Join us as we dive into a powerful conversation with Julie Barth, a remarkable woman whose journey through love, loss, and resilience is nothing short of inspiring. In our chat, we explore the essence of her upcoming memoir, which captures her experiences as a mother of six while navigating the profound challenges of her husband's illness and her daughter's special needs. Julie shares how these life-altering events shaped her mission as the founder of Colin James BARS Outreach, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting women-led households in crisis. Her story emphasizes the importance of compassion, the strength found in vulnerability, and the need for caregivers to seek support rather than isolate themselves. We hope that by listening to Julie's insights, you’ll find the courage to embrace your own journey and recognize the power of community in times of hardship.

Takeaways:

• Julie Barth's journey through loss, love, and perseverance deeply informs her writing and advocacy work.
• Her experience as a caregiver highlights the importance of community support during difficult times of crisis.
• The memoir shares raw, authentic stories that remind us how precious and fragile time really is.
• Julie emphasizes the need for caregivers to reach out and not isolate themselves during challenging circumstances.
• Her nonprofit aims to support women-led households, helping them avoid poverty during crises.
• Julie hopes her legacy will inspire compassion and action in others to support those in need.

Links referenced in this episode:

• juliebarthauthor.com
• cjboutreach.org

I am your host, Keith Haney. Today we have an extraordinary guest whose life and work embody courage and compassion.

Julie Barth is a mother of six, a professional writer and author of Notes from a BlackBerry and from blackberries to Thorns and a forthcoming book, From Thorns to Blossoms. Her journey, marked by love, loss and perseverance, brings authenticity to her writing and her mission.

Julie is also CEO and founder of Colin James BARS Outreach, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting women led households in crisis. Through advocacy and storytelling, Julie empowers women to prioritize their well being and embrace resilience. Julie, welcome to the podcast.

Hi, how are you?

Good to have you on. Looking forward to this conversation.

Well, thanks for having me on. I'm looking forward as well.

So I'm going to ask you my favorite question. What's the best piece of advice you've ever received?

Yikes. That I. That I accepted or that I received? You get to choose. Probably, you know, not, not to worry about what people think of you.

That's always good.

Again, not that I followed, but that somebody gave to me. That's right.

If I could just follow that advice, my life would be so much.

Yeah, advice is so easy to give.

I love giving it. Yes. Taking it and receiving it and putting it into practice. That's a whole nother story. That's chapter two of life.

It is, yes.

So describe your book. You describe your book as an uncommon love story filled with resilience and hope. What does uncommon mean in your context of your journey?

Well, I didn't write the book to release it. You know, I don't. I'll be honest with you. I wrote it 13 years ago, actually 14 now.

We had, I had married my grammar school sweetheart and we grew up together. He was my first kiss. And then we met back up in college and life just unfolded and I wondered what I ever did without him.

We moved back to the same suburbs and we had my daughter. Well, we had my son. And then my daughter. My daughter was born with something, a rare genetic condition called primordial dwarfism.

So really not from what she was born with, but more from the complications of birth. It led into, gosh, 42 surgeries traveling across the United States. And, you know, in the midst of all of that, I added to our family.

So right as she was getting better, she was about five, we again added two more children to our home. And he was diagnosed suddenly with stage four pancreatic cancer.

So he was given two weeks to live and he thankfully, in some ways, ended up surviving 16 months. And I would Take him down to chemo on Tuesdays. And, you know, I thought it was going to be this time for us to reconnect.

Well, it didn't work that way. He was just so sick that I had a BlackBerry, literally.

And I was unpacking all of these situations from Tatum that were so crazy, you know, like, I would take her in for a, you know, checkup and the next thing I know, she was flatlining. So I was kind of unpacking all of that and I was writing it on my BlackBerry, I don't know why, and I was emailing it back to myself.

And then, you know, as the disagree disease progressed and I was, he was moved home, I just continued the story. So it sat on my laptop for 14 years.

But it's a story of us meeting, you know, growing up together and then Tatum, and then it really just went into real time. So it's an uncommon love story, I think, because, you know, when you hear love story, you think, oh, this is, I'm going to settle in.

This is going to be wonderful. And it's not that it's not. It's just, you know, it does, it's very raw, it's very authentic.

And so, you know, that's, I guess, the uncommon nature of it. It wasn't meant to be out in the universe at all.

