Bruce Langford's
Mindfulness Mode Podcast

Episode Transcript

Note: The following transcript is a draft transcript, and as such, may contain computer-generated mistranslations.

Bruce Langford:

Let's talk about anger and hurt, because most of us have it. And with a lot of us, we don't truly know how to get through it. What would your recommendation be, Mary?

Mary Rechkemmer-Meyer, Dreaming To Find Authentic Self:

Wow. That's a great question. I think for me, Bruce, I went through a divorce in my mid-forties and I didn't see it coming. I knew we had some problems, but I didn't see a divorce coming and I could hardly come to terms with it. I was a stay-at-home mother to four kids. I had actually gone back to work three years prior to that. And I was working part-time, but there were days I actually couldn't get out of bed and I thought, what am I going to do? How am I going to support myself? I didn't even own a credit card in my name at the time. Wow. But I think, I think at some point I realized I was going to do this and it was the anger that kind of fueled that. And I remember going to a therapist and I ask him, I said, is it wrong that this anger is, is fueling this.

Mary Rechkemmer-Meyer, Dreaming To Find Authentic Self:

And, and he said, no, use what you have, but if you're still using that in 20 years, you've got a problem. Right. And so I thought, wow, you know, so I think you do kind of use what you have. And then when I went through the cancer diagnosis three years ago, Bruce, I learned early on anger wasn't going to get me out of that one. It had to be a total surrender. I think sometimes you use what you have, but you have to recognize what it is and grow from it and move out of it into something else to be free.

Bruce Langford:

Mary, I love the subtitle of your book, a memoir of dreaming, visualizing, and becoming my authentic self. So dreaming has been such an important part of your life. Can you tell us the role that dreaming has played for you? Did that happen even as a young girl? Were you a dreamer?

Mary Rechkemmer-Meyer, Dreaming To Find Authentic Self:

I don't know. I guess I'd never really thought of it back then. I tell this story in my book, I just wanted to be a stay at home mom and I'd line my dolls up and talk to them. But I think in some ways I was always a little bit of a dreamer, but I didn't have any idea what I could do or even wanted to do. But I, but I think it's, it's something that's planted inside of all of us. If we're willing to look at it and be free from the things that hold us back. Because I think, um, you can't really dream if you believe you're a victim. And one of the things that, that I really, I really believe, we're all going to have adversity, yours is going to look different than mine. And sometimes it's just almost too much. You don't know what to do with it, but none of us get out of this life without some kind of adversity. So we can choose to say, I'm a victim. Well, most of us don't say I'm a victim. We say things like I'm too young. I'm too old. Shouldn't have been this way. Or we can realize inside of that thing, that happened to us. We still have choices and we can move forward. And that's the only way if we own up to it, that we can move forward.

Bruce Langford:

I so agree with that. And I love what you said about, we cannot dream if we're playing the victim role. And the thing is a lot of us don't recognize that we don't think we're playing the victim role. So, you know, you talk all about this in your book and you said, once you believed you could dream, then you visualize a new door has opened up for you. So how do we get to that initial identification that … I am actually living as a victim because most of us don't even think we are.

Mary Rechkemmer-Meyer, Dreaming To Find Authentic Self:

Right. And I, and I think I probably lived a lot of my life like that, Bruce. And I think it's the self-awareness becoming your authentic self, who you were really made to be. And I think God made you to be a person. He made me to be some person. We're so busy trying to be like somebody else and get ahead in business and do it the way somebody else did. And there's nothing wrong with that because success leaves clues, but it doesn't necessarily mean we're that person. So we have to find out who we truly are to be free to. I don't know. I go back to when I was diagnosed with cancer, I knew the anger wasn't going to get me there. I knew it was going to be another journey, but I knew that it was going to be a different journey. And I had to get to the point where I could just totally surrender to it. And I believe that I was going to be healed. So I had to latch on to that, visualize that, believe it. But you know, quite frankly, I knew there was an outside chance. I wouldn't be healed and I had to be okay either way. So let's just surrender, knowing, falling back into it and just being who you are and being okay with it.

Bruce Langford:

It's, it's a thin book. And yet there is so much wisdom because how many people are looking for that answer? How do I surrender? You know, in mindfulness, we talk about surrendering and letting go, but that's the big key is how do you actually do it? And the secret is in your book. And I think it's just so beautiful how you were able to write so concisely and not like you just seem to cut to the chase and in a beautiful way, like it was a beautiful flowing read. Was this difficult? Did you, did you write thousands of pages and then you had to condense it down to this? Or how did this work for you?

Mary Rechkemmer-Meyer, Dreaming To Find Authentic Self:

Okay. So this is really interesting because I thought that after I went back, after I went through my divorce, I went back to work and I went to school nights and I ended up getting my, bachelor's degree at the age of 50. At 51 I started my own insurance agency. And I thought, wow, you know, this is great. So I learned I could sell, I didn't know if I could sell, but I learned, I could sell. I had been telling stories and helping people for a long time. So this was kinda my thing, but about a year into it, I went to a conference and I sat down and I listened to the speaker and it was like, I knew how to run the business, but I didn't know how to … I was so out of balance in every area of my life. So I think it's that balance we all need.

Listen to the episode to hear the rest of Mary's wisdom and insight.