Speaker 0:03

What if the chapter you didn't want in your life was given to you so you can eventually help others navigate some of life's most challenging experiences?

Speaker 2 0:14

This is the Your Next Success podcast, and I'm your host, Dr. Caroline Sangal I'm a life first career coach and strategist on a mission to normalize questioning your career because I believe each of us is made on purpose for a purpose only we can fulfill. The longer we live out of alignment with who we are, what we do best, and why we are here, the more we miss out. And the more the world misses out on what only we can give. The Your Next Success Podcast is where we explore how to build a career that truly fuels your life. We talk about self-discovery, smart job, search strategies, professional growth, and you'll hear stories from people who have navigated big career transitions themselves, so you can create a life, first career and become your own version of authentic success.

Speaker 1:11

My guest today is Judy Pearson, author, speaker, and someone who has lived through chapters she never would've chosen and found meaning on the other side. In this episode, Judy shares her story of resilience, reinvention, and what it means to keep moving forward when life does not go as planned. We talk about the experiences that shaped her, how writing became part of her process, and why even the hardest seasons can carry something forward in you to help others.

Caroline 1:45

Welcome Judy to Your Next Success. I am thrilled to be talking with you today.

Judy Pearson 1:50

Thank you so much. I am thrilled as well.

Caroline 1:52

we're gonna get into all the awesomeness of the things that you are, you have done, how you support women, how you've written so many beautiful stories of others. But let's get a little bit deeper into your story. Tell us where were you born and what was life like for the very youngest, Judy?

Judy Pearson 2:09

I was born In southwest Michigan, right on Lake Michigan, which if you've never seen it, it's absolutely gorgeous, it's like an ocean. You can't see the other side people, people who see it for the first time or any of the great lakes for that matter. But I'm obviously partial to Lake Michigan, are pretty amazed by it. It's, it's really an astounding place and um, it's a big time farming community. My little town, my little hometown is the National Blueberry Capital of the World, which is pretty exciting and, um, it was a great life. I mean, it was pretty Ozzy and Harriet, my father worked, my mother worked, stayed at home. She had been a secretary before I was born. I have, um, a brother who's seven years younger than I am and who is still an irritating as hell little brother. We just spent last weekend together. He and his wife drove to Georgia, we drove up to Georgia. We for a book festival I was involved in and he was very supportive. But then he made sure to take the worst possible pictures of me on stage as possible, um, which is what little brothers are supposed to do. Um, I went to Michigan State. My dad told us that we could go to any college in the city of East Lansing, we wanted to go to, there's only one, it's Michigan State. And, um, he had actually played football at state and we had been going to football games um,'cause he graduated from there as well after, um, being in the Air Force and, um, we went to football games from little on. So it was, it was kind of nice going to a campus that I was so familiar with. My degree was in French, first I wanted to be an actress and he said, yeah, that's not in the picture. And then I wanted to go to art school with my girlfriend to become an interior designer. And he said, well, you can become an interior designer, but you're not going to art school, you're going to get a real education. So finally, when I said okay, I'd go to Michigan State, um, I was taking a French class. I'd had French in high school, and I was taking a French class just for fun and realized how much I loved it. So my degree is in French, I spent a year in France going to, um, Université de Bretagne, which is about 120 miles west of Paris in And because of living there, um, I became fluent in French and I still pretty much am, when I get bored, if I'm in the car alone, I turn on news and then try to translate as fast as I can as they're repeating news stories. Yes.

Caroline 4:49

That's awesome. that's an interest, it's a fascination and it's a way to kind of keep this skill current was still on top of, if you picked it up so quickly, that's built also on top of an ability that you had to be able to be able to do that. So I think that's amazing because we have to use our abilities otherwise we are not feeling holistically fulfilled.

Judy Pearson 5:07

That's right.

Caroline 5:07

Now I wanna back it up a little bit though. So, in that, let's say school age years, like elementary, middle, high school, before you got to Michigan State, what was it that you enjoyed doing the most? Like were there school subjects that, that you were particularly fascinated by and or were there activities or things you did outside of school? Because you mentioned this actor, like, were you in theater? Like what? Give give,

Judy Pearson 5:32

No, that was the hilarious.

Caroline 5:34

Yeah.

Judy Pearson 5:35

Why can't I be an actress? Um, no, I, I was a cheerleader, that was my main thing. I was a cheerleader of all four years. I played, um, in the band the first two years because,

Caroline 5:48

What you play?

Judy Pearson 5:49

Well, well hold on. But I was just gonna say the first two years, because once I became a varsity cheerleader, then I couldn't play in the marching band and be a cheerleader. I started out with a clarinet and then realized I was like, seat number 17 of 18 clarinets. But the drum section was all boys and they didn't have a glockenspiel, the bells. And so I convinced the band director to let me teach myself how to play the bells and march around with the boys. And then during, during, um, the concert season when we weren't, um, when we didn't have football games, then I actually got to stand with all the boys in the drum department and play, um, the xylophone or you know, whatever other gizmos they needed me to do.

Caroline 6:41

Did you ever play piano?

Judy Pearson 6:44

I taught myself piano. Actually, it's funny, my mother was very gifted playing the piano. Um, my brother, I don't know if he took lessons or not, but he, he can play better than I can. Um, but I taught myself how to play first a ukulele and then a guitar. And so understanding chords and notes that made the glockenspiel a lot easier.

