had bought Conan Wolf. It's it's called Burson Marstellar.
They were the agency that had turned me down several years, like three years
earlier. Three years earlier, had turned me down because they said I wasn't
New York material. They hired me, they didn't recognize me. I had
started wearing block, I'd changed my looks. I didn't really changed my looks,
but I started being New Yorkie. They hired me. I knew who
they were, but they didn't know who I was. And I ended up
working for the woman that had interviewed me when I was turned down. I
had the most boring job at Burson Marstellar. I wrote proposals for Jello like
Jello and DuPont flooring System, and I sat in my cubicle miserable because I
knew I was destined for more. And that day came when a very good
friend of mine, the late John Rally, who was a seafood consultant and
marketing whiz, said Melanie, it's time for you to hang your own shingle,
go out on your own. And the impetus to do that were three
things. One, my grandmother dropped out of a massive heart attack, and
I adored her. She was one of my favorite people on earth, and
I realized life is short, do what you love. I flew down to
be with my family for her funeral, decided I would stay a few extra
days, and when I got back to New York, I was given a
written reprimand because I didn't follow protocol and ask permission to stay the extra days.
And that was impetus one to go out on my own. After John
rally sage words, impetus too was I had been freelancing on the side for
a magazine called Cook's Magazine, and I got a call from the publisher saying,
we could use someone like you to help us polish off a program that
we're doing called the Who's Who of Cooking in America. We need to grow
it, and we think you're pretty good. And by the way, you
can write all the bios of the Who's Who. So I jumped at that
opportunity. And coincidentally, the third reason was I was fired. Yeah,
my company fired me. They thought I had a bad attitude. The Dupump
flooring people didn't think I was excited about flooring. I wasn't. The Jellow
people didn't think I was interested in Jello, I wasn't. And I just
hated the whole corporate experience. So those are the reasons I went on my
own. I told my grandfather I was going out on my own, and
he quietly sent me money to buy a computer a fax machine, and I
set up in my own apartment in New York City and that was the start
of a company that started as M Young and Associates. I printed out business
cards. I had new associates, but my dad thought it looked better if
I had associates, so I prunted up Associates and it morphed into M Young
Communications. That company lasted twenty years, and during that time I started the
James Beard Foundation Awards and grew it to the prominence it is now. I
started New York Restaurant Week and grew it to the prominent it is now.
I started many wonderful programs, grew my company into a seven figure success story,
had twenty people loved what I did, and was on top of the
world, and frankly, had achieved my dream of being successful in New York.
The only thing I hadn't achieved to the According to my mother's I was
still single in New York, and she made no She made it very plain
that she was unhappy that I was single in New York, and she would
tell everybody I was still singing in New York and do whatever she could to
try to get me a husband. I would come home for holidays, there'd
be a strange man at the table. I mean instantly hated him, but
somebody else would pick him up. So long story short, I did meet
somebody on my own, a friend that I known for a long time,
and the friendship grew and things were I was on top of the world.
I had achieved what I defined as success. I was running a business,
I was living in New York. I was in the thick things. People
knew and respected me. I was making lots of money. I found a
great man. What could go wrong? Well, in life, things can
go wrong, and this is important that sometimes you make things happen, and
sometimes things happen to you. In my case, things happened to me.
