What up guys it's Lisa Bili here and on today's episode Women of Impact

I'm just gonna take a B because when I say this episode is My favorite episode I've ever recorded as a host of women of impact and guys You're gonna know why today. We're talking about something that more than 90% of women have and that's a massive regret on their deathbed. From not standing up for yourself to never finding love or allowing fear to hold you back. And so here with us to talk about overcoming and living life without regret is the amazing and incredibly inspiring Gladys McGarry. Now she's a doctor that is widely considered the mother of holistic medicine

and is now Drone More Please, 103 years old. Now let's just dive into the episode guys, I really hope you love it just as much as I did. I'm Lisa Billy and welcome to Women of Impact. At the age of 103 years young gladis, you say you didn't find your voice until you were 93 years old. So if someone doesn't want to wait till they're 93 to find their voice, how do we prevent that regret and start standing up for ourselves earlier on in life? First of all, we have to accept the fact that we have a voice. The problem that I had was that I was so dyslexic, I've flunked first grade twice and was a class dummy. And so for years I saw myself as the really not bright one, but I had a lot of thoughts and a lot of things I needed to say. You know, I would make a speech.

But in my mind, I would say,

that's really what you want to say.

There was this back in my head saying,

was that the right thing?

Or are you going, you know, there was this little monkey

on my shoulder that kept saying,

we are you sure?

And it wasn't until I was 93 that I finally accepted my voice because of the way I had accepted life on its terms and said to myself, no you are the stupid one. You're the stupid one in the class. You have to repeat

things. This kind of tape that runs through your mind. But when I was 93, I had a dream. And the dream was that I saw myself as nine-year-old Gladys in the jungles of North India, because my parents were medical missionaries who went out into the jungles of North India because my parents were medical missionaries who went out into the jungles of North India. But I was coming out of the tent. I was peeking out of the tent because I was checking to make sure my younger brother wasn't around because he'd tattle on me and then I'd be in trouble. So I was nine years old. I'm peaking out of it.

He's not there, so I can go. So I run as fast as I can. I climb up a mango tree, clear up to the top, and I'm singing. I'm singing any old song I want to sing because in our family, on a Sabbath morning, you sang nothing but hymns and puggins. And I, at a nine-year-old, thought that was stupid, and I wanted to do my own thing. So I'm sitting up there singing my songs, catter pillars on any other song. And then I get to thinking, you know, is this, you know, what are you doing? And I look over my shoulder and Jesus is up in the tree with me. And he's just laughing. He's laughing like every, and I said, Jesus loves a little children, right? And he says, yes. So I went back to my singing and then I got to thinking, did he really say yes? And so I go back to

that and I say, I'm still a little children, right? And he said yes. So I went back to the singing and I woke up singing and laughing and realizing that all these years I had been downplaying my voice. If Jesus accepted for crying out loud, maybe I'd better pay attention to my own voice. And from that point on, I began to really listen to what it was that I was saying that the inner gladders were speaking. So there's so much in that story, Gladys. So number one, you had a belief system that was given to you and told you over and over that you were done. And that belief system that you ended up having because other people told you it, made you stop talking and saying that voice. So you knew you had that voice, you knew you had the thoughts, but you weren't saying it because of your belief system. And it took a dream for you to snap out of that. But I assume it took you then time to address, hang on a minute, I need to remember that I have a voice. What did that then look like? So once you wake up from the dream, the very next time someone's talking to you and you have that opinion, how did you make sure that that opinion came out? Well, because by then I had gone through my looking at myself and saying, no, you've been wrong all these years. This is a correction to be made. So it was taking the essence of my belief in life and hope and love and the whole concept that comes from the basic beliefs that I have and put it on the table and say, okay, now who are you going to believe? And I had to believe myself. So you were 93 when that happened, you were 103 now. And so for the last 10 years, you have been listening to your own voice. Right. How does that feel? Well, it allowed the book to happen. Oh, wow, yes. Yes. Because the other books that I wrote were all medical books and they were good,

they're important books and all of that. I thought they were very important, but they didn't have the juice. They didn't have the inner core of what it is that we, as humans, are reaching for. But this one does. And so when I was in the zone of Being able to put this forth in this way, then I was ready to write this book Wow How do you think that you would have felt if you'd found your voice in your twenties? I really don't know. I really don't know because The voice that I would have had in the 20s would have been

a lot different from the voice I have now because I've learned a few things. All of the things that I've learned have been important to where I am right now because its life is alive. You know, it has to be alive or it's dead.