Caroline 7:11

Yeah. Yeah. And did you have a piano? Since your mother was a good player.

Judy Pearson 7:15

We had the coolest piano. It, she bought it from a neighbor. when I was really little, we had an antique player piano, the kind that you put the roles in,

Caroline 7:25

Cool.

Judy Pearson 7:26

Yeah, it was really cool. And, um, then that went by the wayside, and anyway, my mother bought this piano from a neighbor who was moving. It was absent and octave on each end. It was a little black piano. It was either used for by people in apartments or people who played in speakeasies, it was on little tiny casters. And I moved that dang thing from Michigan to Phoenix, to Michigan, to Phoenix and when it came time to move to Florida, I was like, you know what? We had already bought our house down here and I said, there's no room, there's no point. My brother said, well, I'll come get it, i'll have somebody move it and then he discovered that was gonna be thousands of dollars. So the piano didn't make it to Florida, but it was, um, it was good enough for my mom to play and she'd play, uh, Christmas carols and things like that. And then I think that must be what my brother learned on. I had let it go very far out of, um, tune. It was basically just kind of a cool thing in my living room.

Caroline 8:30

Like a nice decoration. I'm a proponent of sometimes things that we're fascinated by and interested in, in our younger years, they're part of who we are. Sometimes people override them, and then we, we pick them up later. But I, I find it fascinating that you have all these different musical influences, desires. even listening to music, enjoying it, And, teaching yourself how to do things that, you know, sparked your interest as well as being a cheerleader of others for whatever their seasons are, whatever the game is.

Judy Pearson 9:06

right.

Caroline 9:06

You had that foundation of being a cheerleader. Okay.

Judy Pearson 9:09

Ooh, I like that, that's good.

Caroline 9:12

I've just always been fascinated by trying to help connect the dots and help people see some of those, those other things. Okay. When you were trying to consider, I guess, was college always that you were going to do, like that just became part of, like, you knew you were going to go to college?

Judy Pearson 9:29

Yeah. Yeah. And again, I, I don't want to make my father out to be some kind of horrible draconian individual. He was not, he was wonderful, hilarious part Archie Bunker, part John Wayne, part General George C. Patton. I mean, he was just, he was so fun. Um, and it's funny because he didn't, he, they, my parents were on an era that if a woman worked, it meant that the husband couldn't provide for her, which is ridiculous. But he, there was never a question that I would go to college and that I would work. And I don't even remember when my first son was born, I don't even remember him making a side comment about me going back, back to teaching, which is what I was doing after my son was born. My first son was born and after the second one was born. So it wasn't, you know, it was kind of interesting. He was, he was an interesting guy.

Caroline 10:28

So when you went to go to college though, you, did you go in as a French major or you went in undecided and wanted to explore those things? Like when did this conversation of, oh no, that's not gonna be your actual major, when was that? Pre or post?

Judy Pearson 10:43

So, when I couldn't go to art school with my girlfriend, who's still very much my girlfriend, uh, who's a fabulous, um, fine artist now, she wanted to, to paint full-time, I wanted to write full-time, but we both realized that we needed actual careers. So, I did go into, um, the interior design department at Michigan State, which was called, but you, it was part of the College of Human Ecology, which used to be home economics and the college, the requirements to get a degree in that, from that department, part of the requirements, um, included classes in child development. I hated kids. I was like, eh, why do I have to do this? What does this have to do with paint color and draperies? And so I lasted like three weeks, called home and said, yeah, this ain't for me. But I was taking this French class and really loving it. And quite honestly, um, by the end of my sophomore year, so I spent my junior year in France. By the time I came back from France, I still had a year to go. There were no more undergraduate classes for me to take, I had already gone through everything. So I started taking graduate classes still as an undergraduate.

Caroline 11:59

Now where did this, fascination with writing begin?

Judy Pearson 12:03

I absolutely loved writing. I still got the notebook. I just talked about this the other day at a, at an event. Um, I, I grew up, came of age, I guess is the best way to put it, during the Vietnam War. So there was a lot of teenage angst um, you know, friends of mine were worrying about the draft. We'd already had a couple of guys killed in the war from town. And so I just started writing things and then I would, one of the things my mom always said, when I would come home from school, if the first thing out of my mouth was I'm going down to the beach to walk, she knew that something was in my head that I needed to, to work out. And it's so funny because I still do my best thinking on walks. Um, both my morning walks with my dog or beach walks that, you know, I can take every day if I want here, and it, it's just so funny. So a lot of times I'd go think things through and I would start imagining stories and I wrote mostly short stories, but I still have'em, it's hysterical. And just one day hoped that I could be a writer and actually make money at it. And, but you know, sort of put it on the back burner, got married five years later, had kids, um, then went into radio and it was a long time before I actually got to the point where I could write full time.

Caroline 13:32

So walk me back a little bit. Okay, so this is awesome. So this started at a very young, early age, kind of just like a side hobby thing that you did that as and you enjoyed. And then you had the things that you had to do, school or whatever, whatever that may be. So you went to France as a junior, you then graduate with your degree in French. And then how did this teaching come about?