I lost a lot of business for a variety of reasons. It really had
nothing to do with me, but had to do with the clients. And
I lost about seventy five percent of my business the same year that I was
getting married. So I was in the quandary of paying for a wedding and
losing seventy five percent of my business. I pursued the wedding and kept things
on course, pursued the business and looked for a new business, and managed
to have a wedding and salvage my business by downscaling and retooling and making it
smaller, more focused. Took a big hit for about two years, and
then came back worked really hard to do that. I was back on top,
in a different state of mind, in a different office, but still
successful. And I was back on top of the world for a while,
but there were problems. I wasn't feeling so great. I was turning fifty,
I was getting tired. The business was starting to wear me down,
and I longed to do something else, and I started thinking about wanting to
write and speak and having a voice. I didn't feel like I had a
voice show. I was starting to do more writing and speaking, and then
I was diagnosed with breast cancer and that just kind of put everything to a
crushing halt. I kept going, kept running my business because I didn't want
to lose anything, kept writing. But during that same time, my father
died of cancer, and that's when life happens to you, and then you'd
go, is this really what I want anymore? Or is there something beyond
this? Because by then I was running myself ragged, trying to run a
business, going to treatment, mourning my father, which I never allowed enough
time for. And that's another show topic, giving time to grieve. And
I was tired. I had a new marriage. I wanted to focus on
different things. I was turning fifty. I had turned fifty. I was
fifty when I was diagnosed, and I didn't see what I didn't have a
clear vision of what the future was going to be. So I ended up
closing my company because at that point, I couldn't sell it because I was
fifty and I didn't want to have a golden five year handcuff working for somebody
else doing work I actually no longer liked. I never liked the work.
I didn't want to work for anybody else. If I couldn't have my own
company, I didn't want to do anything. So I started writing. I
knew writing would always ground me. A grounded me at five, ground and
me at fifteen, rounded me at twenty five, and at fifty it grounded
me again at fifty one and fifty two and so on. In writing my
book, Getting Things Off my Chest, Survivor's gone to staying fearless and fabulous
in the face of breast cancer because I just saw that I was going to
take a very traumatic experience in my life and turn it into a positive learning
lesson to help others. At that book won some awards. It's in its
third printing. I have friends, sadly who have been diagnosed with breast cancer
this year. They have thanked me for the book and my advice, and
that happened to me. So when you can make life happen, and sometimes
life happens to you. My definition of success also changed. Wasn't about being
in New York and making lots of money and being in the top of pr
agency or media company. I suddenly redefine what success was and I just wanted
to be happy and healthy and less stressed. So I kept going the trail.
Established this podcast with the goal of promoting my second book, Fearless Fabulous
You Lessons on Living Life on Your Terms. Taking all the essays and blog
posts that I had been writing about reassessing life, recovering from cancer, rebooting
and reframing life in a new perspective, wrote my second book on the Tales
of the Publication my first book, and I have been doing this podcast now
for this is my tenth season. It started out talking about recovery and wellness
after breast cancer, but then my purpose change because I didn't want to be
known as the breast cancer lady. I wanted to be known for more than
that. It is one cog in my wheel of life, along with working
in public relations, along with wine and food, along with being from Tennessee
and being a writer, etc. So I decided I was going to use
the show to inspire and empower women and spotlight women doing the same here I
am today. So what does this mean. It means I am now past
well past fifty and the breast cancer years and the recovery years, and now
I'm in the sixties. I'm in the swinging sixties, facing medicare, the
loss of all my family. My parents are now gone. I was an
accidental caregiver. I learned that I wasn't. I was successful as a caregiver
as the best I could be. And I have reassessed success all over again
because your definition of success will change over time based on where you are in
life, who you're with, and what has happened in your life. It's
not going to be defined on what's expected of you. I was always expected
to be a success, and that was having a successful career. But that's
one aspect of your life. You can have a successful career, but you
may be miserable in your personal life. You may be unfulfilled in your personal
life, and you may be so consumed by your your career and earning money
that you forget how to enjoy your life. So now my definition of success
and I talked about it to my husband over a holiday weekend. I said,
you know, I lay in a lounge cheer, shut my eyes and
envision what it's like to not have to work, not have to earn a
living, not have to do anything but just one thing, enjoy life.
And I was like, Wow, that's my next goal. Just enjoy life
and do what you want. I never have to worry about health, you
know, not worry about health, but money or stature, or I have
to be right the right people, or how many social media followers I have,
but becomes irrelevant because it all is fleeting. You make money, you'll
lose money. You make money, you'll lose money. You have social media
followers, you don't have them. You have friends, you don't have friends.
