This is every widow thing where we believe in saying yes.
And no and no. Hi, everybody.
This is every widow thing. I'm Lacey here with Whitney and
Holly. And today we have two words,
kind of like Sesame Street. We have two words we're
highlighting today. The 1st is no no.
Can everybody say no? No.
That's so important as a widow,
but the most important one for me now, after 12 years after my
husband died, it's the I said this coming year is going to be
the year of yes. So 2024 is the year of yes,
meaning all the things I'm going to do that I couldn't do over
the last 12 years as a single mother because my son was home.
Now that he's going to be in college and you guys already
have kids in college, what can I do now to say yes to oh, lots of
things. Yeah, and I love the way that
you're taking, taking that and making it something positive
because a lot of people, when they become an empty nesters,
especially as a single parent, your empty nest is really empty
and you can get sad or or feel you know, depressed about it,
but you're taking it. And going, Oh my gosh, I'm about
to have so much fun. I mean, I'm going to miss him.
I mean, you're going to see me in tears.
That's just going to happen. I'm prepared for that.
I decided to say, you know what, I'm going to go on that Florida
trip. I wasn't going to because I
thought I'm going to be tired. I will have done this and this
and I, you know, my part time job and and I thought, no, I'm
going to go. I'm going to have a lot of fun.
I think that's. Great.
Yeah. And Holly, you've said yes to
something recently as well. I'll always say yes to.
A trip? I know.
I don't think Holly has trouble saying yes to fun, do you?
You always look like you're up for it.
I am. I think that's good.
I'll take it for it. But it is difficult when you're
trying to navigate kids and you don't have your partner to pick
up the slack. I would.
I travelled with girlfriends. A lot more when Hunter was
alive, because I knew he would handle well, he didn't handle it
great. I mean, let's be honest, you
leave like a playbook that's 25,000 pages long for a weekend
away, but at least you have that other parent, you know?
So I think it's even now I have a 17 year old who's perfectly
capable of staying by himself. But the mom.
Feel hard. You feel a sense of
responsibility. Don't want to leave them, right?
No, it is hard. But I'm trying to.
You're right. They're 18.
Someone reminded me the other day, Your son is 18.
He can stay alone. My son was like this.
Would have been trying to tell her that part of it is that
fear. I go back to that fear and I'm
trying to work on that, not letting fear determine what I
say yes to do. You think about your kids as
much when you don't see them day-to-day, like no guys have,
and then I. Feel guilty about it.
I'm like, Oh my gosh, it's been a week and I haven't talked to
Sydney well. I don't worry about like when
he's home like the summer and he's coming in super late.
I'm like, where is he? Where is he?
But I don't do that when he's at school.
Yeah, because you don't know where they're going to be.
Do you get, do you keep the life 360, by the way, when they go to
college? No, I because I have 5 of my
friends, so I can see exactly where she is in that moment, but
I don't know where she's been. I just wonder if I should get
rid of it all together. Is it really giving me?
Is it giving me Any help? I mean, no, it's just something
to obsess over. Get rid of it.
Because I don't. Let's get.
Back to your yeses. OK, So what is a yes?
So you said yes to Florida, said yes.
Because you can work from anywhere.
I can. And I kept thinking, why am I
like saddling myself to a desk, right?
Silly. And then the other is we all
talked about doing a pole dancing class.
Yes, yes. Done one before in Manhattan
Beach. Hardest class I've ever taken.
So hard I did the S Factor, which was in LA too, and it was
a pole dancing. But it's so fun and empowering.
It is. It's hard.
Sexy, so yes to pole dancing. I bet our glam minded like doing
that. She's done it.
I've done it with her. Well, there was an ICM agent
whose wife started it out in the West Coast.
Do you remember who I'm talking about?
Yeah, I think it was the's factor.
It was one of her that was the class.
That was what I took. But it was 3 hours long and I
thought, this is the hardest thing I've ever done, 'cause I
had to teach us first, then we took a break, and then the last
part was doing the the dance itself.
Right. I love what you said at a minute
ago, Lacey, about not letting fear determine what you do next.
I remember a long time ago that was one of the questions that
Oprah brought up and and then said it all the time.
And I just love Oprah so much. And it was.
If you weren't afraid, if there was No Fear, what would you do?
And I have used that question so many times because fear is a
liar. It makes what?
What's the phrase that I've said before?
It makes clouds into walls and it robs your joy.
Yeah, completely forget the fear, sit in the faith and say
yes to life. And I think as a widow and
people who are grieving and have lost.
That can be so heavy that they stopped living themselves.
Their their their loved one died and now they're dying.
And really it needs to be the opposite.
