Finding the Fabulous When Things Get Tough

Jen Hardy [00:00:11]:

Welcome to the fabulous over 50 podcast where we talk all things fabulousness because, you know, Life can get a little bit crazy, and I don’t know if you’ve been listening to the news or scrolling through social lately, but things are going a little bit wacko. And so that’s part of the reason we’re doing this whole podcast, right, is so that we can learn to find the fabulous in everything. because fabulous really is a state of mind. And let me tell you something. I have really been put to the test over the last couple of months slash years in finding the good and staying positive. And I thought I would talk about it today. I mean, super open, honest, barebones talk to you about what has been happening and the struggle, honestly, that I’ve been having in

Jen Hardy [00:01:05]:

staying upbeat and feeling fabulous.

Jen Hardy [00:01:08]:

So one of the things that I do is I I have a cricket. If you don’t know what a cricket is of, You can make stickers. You can make shirts. You can do all these things. And I got this glitter stuff. And I put fabulous over 50 on, like, 10 shirts. with this ridiculous glitter stuff, and I do my nails to match. And so I am glittery all the time. And what it does is it reminds me — that I’m choosing to be fabulous. And, you know, when I’m I’ve got my nails all fancy and my little blingy shirt, it makes me feel good. But it doesn’t cover up the fact that life is hard right now.

Jen Hardy [00:01:50]:

I mean, it’s seriously hard.

Jen Hardy [00:01:52]:

My husband has been unwell for over a year and a half. We have been honestly fighting with doctors, and I can’t even tell you how many we’ve seen. And it’s a lot. But I’m not gonna depress you today. Don’t worry. We’re gonna find the fabulous in this. So, we’re gonna start off with a little story. And I’m going because I think it’s so important. And it’s really taught me a lot. So here is what it is.

Jen Hardy [00:02:20]:

Picture Japan.

Jen Hardy [00:02:23]:

Couple 100 years ago, there’s a farmer. A farmer and his son, and they’ve got 2 horses. And they’re working out there, and they’re plowing, and they’re doing what they can do. And one day, one of the horses runs away. And the dad says to his friends, I don’t know if this is good or I don’t know if this bad. And they say, what do you mean good? How can it possibly be good? Your horses run away. You’re gonna get half the amount of work done. You’re you could starve. It’s a big deal. And he says, yeah, but it could be good. And sure enough, A week later, the horse comes back and brings a friend. Now the man’s got 3 horses. And the friends say, this is great news. And he says, well, I don’t know if it’s good or bad. And again, they’re like, what in the world? What’s wrong with you? Obviously, it’s good. Well, his son’s riding the horse, and he gets thrown and he breaks his leg. And, again, The friends are like, oh, this is horrible. What are you gonna do? You know, your son’s even more valuable obviously than these horses, and now you don’t have your son. And he says, but, you know, this could be good. I don’t know. 

And at this point, they’re thinking, is what’s wrong with this guy? I mean, he just you know, he clearly doesn’t know what is good from what is bad. But soon after that, there’s a war going on. And they come through, and they take all the available young men to go to war. And the son can’t go because he’s got a broken leg. And the friends come and say, well, this is great. Your son doesn’t have to go. And the man says, well, I don’t know if this is good or bad. And I’m gonna end the story here. because I think you pretty much get the gist at this point that no matter what happens in our life, even if it clearly looks bad. There could be good in it. In fact,

Jen Hardy [00:04:18]:

the thing that looks super bad could be

Jen Hardy [00:04:23]:

a sign of something even better yet to come. And that is something that I learned early on in my life. and I really try to remember it as I’m going through trials. And I’ll give you an example. I am redoing my kitchen. We are ray we are renovating our kitchen. Now, I don’t talk a lot about my health issues at this point because we’re fabulous over 50 and The podcast before was Hardie Mom where I did talk about that, but I don’t. But suffice it to say, I got some health stuff. And so I can’t do a whole lot of physical things. And now my husband has some health stuff, and he doesn’t do a whole lot of physical things. But we’re renovating our kitchen by ourselves. Well, almost by ourselves, we hired a handyman who ended up walking off the job and leaving my kitchen in a much worse place, not only that, but he ended up covering parts of the outside of my home that I had just had painted 2 years ago with concrete splatters over literally like a ten foot by ten foot area, It’s a thing. But because of that, I’ve had some friends that were kind of, you know, like, casual friends really step up. They have stepped up in the place of really good friends and really, like, held our hands, joined with us, and helped us out. And that has been amazing. So something that, I mean, was very upsetting at the time has turned into something honestly pretty darn good. So, you know, that’s a good thing. And we were gonna design our kitchen. Well, we did design our kitchen. I designed catch on. 