Judy Pearson 13:58

So that was what I was gonna do is become a teacher. And so I had an interview, um, I was getting kind of worried the summer was going on after graduation. Um, I was getting married that August and um, we didn't know where we were gonna live because he still had another year of school to go. And, um, we were gonna live wherever I got a teaching job and, and the clock was ticking and I still didn't have a job. So I had this interview in a little town called Lapeer, which is outside of Flint, Michigan, which is now famous for its really deadly water. And so, um, my then fiance, now, ex-husband and I went to Lapeer for this interview, Scott was in the library across the street from the superintendent's office and the superintendent said, well, we're building this new high school, so there'll be two high schools in town, so you would be teaching at the new school and because Title IX is going into effect this year, we have to have women coaches to fulfill what Title IX is requiring, which was that there be sports available for women as well as men. So he said to me, what can you coach? And I said, well, I was a cheerleader in high school and college I cheerleading. And he goes, no, we already have a cheerleading coach. And I said, okay. Um, I was on the swimming team one year. Nope, we don't have a pool. Okay. Um, I don't know, what do you want me to coach? And he said, you can have basketball, softball or track, and I said, could you excuse me just a minute? And I ran across the street to the library where my fiance was and said, what can you coach? And he said, take basketball. And um, he and his brother were both great athletes, um, and so I went back, I took basketball, I had no clue. I mean, we were a football house. We, I didn't know anything about basketball whatsoever. The first year was just awful, it was the first year of women's sports. I mean, we would have final scores of nine to four. And um, it was just, and, and it's funny now, but the other two coaches with whom I became really good friends, and I have gotten together a couple times over the years, it was also really hard. The male coaches and the male athletic director were so misogynistic and such just jerks. We couldn't get, we couldn't get court time to practice. We couldn't use the men's locker rooms during games when there weren't other guys in there when the opposing team would go in there and that was true across the conference. So you had two varsity girls teams and two JV girls teams in the same locker room at the same time with four adult women trying to keep fights from breaking out. It was, it was crazy. And they were, oh, and the men were so mean to us. And so I think now with all the discussion that's going on, you know, nobody remembers those roots and how hard it took us to even get sports at all, much less what we had to go through once we got them. So anyway, that's my little soapbox. But it was, it was a great experience. I taught for five years the last year, um, I built the French program up to such an extent, if everyone came to a couple of my classes, I didn't have enough chairs, I didn't have enough books. And when you're teaching a foreign language, you have to speak with the kids as well. So, you know, 40 kids in a classroom was just untenable. And when I complained, the principal said, then we'll just cut kids. And I thought, you know, I've worked for five years for this, I don't think so. So I quit.

Caroline 17:50

Yeah. I think that's also a lesson in standing up for your own self, right? And something can be a great experience for a chapter, but it doesn't have to be the,

Judy Pearson 17:59

That's right.

Caroline 18:00

Doesn't have to be the whole,

Judy Pearson 18:01

And I should also say there was another incident, the varsity. So I was the JV coach. The varsity coach with whom I was very, very close, got pregnant the year before me. So she was going to leave. And, um, I mean, who else would take the varsity position but me, you know, we didn't have assistant coaches, there was no one else, there was just me. And so I applied for it and the athletic director sat me down and said, well, we're gonna give that varsity position to the boys varsity basketball coach, because the boys team played in the winter and the girls played in the fall. And I said, are you kidding me? Why? And he was like, well, he has more tenure than you do. And I said, I wanted to say, and how are his ovaries today? But I didn't. And so I said, I, I kind of reiterated the locker room situation. And I said, who's gonna be in the locker room, breaking up fights that break out? Well, we thought you would. And I said, and who is it? Since we are building young women and they need a mentor to come to, who is it that these young women are going to come to him or me? Well, we thought they'd come to you. And I said, well, I'm sorry you thought wrong. So first I quit basketball, and then I quit teaching. I was so mad.

Caroline 19:21

Because they wanted you to still do all of the work without the authority, without the title, without the compensation.

Judy Pearson 19:27

Yeah.

Caroline 19:27

For those, those things.

Judy Pearson 19:29

So the, today, the today Judy would've just talked like a truck driver, but the, the then Judy said, okay, bye.

Caroline 19:38

Okay. and then what happened? Then you were home with your child, you went to work somewhere different?

Judy Pearson 19:43

No. I, so I, I quit the end of the year in June, we had a friend who worked in radio and he said to me, you know, I think you'd be really good as an account executive in the sales department selling ads for radio. And so I said, okay. So I interviewed with a couple of stations, I had a couple of job offers, you know, absolutely zero experience at all. Um, oh, actually, in between, as I was phasing out my teaching career, I was also selling Mary Kay cosmetics, which is how I learned to sell. I, I just, I praise Mary Kay all the time. I don't use any of the products, but I praise her sales techniques. So I, um, so I went into radio with, um, kind of a pop station in Flint. And, um, there were no female disc jockeys. And so the morning guy said to me one day, Hey, we need somebody to do a snow white voice for, um, this ad that we're doing for Disney World, can you, can you speak like Snow White? And I said, oh, I would love to speak like Snow White. And he was like, great, that's it, get behind the microphone. So then I started doing bits for them, then I got hired by lots of people who wanted female, who wanted commercials read by females, then I got television gigs. I mean, it was like super fun.

Caroline 21:12

Wow.

Judy Pearson 21:13

Yeah.

Caroline 21:14

Okay, so you followed the suggestion from a family friend that said you might be really good at this, but how, how did you get into the Mary Kay side? Somebody you knew, recruited you to be part of team? Or, or?