So why did you change your mind, decide to share it with the world?

You know, when Colin was dying, I said to him that something good was going to come from such a meaningless suffering, suffering. So, you know, I, after he passed away, I kind of put that in my rear view mirror and thought, yeah, I'll do that later.

And ended up getting into a very abusive 10 year decade long of a second marriage. That was terrible. And coming out of that, I sat down and I read it and it was so profound to me, reading it from the outside, that it wasn't that it.

I think it had useful lessons for other people on top of, you know, I wanted it to be for my children. But, you know, in reading it from the outside and reading me myself as a character, I would have never guessed that I was so lonely during that time.

Like, if someone had asked me, were you lonely? I would have said, oh, no, no.

But I thought it was valuable for people either who have someone in the world who's going through it or people that are going through it themselves to, you know, to recognize that they're not alone, that it, you know, unfortunately, really horrible things happen to a lot of people, and it's really in the way that you process it.

And if they can give me a little, as the lead character, some grace in reading it, that they too can give themselves grace and the people in their lives. Because caregivers, you know, you're so hard on yourself.

You just always feel like you're failing everyone, but, you know, you're the one that's keeping it all together and you're trying in every part of what you're doing is coming from goodness.

So, wow, as you think back to that time, how did you emotionally deal with struggles you were doing with having two people in that situation and being the mother of other kids as well, because you couldn't just, you know, obey. So how did you. How did you navigate all those emotions in that time?

I. I don't think that I did okay. And that's another really big prevailing theme of this is, like, when you hit crisis like that, and you are.

Because, like, when I was with the kids, I had to be on. I had to pretend nothing was going on because I didn't feel like it was fair for them to live in this misery.

It was their childhood, and I didn't want, you know, their childhood to be marred with such a heavy, heavy thing. And then when I was with Colin, you know, I was just trying to get to the next stage with him and make sure his needs were taken care of.

So I don't think I actually had an emotion because it was almost like a floodgate. And if I allowed myself, and that's in the book as well, if I had allowed myself to feel something, it would have surely taken me.

I. I don't think I could have existed in my world if I. If I had, you know, thought through or processed anything. I just literally went from one thing to the next to the next.

And, you know, I think that that's the problem is those things that serve us well because they became very good at that.

You know, if you don't drop them after the fact and deal with your baggage, you get into other situations where those very things that got you through one situation might be the very things that take you down afterward.

Wow. I can't imagine trying to navigate all those different parts of your life and compartmentalize them that way.

When you sat back down to kind of go over the book, to go okay, I'm going to read these notes. I'm going to turn this into a book. I'm sure the emotion started coming out then. How did you process it?

Maybe Even later on, 13 years later, after you are now sitting down reading your thoughts again.

You know, it's so bizarre because as I was reading it, I was so detached from it that I was able to read it objectively, maybe more than subjectively. I'm not saying there weren't parts where I broke down. I think the first time I read it, I could read it objectively.

Now if I go back and I read it, you know, I'm in tears instantly. But I think just getting through the story, I was almost enthralled with my own story.

And again, I had been very good at detaching myself from any emotion that could have triggered anything. I became a robot. I just was on autopilot. So I got through it pretty easily the first time, not so much the preceding times.

You write about how fragile and precious time is. And I think as you're writing about this, what was the defining moment of truth for you in that realization?

I think that, you know, no matter what was going on in my world, and you know, Colin, sadly and, and understandably, you know, he was only 30, 33 when he was diagnosed and he kind of just shut the world out. We both did.

But he shut out his children and, you know, and just said, I, you know, I think there was this thought process in him like, I'm going to save all my energy so that I can heal and spend time with my children.

But unfortunately, he spent, you know, good, probably five months of, of the remaining time he had in his room trying to save up energy for the cure for when he could, you know, move on.

And I remember those months very unfondly because, you know, by the time he had let go of it and said, okay, I'm just going to live life, he lost a lot of life. So, you know, that, that struck with me because I understood why he did it. But at the same time, I wasn't going to convince him out of it either.

But then, you know, you have the dichotomy of that. And then I have Tatum, who's my special needs daughter, who was dying from the day she was born.

And I had so many medical professionals telling me, don't take her out in public, don't take her to a pool. But, you know, don't, don't, don't, don't. And I never really listened to them. And the reason why is because.