Living is a life process and life and love have to work together. As a whole living process and if you don't connect life with love, it gets stuck. That's where we get stuck. But when we can connect life and love and move forward with that, we can see past or through or above so that we can live through the stuck places. Because you don't want to just get over them. You know, you get stuck and people say, oh, get over it. You don't get over them. If you get over them, you get stuck. Mm. The stuck places or the places you have tucked it and said, well, it's not important. But if it's something that needs to be dealt with, it needs to be lived through. And the process of living through it is the process of life and love and growth. Well, speaking of love, that's actually another big, one of the main regrets that a lot of people have is one of the most common is not finding the right love or the right relationship and 19% of people say that that's one of the biggest regrets they have. What I found out was that I had to learn to love myself first. If I was really going to find somebody who could love me and then I went through that whole divorce process and so on. But I had to reclaim who I was. And so when I was, well, here's another story. I love your stories, Gladys. I have to tell you. So Bill asked for a divorce. And I'm driving my car from our office in Scottsdale to an empty house in Casa Grande. The only thing in that house is my dog. So I'm driving it and I'm in my car and I'm nothing in the world know how how I feel and I was broken I was screaming I was yelling I was I mean it was a mess I was a mess and it was a long drive to Costa Grande but I was going on the way and all of a sudden I pulled over to the side of the road And I stopped the car and I said to myself, are you going to spend the rest of your life like this? This is ugly. This isn't what you want to do. So came to my mind of the verse, this is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. And that be glad hit me. You know, that's your name. Oh, okay. So I then went home and I changed my license plate to be glad so that the whole time I was driving in Phoenix community I was people behind me had to see be glad because every time I got into the car I had to see be glad. So that was going around all the time I was trying. But then it's the whole process of passing it on to the next person. If I can be glad, I can help somebody else be glad. And it's that living life process that is love. Wow. And you were in your 60s at the time is that correct and you'd been married for over 40 years when this was 40-6 years. I was just just turning on to 70. Yeah. So you're turning 70, you've been married for a 46 years, you have six children, your husband Bill asks for a divorce. And

after that is when you learnt to love yourself? Well, I had really prior to that, but I had recognized it. Bill and I had dealt American Holocignetical Association. I loved him. I loved me. We loved each other and we were doing this whole thing. We had a symposium for 20 years and when we started symposium actually, I didn't speak from the podium. It wasn't until people began saying, why don't you speak and then Bill asked me to come up and speak. But it's a process of growing into something that was really important and that was my voice. That's such a beautiful story and in those moments of he's left you, you know turning 70, a lot of people would give up on love. A lot of people wouldn't then love themselves more. A lot of people would unfortunately love themselves less. What did you do in your mind? Obviously you did the screaming and the car and you changed the gladdest thing. But then how did you begin to love yourself again? And still appreciate love because gladdest, a lot of my audience and people I know have had heartbreak and they never love again. I know Well, I wrote Bill a letter and I said thank you for giving me my freedom Because it was when I was no longer Bill and Gladys. I was no Gladys But all through those years I was Bill and Gladys, I was now Gladys. But all through those years I was Bill and Gladys.

And I accepted that because that's the way it was. But when he asked for the divorce, And he was gone.

And so I was glad, and I could claim my voice now.

So do you think now in hindsight having gone through the heartbreak, do you think it's better to have loved and lost or to never have loved at all? Well first of all, I had an amazing mother who taught me to take hardship. Let me tell you a story. My first two years I was at class dumbbell, so I accepted that and I thought I really was. But when I got to third grade, Miss McGee saw something in me that the other teacher had not seen.

So she appointed me class governor. So as class governor, I was to take the things that we in the third grade did to the whole student body. I could do that. I could talk. I mean, I might not be able to read and write, but I could talk. And so, you know, we had a play, and the play was the frog jumped over the pond. Well, I was the biggest one in the class because I'd flown to grade, you know. So I was able to jump over the pond, and the pond was a pan in the middle of the stage, And I was to say this whole thing, and the frog jumped over the pond and go on with the thing. Well, I was sure of myself, and I knew exactly what I was going to do. I walked out in the stage with a lot of confidence, but in the front row of the audience were my two older brothers, and they just threw me off my step enough, seeing them, threw me off my step enough that instead of jumping over the pond, I landed in it. And so I'm now, eight-year-old, standing in this pond of water. My mother had made a green suit for me out of cheap dye, which is now fading. I'm standing there crying. I can't move. I'm done for it. The teacher has to come and leave me off the stage. So I go home and at home my brothers are telling my mother this whole story and just laughing their heads off. And I'm giving them the devil's eye, which they're not paying attention to. But finally, my mother says to them, all right boys, now you've had your fun. What can we, as a family, do to help, Gladie, if this ever happens to her again, so that the people will laugh with her and not at her. I mean, that kind of wisdom was so pivotal to me at that time, that that's what I began looking for. And I can't tell you how many times I've tripped and stumbled as I'm going up to the podium, It's's fun. By the time I get there, I've got the audience in my hand. My mother had the ability to take life as it came and really get the juice out of that moment. And so going through the motion and kind of just taking life as it comes is a powerful lesson?

...