Judy Pearson 21:26

Sister teacher, um, who not only was pregnant at the same time I was with my second son, but our boys were born on the same day.

Caroline 21:36

Oh wow.

Judy Pearson 21:37

So she was, um, she was in Mary Kay. And she said, this is great because we were both still teaching. This is great. We can, we can still keep teaching, um, and we can, um, and we can sell Mary Kay. And then when, you know, summer comes, then we can sell Mary Kay over the summer. And so I said, yeah, that sounds like a great idea. So I did that and I sold Mary Kay over the summer. And then I got this radio job, can't remember exactly, but it was pretty close to May, maybe it was like later in the, it was after Sean was born, now that I'm thinking about it. So after son number two was born. That's right. Well, why would anyone hire me nine months pregnant? So after son number two was born, then I started, um, my radio career about November of that year.

Caroline 22:26

Wow. And now how did that evolve into then doing, then what?

Judy Pearson 22:31

Well, so first of all, because I had never been in sales like that before, I, I didn't know how, I didn't know what a no was. And so, you know,'cause you can always talk a woman into buying a lipstick. But, um, I was asking people to spend, you know, big money on my radio station and the other sales executives, I'd say, well is anybody calling on such and such car dealership? Oh, he'll never buy from you. He doesn't buy from anybody. And then I'd come back with an order because I was too stupid and, you know,

Caroline 23:07

I, I think you were persistent. You were just,

Judy Pearson 23:10

Well, you know that, that old tv That's right. You know that old TV show with Peter Falk? Um, oh, um. Oh, I can't think of what his name was, Colombo. Colombo.

Caroline 23:21

Yes.

Judy Pearson 23:22

And he keeps coming back to whoever he's been interrogating, going. Just one more thing, and I kind of started doing that somebody would say, no, I, I don't wanna buy your rate from your radio station. I'd be like, okay, I, I just wanna tell you this one other thing. And then I'd say something else, I think they bought from me just to get rid of me'cause I was, I just wouldn't leave. Or I'd come back with lunch and I'd say, okay, let's talk a little more, right.

Caroline 23:49

This is great because you were building relationships, you were building PR rapport. And what I learned when I was doing recruiting is most people would give up and, and this was recruiting, like there was a job that a chemical company couldn't fill on their own. And so they tried to outsource that recruitment to the firm that I worked for. And so then I had to, it wasn't like we just put a job posting and people dropped their name in a bucket and then you go, but it was more like you had to actually go out and find the people who could possibly do that super specific job, then engage with them, then convince them to put their name in a hat and all of those things. And most people would give up after one, two, or three attempts at connecting, but the sweet spot was between eight and 12.

Judy Pearson 24:35

Wow.

Caroline 24:37

So I saw that metric and I was like, well, okay then, you know, let's go. And so, but it sounds like even without having somebody tell you that metric, you were just being persistent and kept going, and kept trying and kept trying and formed a relationship that they then began to either trust you or who cares, get rid of you, and you still helped them with this advertisement,

Judy Pearson 25:03

Right.

Caroline 25:03

Um,

Judy Pearson 25:04

That's right. Yeah. Oh, the, when I, when we moved from Michigan to Phoenix, um, the radio station threw a going away party for me at a, a local bar that we all hung out at and, um, it was so funny'cause so many of my clients came, especially clients from known, had known me since the very beginning who laughed about the fact that Judy just wouldn't leave.

Caroline 25:32

Now, what was it that made you want to move from Michigan to Phoenix?

Judy Pearson 25:37

Um, my still then husband had a best friend who lived in Phoenix and he was getting married. We went out for the, his wedding. My husband was the, the best man and we absolutely fell in love with the city. It was the dark days of the auto industry in the rust belt. You know, prices were through the roof for everything, interest rates were through the roof. It was, um, it was dark and cold in Michigan and the sun shone brightly in Phoenix. And so unfortunately that was in like March, we didn't know how brightly the sun's shone till, till we moved there and like, oh, it gets hotter here. Um, but it was, it was just absolutely, it was like walking into like a wonderland. In fact, I said as I'm driving through the city the first time, well, this isn't Kansas anymore, Toto.

Caroline 26:38

And so he then got a job and you followed and got a job as well, or you both got

Judy Pearson 26:42

together, We both had jobs. We, we came back to Michigan, went back to Michigan, said, okay, this is what we're gonna do. Both of our sets of parents thought we'd lost our mind, and um, we just packed up and, and we got jobs ahead of time, both of us. But then we just packed up and, and moved. And, um, I went back into radio. He had been working in banking in Michigan. So then he got a job in banking. And, um, we actually, I had moved to, um, a different station before we divorced, and I think he, yeah, he had moved as well. So we both took those first jobs and then made a couple of resets in jobs'cause you don't know, you know, and, and people promise you the world, oh my gosh, you're gonna make so much money, you're gonna have such a great list. That's not true.

Caroline 27:34

It doesn't happen. Yeah. Well, or, and or they want, I was just talking with a, a young lady getting ready to graduate and, and get her first job. And she said, well, what do I an, how do I answer when they ask, how long are you looking to work here? I said, you go ahead and answer and say, I'm really looking for a long term, uh, opportunity. And so long as I'm able to perform and also enjoying the experience, I'm looking for something for a long time and I'm like, and you're not obligated to stay there because you can undecide just as quickly as they decided, or they can undecide just as quickly as they, and so there is no loyalty, but go ahead and act as if, because even marriages, even beautiful marriages that are supposed to be till death do us part, sometimes they don't necessarily work out.