And this was pre Colin, you know, and it flowed afterward. But I always felt like, what good is a life to preserve if you're not allowed to live it? And that's kind of how I've always viewed things.

I lost my father at 54, who had spent his whole life saving, you know, for retirement and never enjoyed anything. So I think I had the experience of that growing up with a father who was always waiting on the sidelines. You know, he was so afraid to.

So afraid to die that he never learned to live. So that's always been kind of my perspective on it.

For caregivers who pick up your book and are maybe experiencing just some of the emotions that they're going through, what advice do you have for caregivers?

I think not to push people away. You know, it's a very strange dynamic that you don't understand until you're in it.

But when you're a caregiver, you know, it's like you step out of life and everybody else's life continues, you know, to. To circle and yours just stops. And, you know, then when people don't check in with you, then you stop checking in with them.

And when that happens and you get resentful that you're stuck in this, you know, isolation, and if you do have a chance to go out, the last thing you think is, I don't want to bring my heaviness to the situation, so you just stop talking altogether. When you do that, you know, it. You just keep pulling, pulling, pulling back.

And when it's a long, drawn out illness or when it's something you know that that does consume you so much, you forget that you're a human being. You forget that your whole purpose here is not to care for someone else. Obviously that's, you know, your main goal, but you have to live still in it.

And you. And people aren't abandoning you because that's how it feels, at least from my perspective.

I think people don't like uncomfortable situations, so they necessarily pull back to protect themselves. And I would say don't take that personally. That has nothing to do with you or who you are.

They just don't know what to say to you, so they stop talking to you. They don't want to tell you anything bad because they feel like you have so much.

But then it feels like everyone else has good stuff in their life and you're the only one. So, you know, continue to reach out, I guess. Don't isolate yourself. Don't feel like you're alone because you're not.

And people do want to hear, and they do want to be there for you.

Somebody said who was going through some things like this. They said, you know, for those who want to talk to support care, those people are going, who are caregivers. They weren't sure what to ask.

And you just kind of pointed that, too.

So if you're looking at someone who's going through what you went through, what advice do you have for them in terms of, here's how you can be supportive, here's how you can be helpful, and here's what you don't want to say.

I think one of my least favorite phrases, and I understand, and I catch myself doing it too, is if there's anything I can do.

Right?

You know, it's like, so don't ever say, well, you know, it's okay to say it, but my, my perspective is, you don't have to say, is there anything I can do? Just look around, you know, like, I. I loved the people.

You know, we were in Chicago at the time, and I love that there was a person that showed up and just, they shoveled my snow. You know, they didn't. They didn't ask, they didn't say, what can I do? I literally looked out the window and there they were with their snowblower.

You know, you see people struggling, don't just ask where. What I can do. Just step in and say, hey, listen, I'm either going to pick your kids up from school today or I'm going to run to the grocery store.

What do you give them? An option out. Because when you leave it in their hands, there's already so overwhelmed.

It's almost like you're putting one more thing on their plate that they're never going to take you up on. So just do. I mean, you know, that's kind of how I feel about it. And, and don't feel as if you're bothering them or imposing on them.

You are going to probably catch them stressed. They might seem like they're mad at you.

You know, they might seem overwhelmed when you get on the phone with them, they are, but that has nothing to do with you. So have heavy shoulders.

And the second thing is tell them how bad your life is if something bad happens, you know, say, hey, I know you got a lot going on, but I just had something really bad happen. Because as a caregiver, it's kind of nice when you know that not everyone else's life is perfect. So you're not unloading on them.

You're Almost making them feel human again. Like, everyone has problems. And I am going to involve you in my world by telling you my problems that you can tell me yours as well.

Well, that's good.

I had a person who wrote a book about ways to support people, caregivers, and those are some of the exact same things she mentioned is if you go into the store, just say, I'm going to the store. Can I pick up this for you? Or bring. Just bring stuff over for them because they just don't have time to do it.

So I love that you mentioned that as well.

Well, and you don't want to feel indebted to everyone. You know, there's. There's a part, especially as a, as a.

As a woman I'm speaking from my experience is like, I just remember thinking I have to be control of everything. And if I let. If I delegate one little thing, this house of cards is going to fall.

And the other thing is, like I said, I always felt like if somebody did something for me, then there would necessarily be a payback at some point. And I hated feeling indebted to all these people in my world that were working so hard.