You, let's live for them. Let's live because they don't
get to anymore. Let's value what we're being
given here. Well, they would want.
They would want you to live your life to the fullest.
Yeah, if I died, I would want Hunter to be having the best
time ever. Well, I stripper.
Poles and well, I told my floor before he died, I said.
I'm going to tell a couple of women that I know will come
after. You right that you don't like
pot roasts, that you only like clean foods and stuff.
And then one of my friends said, you're absolutely right, I was
going to go after him if it had been you.
And we laughed because it's true.
I mean, he's a good guy, so why wouldn't she?
But of course, but I do think that we have to address the the
no comes back to yes, you may have to do EMDR to work through
trauma. You may have to do therapy for
years because I did have to do therapy for years to work
through that and it's still sometimes.
And go back, yeah, I mean, I I've been in therapy several
times and then take a break and then I'm like, you know what?
I need to go in and get this addressed.
So you could be doing therapy back and forth?
Around and to different therapists too.
Yeah. That's important, the time
because different things are going on that were happening,
you know, from six years ago to today, like.
You're dealing with different. Things.
It's different. And what was it?
I think it was you, Lacey, that said something about every
transition. There's there's a new there's
grief with every transition and there's going to be transitions
for the rest of our lives. Yeah, the college going away to
college, that has positives, that has negatives.
But I also have tried. Like, I'm going to take the
playbook from you fun people over there.
I'm going to start saying yes to more fun things and then carving
out. I know, because they've all
laughed at me, that you're the one that always goes home after
dinner. Part of that is I am an
ambivert. Right.
It's not saying no because I don't want to have fun or that
I'm just busy. It's so important.
It really comes down to I'm one of those people that needs alone
time to be able to be with people.
And I think because I'm chatty and outgoing and I think that
you're constantly, always out there.
I'm not. I'm one of those people.
I'm impressed by you. Like as far as you're liking to
be at home alone. If I'm home alone for too long,
I I have. Anxiety down you.
You get into your thoughts and you call me and you want me to
go have drinks with you. It's a big afternoon.
Man, you're lucky she calls me to go on a walk.
Thank you for not calling me for a walk and like it.
Is 104 out? No, I don't want to go on.
Well, my AC was broken on Sunday and Holly texted me instead of
saying let's get you into a cool movie theater, she's like, no,
let's go have. Some drinks.
So what do we do? I said yes.
You did. I had so much fun.
I think it's hard for people, especially women.
To say yes for themselves to to to put themselves on the list.
And that's also where our next word, no, comes in because we
say yes to everybody else and not to ourselves.
And then we don't say, you know, you need to start saying no to
everybody else and yes to yourself.
No, I'm not going to volunteer and bring the cupcakes.
No to the sign up sheet. No to the sign.
Not all the time, but especially like I was.
And I think Kira has said this before.
And sadly, she's not here with us today because her son Thomas
is getting his wisdom teeth pulled and there has to be a
parent there. So that's her.
We miss you, Kira. We miss you, Kira.
Good luck to you, Thomas. Yes, but now I forgot what I was
saying. Dang it.
Kira volunteered. Oh, volunteering.
Yeah, you know the Super mom before this happened and and I
was the first one to sign up. I was running the, the totally
the meetings and. Baking the cookies.
Well, buying, buying. I was going to say buying the
cookies. I believe the other, but right.
I I baked. I mean, I could believe
elementary. I'm horrible.
I mean, and I even made heart-shaped pancakes for the
Valentine's Day party at school. I'm like, do the kids really
care? No.
They. Don't.
I don't. But other moms?
You think are watching and so you're trying to put on a good
show. I did.
It for the kids. Yes, you did.
For the kids, you know that old heart thing makes them feel bad
about themselves. Why?
Don't we do that to say no, no, I'm not going to volunteer at
the school today. No, I'm not going to be the
carpool person every time and be the one that that picks up all
the kids, you know? Oh, I had to do something so
awful. Well, my son needed.
We were at a school that's like 25 minutes away.
And there were one was a working mother outside the home, had a
full time job. And then one of the other ones
just had several kids and just, you know, but they knew I was
not working at the time. I took a break and I should have
never told anybody that I took a break because then it was always
like, oh, I have to do this, do you mind?
And I finally just broke off and told them I'm not going to be,
I'm not doing it anymore, I said, because it ended up
falling on me. The whole point in having.
And I thought, wow, I've come a long way.
I'm from Mississippi. And in Mississippi, you know,
you just everything has to be so nice and everything so well, as
I've gotten older, everybody's like, you're so good at
boundaries. It's called survival, people.
Yeah, I didn't have a choice. I can't take care of your kids.
It was always amazing to me as a single widow.