Judy Pearson 28:23

And that's only because murder is illegal, otherwise it would've been death to a sparse. I just like to toss that out there.

Caroline 29:15

Okay. So we've talked a couple times about this, my husband, my now ex-husband, now this fun side comment, but like, what happened? What happened with that? So while your career is kind of going and your, you know, mom to these beautiful children, you had taken a lot of things with this man who you thought was going to be your forever person, and then what happened? What happened with that?

Judy Pearson 29:38

The, the best I can figure is we just grew apart. He, um, he became very serious after we got married about, um, about being a provider, being a parent. He never, which, you know, is usually the opposite of what most women complain about. But he never wanted to go anywhere without the kids, like even a vacation or, or, and he never wanted to go anywhere with just me. It was always another couple or we'd come down to Florida every winter. My parents would come down here, so we'd come down to Florida and stay with them, or it was always something like that. And finally I just said, you know, this isn't working, it was 15 years. I mean, we gave it a go. And, um, I said this, this just isn't what I really want.

Caroline 30:24

Yeah.

Judy Pearson 30:24

And, and he said the same thing. And, and so we went our separate ways.

Caroline 30:29

And then, and, and then what happened? So now this major life change happens, but in this beautiful place that you enjoyed, you have a career that's kind of going and and excelling, where did writing come back into play and or what else Hap'cause? Yeah.

Judy Pearson 30:45

So I'll go through the next steps really quickly'cause the details are boring, but, so I'm a single mother. I'm doing very well at this radio station. It's a huge conglomerate at stations all over the country. I'm in the top 10 of all the salespeople all the time. A new owner comes in and fires me because the sales staff is supposed to go hike Camelback Mountain in the mornings and go to the bars in the evenings. I had kids, I had soccer, I had dinner and homework and laundry. And so he fired me wrongfully, I sued and won. And in the meantime one of my clients, uh, actually was a pair, two guys owned an ad agency, and they asked me to come work for them in advertising. So I did. And then my eldest son needed braces and so I took him to an orthodontist that the dentist recommended and then six months later I got, um, free tickets to, uh, Phoenix Suns, the NBA team basketball game in a suite, really bougie suite. And I knew that the orthodontist was single, and so I called and asked him out to the basketball game. So then we got married. And that opportunity, he actually said to me early on, um, about a year into our marriage, listen, I take Fridays off, I don't see patients, I'd really love for you not to have to work on Fridays too,'cause we can go on long weekends. He had a motorcycle. He used to take motorcycle trips. You know, would you, by this time I was a partner in the agency, would you be willing to, um, quit the agency? And I said, of course, on one condition. I wanna write, I wanna write full-time. I wanna see if I can sell my writing. I can sell books or something like that. And he said, okay. And so he did. I did. And thousands of rejections later. Um, I wrote a lot of newspaper and magazine articles. I wrote two novels. Neither of them has ever seen the light of day. I actually loved the rejection.'cause like you, you know, it's between eight and 10, 12 is the sweet spot. Same thing. I just knew the closer to, I would get closer to it, yes. Because of all the no's and my that, he also is an ex-husband, that ex-husband thought, um, said to me, you're delusional, you're crazy. And I said, I don't think so. I think I can do this. So I, my father came to visit and I took him to a World War II museum, or, or antique store, and I knew the owner and he'd found this collection of papers that had belonged to a man who'd been a prisoner of the imperial Japanese army in the Philippines, this guy had bought this dresser and they were in the drawer, and that became my first published book called Belly of the Beast. It's this amazing, unbelievably awful, um, story of our POWs being used, uh, and being abused in the Philippines, and then shipped in container ships, um, to Japan for slave labor. So that was my very first book.

Caroline 34:05

Oh wow.

Judy Pearson 34:06

So then, so that was pretty exciting and Penguin Putnam published it. I, and after I'd written it, an author friend had connected me to the man who became my first agent, and he got this great contract for me, and it was great. So then I found the next story, and this is really funny. When I left teaching, um, my mother said, oh, I feel so badly that you're, that you're leaving, you speak French so beautifully. Which was so cute'cause she did not speak French. I don't know how she knew, but they understood me. So she decided I must do well. And, um, I said, you know what, mom? I, that's never gonna be wasted. I'm always gonna be able to speak French. I'm telling you, Caroline, if I hadn't spoken French, I never could have interviewed all the 80-year-old men who during World War II had worked as teenagers with this woman spy I was writing about. And that book, Wolves At The Door became a bestseller, was, um, purchased for a movie, still sells a gazillion copies. I still get requests from every time something related to the CIA and women happens on a national stage, they call me for interviews. So Virginia Hall was one of the first women, CIA agents, what do you have to say about this? And then, so now I got two biographies under my belt or by then, and I was like, okay. So I guess I'm a biographer. But, um, unfortunately the orthodontist after 15 years also, um, he just, um, he, he just, he had a lot of issues that just made him angry. And I am not an angry person and by this time, my, my children were grown and I just, I couldn't handle it anymore. He was not, he was not violent, he was just not nice to be around. And so I just said to him one day, I am sorry, I wanna break up and I don't want anything, I don't want the house, I don't want your money. I'm, it was like a country western song I want, I'm taking my pickup truck and my dog and I'm going to Michigan and I went back to Michigan. I bought a little house after my parents died, a little house in my hometown. And, um, day two that I was there in the middle of a blizzard, um, met my forever husband, and that was 17 years ago, so we've passed the 15 year mark.