I ordered the cabinets. We had chosen the backsplash and the countertop, and I don’t know if you’ve ever gotten a chance to do this. But It is one of those fantasy things. If you follow me on Facebook, I just got one of my fantasy things for the kitchen, which is 2 refrigerators together that look like 1. It’s obnoxious. It’s an obnoxious first world thing, and I absolutely it is fabulous. It is the epitome of fabulous for me, but so is the idea of designing a kitchen. I mean, everything I want laid out the way I want. set up the way I want with the colors that I want, like, everything I want. And I was thinking this is one of the most fabulous things that has ever happened to me. It is very exciting. So I had planned on doing a certain color scheme for my kitchen. And my husband and I were so excited. And I’m loving it because he’s getting into this, and that makes me happy. because I don’t like making all the decisions. I like it when he makes decisions. I like it when he blends his input because it’s his kitchen too, and I’m not gonna lie. He does do almost all of the cooking. So I need to make sure he’s happy in the kitchen. And so we go to order the countertops And there’s no one there to take a countertop order at Home Depot. No one. And we have a certain counter we want, and there and that’s it and whatever. So we’re pretty disappointed. I’m feeling like the guy whose horse ran away. Like, I’m seriously disappointed. Well, guess what? It turns out I have to change the whole color scheme of my kitchen. 

Long story short, Problem with the flooring have to rip it up, and we’re going back to the terrazzo underneath, which is great. Thank god we have the terrazzo underneath. Because I love Toronto. I do. I mean, you can I can roll my baby grand piano across it. It doesn’t damage it. I can drop things on it. It doesn’t damage it. I can do anything I want to. The problem with my terrazzo, though, is it off white color. with gray and a light orange, almost a corollary color. That is not one of my favorite colors. I’m not gonna lie. And so now I’ve gone from a kitchen that was going to be beautiful black, white, gray with my coastal blue in it. To what now? I have no idea. But had I ordered that countertop? It would have looked heinous in that kitchen. So you know what? It turned out really well. Then we went to pull up the floor. There was some icky stuff under it, then we couldn’t live in the house for a few days. And we got to go stay at a hotel that we’ve been wanting to stay out in our area since we moved here 4 years ago. 

Turns out it’s a really cool hotel. And so we got a little bit of a vacation out of it. And now we’re back. My husband is a rock star and worked for 8 hours doing that. He hasn’t worked freight. I was doing anything in a year and a half and won’t be doing it again for a while, but he did it because he wanted to spec home. Do you know how many good things came out of ripping out that floor? I was in tears when we found out there was a problem. As I believe most people would be, it was a big deal. And I love my beautiful gray floor. and I hate that we’re giving it up. But my husband found out he can step up and do things when things go rough.

Jen Hardy [00:09:24]:

We had the wherewithal to be able to go stay at a nice hotel for a couple nights and have a vacation.

Jen Hardy [00:09:31]:

And when we came back, I fell in love again with my Toronto floor. And I am more than willing to change my color scheme on my kitchen because in the scheme of what is going on in the world, the fact that I’ve gotta change colors in a kitchen is definitely not

Jen Hardy [00:09:48]:

The worst thing that could happen. And I really know that I need to focus on that. So

Jen Hardy [00:09:59]:

I’m sharing all this because I think it’s important as I’m doing this podcast. that I don’t sit here and say, you know, I live on this beautiful island, and I’ve got this beautiful pool home, Three Blocks from the beach, And you know, everything is butterflies and rainbows because I live in the real world where poop happens on a quite regular basis.

Jen Hardy [00:10:25]:

And sometimes, I melt down, and sometimes it’s hard. But

Jen Hardy [00:10:34]:

I always let myself have my little pity party. If you’re going through a horde hor horrid, hard, whatever. That was a combination of those words. Time. Set a timer for 5 minutes. And you when you’re alone like, don’t wanna do this in front of people. Shut your bedroom door, go in the bathroom, turn on the fan, do whatever set a camera from is. You get to cry and yell and moan and whine and everything about what you’re going through. When that timer beeps, you’d be surprised how much better you feel because in our culture, we’re told to just, like, suck it up and get over it, build a bridge and get over put a you know, life is hard. Wear a helmet. All these things. Man, it’s true. Like, we can’t be babies, but If you don’t get it out, it’s just gonna build up inside you. And I really believe that our culture does us a disservice by not allowing us to grieve problems. Okay? We need to be able to grieve a problem. Now should I grieve a floor color? Well, you know, that’s — for debate depending on the person. What I was grieving was the whatever was living under the floor that made our whole house smell really bad. Like, that was a problem. But,