These people who had husbands, one of them even had an
assistant, still had the balls to ask me to be the one to go
get them all the time because they had something come up.
But if. You're normally that Yes person
they're they're going to keep coming back to you.
So that's why, you know, once you started saying no.
You have to set boundaries. It's all about.
Boundaries. It really is.
I mean even. Well, our kids weren't even
friends. Our kids weren't friends, so it
made it a whole lot easier. One of them wasn't even
particularly nice to my son, so it made it a whole lot easier.
Just like, damn good. But they would see me at the
school picking up my son at the same time they had to pick up
theirs. That was a little uncomfortable,
but I got over it. You know what you should have.
Your job is not my problem. My not having a husband's not
your problem either. I mean, I have to remember that,
too. We all have to take care of our
families. That's, you know.
Right. And we're not saying, I mean you
we're we're kind people. We're we're gracious people.
But we get overloaded because I do.
I get overloaded because I always say yes to other people
and say no to myself. And it even goes to the kids.
And probably we've talked about this, this, this guilt that we
have because their fathers are dead, that makes us go above and
beyond sometimes what we need to do.
Because we feel so guilty, we're trying to make up for the fact
that they don't have a dad, which by the way doesn't work.
There's definitely, I think I did parent for many years out of
that and I probably still have moments of that letting him do.
Things trying to backtrack out of it.
I remember you saying that about vacations, Holly.
You said that you're like, wherever you want to go, and
then now you're having to go. OK, how about because I and I
did the same thing? Yeah, making choices based on
him not getting and his dad would have been way more
conservative about the way we spend money, the way where we
would go. I'm sure my my son's had
probably a more fun life and that's.
It right. Well, I know my sorry, Oliver.
For a while I was like, I don't care.
I'm just going to spend money like I'm dying tomorrow.
So I did a lot of things with the kids that now I'm like.
I think we've. All the budget is hurting?
Absolutely. I say that all the time, Yeah.
You just have to, you know. But all of it's a learning
process. I mean, you know, it's not like
any of us had any practice of our husbands die and nor did I
know anybody who this had happened to.
So I had nobody to call grief group but everybody in my grief
group, with the exception of Carol Sticker.
Carol who I love Carol. She's moved though.
She was. We hit it all.
Was she a stickler? Sticker.
Oh, I hope you're listening.
Carol. Her son is like this amazing
like you know runner like he's oh.
I was wondering where you were going with that, your potential
Olympian. I mean, he's that good.
This good body. I was like when his dad died and
now he's Oh my God. All right, so say yes to
yourself, no to others. Now I've got a couple of yes or
no rapid questions, rapid fire. Rapid fire questions.
If you're up for it, do it. All right.
Have you ever taken a personality test?
Yes, recently. Oh, do you know your star sign?
Yes. Doesn't really, No.
But I I learned it in a job interview.
That's how I knew I had the job. What I'm going in there and I
was really not cut out for the job.
It was a business and acquisitions job.
Long story short, he said. So what's your sign?
And I said yield or stop. What do you what are you saying?
I didn't know what I was 22. Oh.
I love that I was not. Kidding.
Not that anyone asked. And he said no astrological.
He looked at me like God doll, that's how you talk.
And I said, and then he goes, well, what date is it?
I said October 16th And he said you're a Libra.
And then in a split second I said I guess I got the job
because she's not supposed to ask when my birthday is, I guess
the law. And he said, oh, you definitely
have the job. Oh, that is that's hilarious.
That's funny. Not funny.
That's surprised You're a Libra. I'm a Libra.
It's like indecisive. It's the balance.
This is years of practice. If you had known me like in high
school, I was much more easygoing.
This is called 12 years. Many years in entertainment, you
better get tough or you're going to be run slap over.
Do you have any scars, Lacey? What do you mean not an?
Emotional, physical, physical scars?
Yes. OK, Holly, here's yours.
Have you ever broken a bone? No.
Have you ever broken the law? No, Yeah.
Oh yeah, you lied. All broken the law.
If Y'all can only see her now, that's why she didn't want the
video in a law. Totally broken, are you?
What? Are you claustrophobic?
Yes. Have you ever had a near death
experience? No.
Have you ever had a paranormal normal experience?
No. Yes, you have.
Toby has talked to you. I mean, that's paranormal ghost.
What about you, Lacey? Paranormal experience?
Yes. When I was sitting in the living
room and I think it was just like a day or so afterward,
everybody was out of the living room.
I was. I had not taken anything.
I promise you guys. I'd had no drugs, nothing.
There was a black wisp that went across the room in the shape of
a person. Oh, and it freaked me out.
OK. Would you say yes to plastic
surgery? Yes.