Caroline 36:37

so somewhere in this story, and I don't exactly know where, but there was a health challenge that encountered.

Judy Pearson 36:45

That came next. That comes next.

Caroline 36:48

Tell me. Yes. Yes. Okay. Tell me. So, and where are, so you're in Michigan?

Judy Pearson 36:53

I meet this wonderful man. We, we fell madly in love. We, uh, dated for a year and then he proposed, we had, he too had been married several times. We had, and he had grown children. We had a really simple ceremony on the bluff overlooking my beautiful Lake Michigan. We went across the street to a little park that my mother had helped, um, raise money for when she was still living. We had a reception there, we had blueberry pie And, um, less than a year later I was diagnosed with cancer. And the icing on top of that blueberry pie was that my son, who was now in the Air Force, was about to be deployed to Afghanistan. And that was during all the hostilities in, in Afghanistan. So it was, it was a tough year. It really was.

Caroline 37:43

And you were still writing?

Judy Pearson 37:44

So I had been trying to find the next story after the spy and, for the next book, and I had gotten this idea or gotten very interested in women's courage because having written about a man and then about a woman during these really horrific times, I realized that men's and women's courage is very different. Women are no less courageous than men. They just exhibited, we exhibit it in different ways. So I was gonna write this book about courage, and then I got cancer. And so it was triple negative breast cancer, which is rare and aggressive. And so I had a mastectomy and 18 rounds of chemo while my kid is being shot at by the Afgans, by the ISIS actually. Um, and so we all, we all survived. My marriage survived, and my son survived, and I survived.

Caroline 38:40

How, at the beginning though, when you weren't sure and you hear those words, what were your take? Take us back to that in this, because, because sometimes that journey is a whole bunch of, I'm not sure, we don't know. Well, let's try another test and then you finally get some sort of answer. But like, quick, like were you just going for a routine mammogram or like, what, what happened where?

Judy Pearson 39:07

So two months after my routine mammogram that showed nothing, I was simply scratching at my chest while we were watching TV one night. And I felt this lump, like in my cleavage, and I said to David, what is this and what do you think this is? And he goes, I don't know, but I never noticed it before. And so, um, I, I went to my primary care physician and, um, excuse me. We did do, I think an ultrasound was next and, or maybe an MRI and she said, yeah, they need, they need that to be biopsied. And I said, okay. So my husband was a firefighter in Indianapolis when he met me, and he was planning to retire in South Haven, which is why he was there that fateful night. But that we met and I gotten to know a lot of his friends, one of whom was a nurse in Indie, and her sister was a breast cancer survivor. So I called Lynn and said, what do I do? And she said, well, I, I only know people here, but the woman I know that I, I would send anybody to I think you should go to. And I said, okay. So we went to Indianapolis, it's about a four hour drive from South Haven and um, David's folks were still living there. And I got this biopsy biopsy at the time. This was, this was so cruel. So I'm laying on the table and they numb the area and they just put these little robot arms in and pull the chunk out. And, um. I am chit-chatting away, which is what I do before a blood test or anything else. So, you know, if something's gonna hurt, I wanna talk and not think about it. And I'm like, blah, blah and the um, uh, radiologist who was there, who was doing the biopsy, said to me, listen to me, this is very serious. And I don't know how she knew that, you know, that there was this lump that was a lump in all these other tests, but it was just a lump at that point in time. She's, this is very serious. And I said, oh, wow. And then after they make an incision and pull out the skin, the, the lump, then they send you for a mammogram and smush that thing as hard as they can with an open wound. I'm, I don't understand why this is a good thing. So I looked down at the plate with my mush boob and blood kind of skirting out a shirt squirting out. I got really dizzy and I said, I'm really sorry, I need to sit down, and she said, are you okay? And I said, sure. I think this is cancer, my son's going to an AF to Afghanistan and I'm a newlywed, but I'm fine. So, so when the call came, we weren't surprised because we just, um,

Caroline 41:55

You had like, so you had a feeling or because the person said, this is serious.

Judy Pearson 41:59

Because that she, of what she said, and it was really cute, my in-laws were down here in Florida when we called to say that we had, when we got confirmation. And David's mom said, um, they're very, um, very spiritual people. And she said, listen, this was decided for you before you were born, but God knows what he's doing and there's probably something good that's gonna come out of this. And I said, okay. And those were the words I took through.

Caroline 42:29

Oh wow.

Judy Pearson 42:30

Yeah.

Caroline 42:30

How long was that journey for you? For the 18 rounds?