Jen Hardy [00:11:45]:

you know, take the time to let yourself

Jen Hardy [00:11:51]:

mourn or grieve or get over what’s disappointing you or all the things. And maybe you’ve got 30 tiny things that people say you shouldn’t be bothered by that. Well, you know what? But you are. You are. And when there’s 30, It’s like massive boulders on you. Right? Let it out. Get over it. Talk to a friend. Let them help you get over it. Talk to a friend that will let you just talk and not try to give you a bunch of solutions, though. Sometimes you just need to get it out. Get it out. And then I promise. You’re gonna be like that farmer who’s gonna say, hey. This really stinks, but I know something good can come out of this.

Jen Hardy [00:12:33]:

And I’m telling you right now, I’ve got a list of, literally, like, 30, at least, Bad things that have happened in the last 7 days. I have been hit and hit and hit. I mean, it’s like someone’s got a pitching machine. with these just poop baseballs that they’re shooting at me. And I am tired. I’m exhausted, but I am still standing because I know that good is gonna come.

Jen Hardy [00:13:13]:

Alright? Now there’s a phrase. and it’s pretty funny. My mother-in-law always used to say when there was something bad. This too shall pass. Yes. And that is very wise. But then I heard somebody say something else, and I think this is more true. This too shall pass. It may pass like a kidney stone, but it shall pass. And some of these things are passing like a kidney stone. But It’s going to get better. It is getting better. I’ve got 20 boxes of new cabinets in my kitchen. Now granted, they’re still in the boxes. And that’s okay. because my electrician, he was supposed to move some cords around. He got in a car accident. It won’t even be working till next week. So when I look at it, I think but It’s not my family that got necrotics and god help his family. But this is the kind of thing that’s been going on, but he’s gonna get better. He’s gonna come do this. And in the right time, I will have a kitchen, and I will share that bad boy with you.

Jen Hardy [00:14:11]:

What is it that you’re going through right now? We’ve all got something. If you don’t have somebody that will sit there and listen to you, I ask you right now to please reach out to me. You can email me jen@jenhardy.net. And if you wanna talk to me, shoot me an email, jen@jennardier.net, and say, Jen, I wanna talk. And give me your phone number. I’ll call you, and I will listen. because there are far too many people out there that don’t have someone to listen.

Jen Hardy [00:14:47]:

And I felt like I was one of those people. And for some reason last week, I got so much love from so many people That I had forgotten love me, honestly.

Jen Hardy [00:14:58]:

And I feel so loved up right now, and I wanna share that with you. because you need it. Everyone need it. And if you have everything going great and you’re like, Jen, I don’t need that right now. Everything’s going great in my life. Then I would ask you to look for someone around you who is struggling and you reach out to that person. Because at all times, we are either the person whose things are going great, and we can always give back. or the person who needs and asking for help or asking for someone to listen is hard. but you can do it, and I’m here.

Jen Hardy [00:15:38]:

Because with all the things I’m going through, listening to someone else, Tell me what they’re going through is not more of a burden for me. It’s actually a gift

Jen Hardy [00:15:48]:

letting me be your shoulder to cry on is giving me a gift because I enjoy helping people, and I enjoy listening. And I love that you are listening to me right now. We just passed 20,000 downloads,

Jen Hardy [00:16:06]:

20,000

Jen Hardy [00:16:09]:

times people have listened. It is definitely time I’m giving back to you. There’s lots of paid ways that I’ve got to help people out. but this is not paid. This is just my time. Free to you. because life is hard. And I want you to feel fabulous. I want your life to be fabulous even in the hard times.

Jen Hardy [00:16:40]:

So if you haven’t subscribed yet, hit that subscribe button. If you need someone to reach out, jen@jenhardie.net. Or go to jennhardy.net/contact.

Jen Hardy [00:16:51]:

Send me a message. Give me your phone number. I’ll give you a call. because you don’t have to do this alone. And that’s all I’ve got to say today. I know it’s kind of a different episode. But, you know, I just wanna be real with you. This is life. And Yeah. It’s not always easy. But we’re gonna take the hard things, and we’re gonna turn them into something fabulous. and we’re gonna know that something fabulous is right around that corner. We don’t know what it is yet. We can’t even see its shadow, but we know it’s coming. It’s coming for me. It’s coming for you. We got this. Alright? So Thank you for listening. I love you. You’re not alone. We’re gonna have a great episode coming up. So stay tuned and stay fabulous.