So if they had just done it, I probably wouldn't have thought twice about it.

Yeah, exactly. I think somebody also said just taking a garbage out for them was. Was so powerful. It's like, oh, I'll bring. I'll take your garbage out, too.

And it was like, oh, thank you. Because there's just one less thing I had to do.

Mine is unloading the dishwasher or putting away laundry. Those are the two things.

You mentioned. The joy and heartbreak were coexisting for you. How did you learn to embrace both without losing hope.

Again? I don't. I don't know that I consciously have ever really done anything.

You know, I. I almost wish that I could tell people how I was able to, you know, do what I do. I think that, you know, it was one thing after, you know, losing my dad, then it was just one thing after another after another.

And I think a lot of mine was just necessarily learning that, you know, you're going to have good and you're going to have bad, and everybody has that in their everyday life.

And I guess if you can take how you manage the little ups and downs and try to apply them to the big ups and downs to level things out, there's just these extreme highs and extreme lows, and if you can try and meet it in the middle somewhere and experience it but not become overwhelmed by either one Joy or sadness.

As you look back at now that this time in your life has passed, I know people reading this going, did anything good come out of it? And it's kind of be hard to ask that question.

But, I mean, as you think back, is there something about that time that you look back and go, that was valuable or that there was a blessing in there?

I get many. I will say, you know, one is that, yeah, I lost the love of my life.

But, you know, I think that had I not had that experience, like, I could have gone my entire life looking for somebody that, you know, made such an impact on my life. And for, you know, at the time, it didn't seem short. Now, looking at it, you know, him being in my life was only a decade.

He's everything I've ever known in my life.

But if I didn't have that or if I didn't have, you know, every moment that I had with Tatum and with Colin, I didn't take for granted, I still don't take for granted. And that's the one positive is that, you know, I try to live every day, you know, knowing that if.

If this was the last knock on wood, that I lived it to the fullest. Because I think, you know, we just lost a dog two weeks ago, and, you know, that's when you. After you lose a. A person or a dog, you know, you.

You think, oh, I should have spent more time with them. Don't we all do that?

But like, to wake up every morning and have that desire to say, I'm going to spend time with this person so there are no regrets instead of regretting it afterward, I think is valuable.

Lessons I learned is that, you know, time is not endless, and people come in and out of your lives for whatever reason in that moment, and to, you know, really appreciate them for who they are and what they provide and the relationship you have with them.

So you had the courage to put all this in this memoir for people. What do you hope the people who are going through this pick up this book? What do you pray that they get out of it?

Well, there's kind of a series, so there's the first one, which is about, you know, my relationship with Colin and Tatum and. And, you know, everything that I went through with them.

And then the second book, from blackberries to Thorns, is getting in and getting out of a relationship that I was in that was very toxic.

My hope, really is that I hope people read both of them because, you know, I think that when you read about somebody else in their life circumstances again, you know, if they can give me the grace to know that I was doing my best in the first book, maybe not judge me so harshly in the second book and vice versa, because although I'm very different circumstances in the two books, I'm the same character. And I think that that's something that we all need to understand is like, there's no such thing as being good or being bad.

You know, you're reacting to a situation you're in. And I hope that's kind of what people learn, is that your core is good.

You know, I never made an intentionally, you know, harmful or malicious decision, even if it didn't work out the way I wanted it to.

You know, I hope when people read that and if they're willing to overlook some of the decisions I made and say, oh, that was just because of where she was at, that that will like, kind of, you know, radiate to the rest of the people in their world and themselves.

So how's your life today after all of the things you've gone through?

A little hectic. Um, but it's, it's good.

You know, I, I, I turned all of that into, as you mentioned earlier, I run a charity right now and still getting it off the ground. But, you know, meeting so many amazing women and their struggles and helping to ease their burdens, that means a lot to me.

Teaching my daughters and my, my sons as well to treat people with dignity and kindness and, you know, and to never try not to assume things or to judge other people for their life circumstances. I wake up every day in peace, and I know that people, everybody wants to be happy.

I'll take peace because I don't think you can have happiness without it. So I wake up. My soul, knock on wood, is very peaceful. And that's such an amazing feeling because it's been a very long time since I felt that way.

Tell us about your charity.

So it's, we formulated it to women to help women led households who are struggling. You know, unfortunately in the United States, women, when they lead a household, really have to slip into poverty before most services are available.