Judy Pearson 42:34

Um, my mastectomy wa I was diagnosed in April, my mastectomy was in May and I finished chemo just before Thanksgiving. And, um, my oncologist, this is a really good lesson in terms of keeping yourself fit. I was only doing it because I was vain, so I've always watched what I eat. I've always exercised, you know,'cause I always wanna look just so, and my oncologist said to me. You are very fit. I was 50, like 55 I think at the time, and she said, you are so very fit and this is so aggressive. I am going to give you this chemotherapy every other week, usually I only go every three weeks, but I wanna get ahead of this. And do you know, when they did the pathology on the breast they removed, it was full of cancer. I had dense tissue, which mammography cannot see through, and so afterward, then on my remaining breast with every mammogram, I got an ultrasound as well because there the mammogram was useless, but I had to go that route first and then do the ultrasound. And then let me just skip ahead a minute, I had four biopsies on my right breast, the remaining breast. So over the years I'd had four biopsies. I do not have a BRCA mutation, but my mother's sister died of the same kind of rare breast cancer. So I have a family history, I have a personal history, I had biopsies and in the interim had learned that we have Ashkenazi Jewish result or, um, heritage. So all of that meant I was a time bomb. So last year before Thanksgiving, I had the right breast removed prophylactically. They did bo, they did pathology on it anyway, even though I did not have cancer, they found what's called um, acute lobular hyperplasia, which means a little group of cells have gotten together and they're organizing and in no time at all they're gonna be become cancer. I dodged another bullet. Isn't that amazing?

Caroline 44:55

Absolutely, what made you after all those, uh, after the, you know, years and after the things and to what made you last year decide, you know, take her.

Judy Pearson 45:05

Well, okay. The horrible truth. Here's my, um, my vaness coming out again. The horrible truth is when I had the reconstruction with the first mastectomy, the plastic surgeon, who was wonderful said, look, a breast is teardrop shape. These implants aren't, they're round. So I usually advise women, and I am not very big. I usually advise women to put a little implant under their remaining breast to kind of lift it a little bit. So they're kind of even, and I was like, okay, well that little bean had slipped out of its muscle capsule and it was going toward my armpit and taking my breast with it. So in a bathing suit, I was horribly conscious. In clothing, I was horribly conscious. My husband kept saying, I don't see anything, but he also never tells me if I have spinach in my teeth. So I was just so self-conscious. So part of me said, okay, I'm a time bomb. I'm gonna do this. The other part of me was, yeah, another 10 years and I'm gonna look like crap. So I pulled the trigger and I wouldn't have probably been alive in the next 10 years.

Caroline 46:18

Wow. And so, but good thing that you did, right? So there was something, something inside you, regardless what the, how it outwardly got to your conscious, but something was saying, this needs to addressed um, and for your benefit.

Judy Pearson 46:32

Yeah.

Caroline 46:32

Wow. Okay. So something good did come from all of that, that you went through. Tell a little bit about how that all evolved.

Judy Pearson 46:44

So, after cancer. So during cancer, I just, I was really foggy brain. They call it chemo brain. I just, I was tired, so there was no way I could really think clearly enough to write another biography, nor could I travel to do research or anything else. So, um, so I put together an anthology of some newspaper, of some magazine columns that I had written through the journey. But, um, but on the other side of cancer, the courage book just wasn't fitting. I, I didn't know what I wanted to write. Um. We had also by this time, moved back to Phoenix because my chemo made me very cold sensitive. And so Michigan and Chicago, where we had a condo just weren't working. So back to Phoenix I go and I, um, I was four years out of cancer. I started a little non-profit for women's survivors of all cancers who are giving back to the greater good in their survivorship because there is healing in helping. If you shine your energy out to the greater good, out to the world, you forget all the things that are troubling you. And, and a second act, we called it, having a second act after any life challenge is important. Doesn't matter whether it's cancer, a divorce, a death, the loss of a job, you know, anything. And, um, through my organization, I met the woman who became the inspiration for the next book, and I proceeded to write an accidental out of order trilogy because in researching that first post-cancer book called From Shadows to Life, I learned about Mary Lasker, who became the subject of my second post-cancer book. And in researching that, I learned more about, um, an amazing woman called Rose Kushner, who with Shirley Temple Black and Evelyn Lauder, who is the daughter-in-law of Estee Lauder. The three of them never met, but they independently launched what became the Breast Cancer Movement and that book came out last September and just won the Gold Medal Florida Book Award.

Caroline 49:05

Oh, that's amazing. And um, for people who don't know yet, who was Mary Lasker?

Judy Pearson 49:11

Mary Lasker was, um, was a very wealthy, uh, philanthropist who was married to the man they call the father of modern advertising, Albert Lasker. They both, it was a second mar marriage for both of them, and both of them had this passion to cure cancer in the thirties and forties, and they couldn't figure out why. No one was trying to figure out how to cure cancer, you know, a simple pill. There's gotta be a pill, some there, or maybe an injection. And so Mary started campaigning against it. Albert sadly died of cancer, I think it was colon cancer. They never really say, they, sometimes they call it bowel cancer, or sometimes they call it stomach cancer, but I think it was probably colon cancer. And Mary carried on, and eventually, because she had such rich political, um, uh, resources, she convinced she and her group convinced Richard Nixon in 1971 to sign the National Cancer Act and that infused over a billion dollars of'71 dollars into cancer research, unheard of amounts. And that in turn started America's research churning to get to the point where we are now and all the things that have been discovered and tested and found useful are the things that are saving all of our lives today. And actually the funny thing you said, for those who don't know Mary Lasker. So I wanted to write the next book just about Rose Kushner and my editor and my agent said, okay, look.

Caroline 50:50

Tell us, and Rose Kushner was, how was she related?