Things go by the wayside. But what you do have and you can
keep is your soul. You can take care of your health, and you
can hone your talents and new ways. So I laughed at somebody recently and
they said, what are you doing now? And I said, I seem
to be in the business of buying and selling because I'm in the decluttering.
I'm now in the business of selling stuff and learning how to evaluate and sell
things in trade. And I never thought I'd be in that position, but
I fell into it because my mother died and left me a house full of
stuff, and I have to figure out how to get rid of it.
And I believe that there is a buyer for everything. I believe that I
can sell to that buyer if I know how to do it enthusiastically and with
confidence to understand what that buyer wants. So now I'm in a completely new
line of business that I never thought it would be. And besides the paltry
end of things called journalism, I'm still right for that lousy sixty five to
two hundred to three hundred dollars an article, and I do this podcast,
which is still a labor of wealth. But I'm still looking for sponsors,
so consider me please. But now I seem to have added another career at
the right page of sixty four, where I am selling stuff and I'm learning
how to evaluate vintage jewelry and paintings and collectibles that I may not think are
worth anything, but then I find they are to somebody else, whether it's
a snowglobe or a nutcracker, or a purple dish, or a type of
china or a Christmas ornament. I had no idea, But I'm learning new
skills doing it, and I promise you this time next year, I'm going
to be in a really great place with something else happening, and bring writing
about this. It will become a book. And so think about your life
and where you are now, and never believe that you're a failure. No
one fails. Maybe they go down the wrong path, or maybe just things
just fall by the wayside or life thins out and phrase in that area like
an old worn sofa and you have to patch it up or get a new
sofa. But you don't say it's no good. It was good for a
time, and maybe it's no longer right for the time that it is right
now. Maybe it's time for something new and different. Embrace it, accept
it, fail forward. If you feel like you're failing, fell forward,
take the experience and apply it in new ways to something else, or use
it to help lift somebody else up who's going through the same struggle. I
always find that's helpful. But never say I'm not successful. You are successful
as long as you're doing and living the life you choose. You're helping others.
People enjoy being with you, you enjoy being with yourself, and you
wake up every day with your foot on the ground saying I'm ready, let's
take it on. That to me is success. It's not the material things,
and trust me, I'm surrounded by them right now and I can't wait
to get rid of most of them. It's not about material things and material
wealth. It's about spiritual wealth and physical health and mental health and taking care
of it because those are your treasures and the people you love and the people
who care about and the people who care about you. And they may be
people that you don't realize really cared about you, but they suddenly resurface in
your time and need and say I'm here for you, and you're like,
my, I didn't talk to you in years, but now you're here for
me. Wow. So always look at everybody with face value and remember your
self value, because they are both worth more than you can ever imagine.
That brings me to the conclusion of this show, which I started to define
as I wrote down notes for it, called most likely to succeed. Yes
I was most likely to succeed, and yes I have succeeded, and yes
I continue to succeed and thrive. There have been setbacks, there have been
stuff, stumbling stones. There always are at sixty four years. I haven't
lived life with a few bumps and bruises in what kind of life did I
live? But as my dying mother said at eighty eight on her eighty eighth
birthday, I have lived an amazing life and I achieved much. And I'm
so proud of what I've done for the city and the community and for myself
and the people I care about. I am ready to leave this life now.
And she did on her terms. Whether we liked it or not,
I was actually happy she did because she did it on her terms. So
I hope that you can look at your life and say, I'm glad that
I've done what I've done, and I'm going to put regrets in a box
and toss him in the garbage. But your regrets in a box and toss
him in the garbage, and fill that space with something that you love doing,
you want to do, you want to learn to do, and keep
on going. I'm Melanie Young. You have the right to live life on
your terms, take it at face value, never forget yourself value and self
worth, and share your gift with others. Thank you for joining me on
this edition. A fearless, fabulous You