Me too 100% yes or no to donating blood yes, yes, yes,
yes or no to organ donor yes, yes, yes or no to having another
child. No, if it were biologically.
Possible. Just say yes or no question.
No, someone said. Hey, you could have another kid.
I'm on the fence. I'd say yes, I'd do it.
Yes or no. Take peyote in the wilderness.
Like what? Peyote, what's that?
You know, like Jim Morrison and The Doors And you remember that
movie. I don't know what you're talking
about. Peyote.
It's like in the Native American, you know, peyote.
What the heck are you? Saying yes, Lacy.
Peyote is a cactus and it has psychedelic.
Oh, you're saying, Should I take the psychoth?
Yeah. Would you take?
That would you take it in the wilderness, Lacey?
Yes. No, I wouldn't because I'm
terrified of. I'm allergic to so many things.
I'm terrified of it. Would you ever go on naked and
afraid? What is that?
You don't know that TV show naked or afraid.
No, I'm never heard of it. No, I'm saying no, I wouldn't.
Never heard of. It.
Oh, man. And then there.
Was naked, I would be. Naked.
And then there was naked and dating, and you're dating.
For the first time, and you're both naked.
No. Would you ever pose nude for
Playboy? No.
If someone came to you right now and said were there going to be
tasteful photos? No.
Lacey, yes, you would. Yes, you would.
Your mom is in memory care, so you you would say yes.
Come on, you wouldn't. Yes, you would.
Sorry, Mom. Would you?
Ever. There's some of them that are
tastefully done, like you're not really seeing anything, right?
It's more like a bathing. Right, that's what I'm saying.
It's a day would have me out, maybe, I don't know.
Would you ever go on a first date out of the country?
You know like he has you know private Jet and he's like let's
go to, but I would vet them so. Sure.
Well, you've already said yes to a first date.
It's just going out of the country.
Sure, I think so too. That'd be fun.
Would you ever go out with a 25 year old?
No, no. Never.
Way too young. Never.
My husband was nine years younger.
That's my limit, I mean. Y'all are saying no to a lot.
I feel like you're asking some crazy.
Stuff. That's the point.
You have to get crazy. I would date 10 years younger.
That's about as low as I want to go.
How? Low.
Would you go? I would.
It depends on the person. Honestly.
If I felt a connection you think you would like if Oliver were
still alive, do you think that you?
I know it's hard to say but. Do you think that you would have
issue with the the age difference now?
Do you think it would bother you?
I think if I looked a lot older, I think it would bother me.
But he was so against Botox and all of that.
He was very anti did it one time.
And he said don't ever do that again.
It looks ridiculous. And he didn't care about
wrinkles. He cared about being fit and
healthy. That's all he cared about.
But it would bother me, like, I don't want to look like his, you
know, old lady over here, right? You know what I mean?
I felt like when I mean granted, it was. 20 year difference not
20 but 15. Something like that when I dated
that 35 year old. Yeah, 15 is substantial.
I mean it. They're babies.
Well, like when I was with Oliver while he was alive, I
still was. I mean that he died when I was
much younger. That was 12 years ago.
But I think now the the aging process accelerates from here to
4, right? No.
I refuse that I refuse. That it would bother me if I
looked a lot older than him. It would, yeah, that would
bother me. I think that's why maybe going
older this time. Like dating wise maybe.
Well, I will say it depends on how people take care of
themselves. All.
And I work at it. I mean, this doesn't it's not
easy. You have to exercise.
You have to eat healthy foods and still eat my Cheez its and
you still you know you're allowed to say yes to Cheez.
Its OK. But if I get plenty of rest, I
love them. I'm addicted.
Like that is something white cheddar.
I can't. Regular.
I can't say no. Say no to cheese it OK?
Now I know while we're we're friends, because that is a
thing. For what?
Is it to cheese it? I don't know if it brings me
joy. Don't.
Say I don't say. Yes, I'm saying yes.
I heard true the other day the word glimmer and it's the
opposite of trigger. Like you'll have a trigger and
it'll create anxiety and stuff. A glimmer is a small moment that
creates joy or hope. So she's it's are your glimmer.
My glimmer I'm not and I don't. Are y'all people that restrict
what you eat? No.
I want to be. Because, hey, being the only
living parent, I realize I want to be like my dad.
He's 89. You can't stop him.
I mean, he's fit. He's got his.
He's just in bored ABS. Yeah, he's yes, he's he's in
really good shape and he's 89. He's sharp and now that he's
getting good rest, it's you can't stop him.
Yeah, he drives. Really well.
I mean, and I want to be like that.
I want to be that Lady that's like I get up and have a bourbon
every morning and smoke 10 cigarettes and I'm 120.