Judy Pearson 50:53

She, she was the middle woman of these three. Um, she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 74. She changed legislation so that insurance companies were mandated to cover mammograms and reconstruction, which they did not do until the 1990s. And to insert, uh, notification and birth control pills that the level of estrogen was a carcinogen. And, um, and other amazing things testified before Congress. I mean, she was a rockstar. Wrote the very first handbook for women to get themselves through breast cancer treatment.'cause there was nothing I had the advantage of reading. All these other women's journeys. Um, so anyway, my agent and editor said, look, we love that you wanna write about these people that no one knows, but we all wanna sell books, so let's add some famous names. And my editor said, Shirley Temple Black First Celebrity to come out about our cancer. And my agent said, Evelyn Lauder took up the reins after Estee Lauder retired. She, uh, created the pink ribbon. She, you know, really drove the modern era of breast cancer. Hmm.

Caroline 52:10

Wow. So these women came before you helped set the stage for your eventual treatment. You then have this second act that you create to help other people shine a light on the good that they're doing in the world after their cancer. And oh, by the way, while you're doing all of that, you're continuing to go back and tell the stories that many people don't know to bring those to light, to people,

Judy Pearson 52:37

That's right.

Caroline 52:39

learn.

Judy Pearson 52:40

And the, the last thing I want to leave you with is my other firm, firm belief is that there's always treasure in life's wreckage. So I left teaching because. Of the reasons I told you, but if I hadn't known French, I never could have written that second book, which really launched my writing career. I learned to sell through cosmetics and the radio station. But as a writer, you have to sell yourself and sell the fact that you can tell a story, that you can link together a bunch of facts and people and themes and make it all make sense and make readers wanna read it. And my advertising background people have this wonderful, rosy picture that writers sign a contract, get a million dollar advance, and sit back and, and rake in the rest. Here's the truth. Most of those people, particularly non-writer, so famous. Actors, actresses, politicians who write books and get multimillion dollar advances, they never earn out those advances to start making royalties. In other words, it's like an advance against commission where they give you a thousand dollars a month and then you're supposed to sell more than that to make more in that month. So what happens to 99.9% of all authors is we have to maintain social media, send newsletters, go out to book events, speaking events, festivals. We are forever on the road and still writing in between. So all of that, all of those, og, and then she got divorced, og, and then she got cancer. All of those things taught me new things.

Caroline 54:27

And they ended up working for you. And so now, uh, well, two more things. Number one, how do you define authentic success for you in this moment?

Judy Pearson 54:38

You know. I, um, there, there was a stint. I just had this conversation with my granddaughter. There was a stint during high school where the mean girls got together and decided they didn't like Judy and I, I felt so badly about it. There was nothing I, they just didn't like me. So there was nothing about me that I could change. I couldn't look different. I couldn't speak differently. I couldn't, I couldn't do anything to be different. So I really learned to just play down what I was, and I have a really hard time accepting praise or, um, any kind of accolade. It's really, that's really hard for me. Plus, you know, it's boastful and all those other things. When someone comes to me, and this can be true about, and I keep looking over at my book shelf, this can be true about any of the books that I've written. When someone comes to me and says. I heard you say this or that, or I read this or that, and it really moved me and it really helped me and I was able to do, fill in the blank, when someone tells me that something I've done has helped them, I feel successful, even if it's just one. And in fact, my husband and I have always said, um, just before I get ready to go, um, speak somewhere, you know, I just need to touch one person, just one.

Caroline 56:07

Oh, that's beautiful. So speaking of getting ready to go and speak somewhere, you're getting ready to go to the Women Life and Science event that is going to be happening in Greenville, South Carolina on April 30th. You are the keynote speaker and the night before there's gonna be a book signing, with your latest book. But give a little preview of what's the topic that you're gonna be talking about at this keynote.'cause there still may be time to get tickets.

Judy Pearson 56:35

I think that most people at my age may just consider that they've done enough and they're going to retire and they're gonna enjoy grandchildren and, traveling or whatever retirement looks like. I kind of feel like I may be able to help younger women. I. By telling them stories of things that might be coming and by telling them whatever junkie stuff they're going through, it's not the end of the day. It's not forever. It's just for now and just keep taking steps forward. And that's hard sometimes. So I try to come up with, with phrases and stop checks and things like that to help women, men to, but I, I could speak more knowledgeably to my sisters so that they know, hey, this, this is not gonna be like this forever.

Caroline 57:33

It's gonna be fascinating. You're definitely going to be able to inspire women of all ages and stages in their life and career for deeper, realizing that everything is indeed happening for them. Sharing your story, sharing the stories you've written of so many wonderful others. I can't wait to see, to meet you, to see you.

Judy Pearson 57:55

Oh, thank you so much. I am, I'm really looking forward to seeing everybody, but to giving you a big hug for this opportunity to be on your show. Thanks.

Caroline 58:04

Thank you so very much. I look forward to getting this out into the world, and I wish you all the best with your next success as that continues to evolve. And thank you so, so much, Judy, for being on the show today and for sharing even more about you.

Judy Pearson 58:19

Absolutely.

Speaker 58:20

Judy, thank you so much for being here and sharing your story. I can hardly wait to see you in just a few short weeks at the Women Life and Science Event in Greenville, South Carolina. Thanks for listening to Your Next Success with Dr. Caroline Sangal. Remember, authentic success is yours to define and includes aligning your career to support the life you want.