So our mission is to be a concierge service for people who come to us and many different walks of life, whether that means, you know, special needs parent who's, who needs resources they can't get or, you know, is chronically ill, husband or divorce, you come to us. We're hoping to network with other charities, specifically in South Carolina first, but we'd like to, you know, extrapolate it to The United States.

And what we want to do is you come to us and you don't have time when you hit crisis to figure out who does what. So we're trying to figure out who does what. So when you come to us, we're like, call these people for your mortgage. Call these.

And for anything that isn't already out there. And there are so many services out there that no one's aware of.

Then we want to be a safety net to kind of be that bridge to get people before they slip into poverty. Because, as you know, as a. My. As a mother, once you hit that poverty, it is so hard to rebuild. It takes a woman a decade to rebuild after.

After crisis.

And we just feel as if we support somebody where they're at, then we can give them, you know, a lifetime of being able to soar instead of hitting poverty and trying to rebuild, because that's nearly impossible.

Yeah, that's a great. That's a great ministry. What led. I'm. I'm assuming your. Your story led to that nonprofit.

It did. You know, like I said, I. I've been in the many different me who have. Who has had to regroup, rebuild, find resources. I've been very, very blessed. I.

You know, when we were in Chicago, my husband was sick. We had a whole community that came out for us. Um, you know, it. I. I just understood how hard it is to. To rebuild and felt very alone.

And, you know, I was able to figure it out. But, gosh, how nice it would have been if somebody who had been through it before was able to just give me a roadmap. So that. That's my.

My mission is to, you know, even if I don't have the resources to find them for you. Because I think part. The biggest problem really is just being so overwhelmed by something that you don't even know where to start.

Yeah. That's awesome. As you wrap up, I want to ask you my other favorite question. What legacy do you want to leave behind?

I would like to build an army of compassionate people. You know, someone said to me the other day, well, what happens when you burn out? You know, I talked to a lot of women a lot.

2:00am you know, midnight. I have two women living with me now. They said, what happens when you burn out?

And, you know, it's not that I don't want to do this forever, but I hope my legacy is that I'm building other women that will go out and do what I do for other people. Because I think as human beings, if we all.

If you know, when you go through something tough, we all just want to put it in our past and move on and not, you know, and we're so glad it's there.

But, you know, not to devote your life to charity, but, you know, if you see something, you experience it and you can help make it a softer landing for the next person that comes along, then I think that, you know, even if it's one person, I think that's a better legacy than, you know, than nothing. So I just hope to make, you know, people's lives better and my children too. I hope that there's a kind of world for them.

Wow. So a surprise thing is on our season this year is we have a surprise question. Pick a number between 1 and 10 for your surprise question.

8.

If you could look into one person's email without them knowing about it, who's the email would you look through?

My daughter, Piper. Don't tell her I said that.

Edit that part out then.

Okay. Just my daughter. You can leave that one. I won't tell you which one. I have four. I just won't tell you which one.

That's too funny.

Some people. I'm a very inquisitive person. I'm a psych major and I just love to. Yeah, I'd love to figure out how people tick. And she's.

She's one I have not figured out yet. So any. Any insight I would have into what goes on up there do me wonders. But I would also love to battle her because she is just such an amazing.

You can leave it in because she's an amazing human with such compassion, yet ability to separate herself from emotion. I think that's such an amazing thing to do.

Oh, that's great. Where can people find your books and connect with you and your organization, your nonprofit?

If you go to my website, Julie Barth B A r t h author.com I have tabs there for our organization, which is cjboutreach.org but it's there. They're my daughter's artwork, the one that special needs. She sells her artwork to profit our organization.

So any way you want to get involved, there's tabs to donate, there's tabs to get involved. And if you are someone who needs something, even if you're not in the state, state of South Carolina, please reach out to me.

I man all of them and that is what I'm there for. Like I said, I might not be able to provide you resources, but I will find the wizard who has them for you.

Well, Julie, thanks so much for sharing your incredible journey and story with us and your insights today about navigating through some of the toughest times in our life. For those who are listening and can learn more about Julie's books and her nonprofit by checking out the links in the show notes below.

Until next time, keep building bridges, keep bringing hope, and keep living a life of transformation. Thank you, Julie, so much for sharing your story with my listeners.

Thank you, Dr. Keith.