Most of us are taught how to lead others. Very few of us are taught how to lead ourselves.

In this episode, I sit down with Mary Howe - former US Air Force AC-130 crew member and nurse - to explore self-leadership, resilience, and what it really means to take responsibility for your own growth.

Mary shares how growing up in a military family shaped her understanding of strength, service, and identity. We discuss joining the Air Force at 18, the structure and purpose she found in high-performance environments, and what happens when that structure disappears.

We unpack the military concept of the debrief - stepping back from your experiences, extracting lessons, and re-entering with clarity - and how this practice can help you navigate burnout, setbacks, and identity shifts. We also explore harsh self-talk, societal expectations, and why many of us demand more from ourselves than we would ever ask of someone we love.

This is a conversation about personal responsibility, resilience, and the quieter forms of leadership that begin within.

Connect with Mary:

Substack - https://marykatherinehowe.substack.com

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/_mary.katherinehowe/

Most of us are taught how to lead other people.

Very few of us are taught how to lead ourselves.

Hello and welcome to the Lonely Chapter, a podcast for people who are doing okay on the surface but quietly unsure how to live well.

Today's episode is with Mary Howe, a former US Air Force AC130 gunship crew member who joined 18 looking for purpose.

We talk about chaos at that age, growing up around elite military service and how serving others shaped her early idea of strength.

We explore the idea of internal leadership and the military concept of the debrief, stepping back to assess, extract lessons, and move forward with clarity.

This is a conversation about purpose, identity, and a quieter kind of strength.

I've noticed that when I ask more people find the show.

So if you are enjoying it, please do follow or subscribe wherever you're listening.

It genuinely helps these conversations reach more people.

Let's get into it.

Mary, you grew up around very high standards of service and resilience in your household.

How did that shape what you believed strength was supposed to look like?

There's so many layers to that.

So I guess to start, I saw strength in different ways through both of my parents.

A little bit about my background.

I was born in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and we moved to a small town in East Texas, and my dad trained law enforcement officers.

He still does to this day.

So he was a Delta Force operator, and he trains, you know, civilians, church security, has his own shooting range.

So there's one side of the house with that.

And then my mom, she wholeheartedly believes in community and history, and she is in every single club in her hometown.

And I really saw how leadership from her is reflected through serving that way.

And then I saw it through my dad, through the training that he does to police officers, which is just, you know, it's a selfless thing to do.

So really what I saw for strength was this external servant leadership kind of modeling that I was constantly watching.

Yeah, I think that's like the two types of service that you list there as well.

And I think when we say the word servant leadership or the words they almost.

Some people might think they don't go together.

To be able to lead, you need to be able to serve the people that you're leading.

Right, Right, absolutely.

What about yourself?

You joined the military at age 18.

So how did you see yourself at that time and how much of that was shaped by that, the way you grew up?

A lot of it, Sam.

I was chaos when I was younger, and I had a lot of energy and I didn't know yet where to direct it.

So in high school, I was kind of starting to look at ROTC programs, which.

So I'd go to college and do their program.

So you become an officer in one of the branches.

I was initially looking at army, and, you know, I really just didn't have the heart to go to school at that time.

And so I was like, I want to enlist.

And my parents were like, join the Air Force.

And so that's what I did.

And I really.

I was motivated to do.

I've never been someone that's like, okay, I can sit at a desk all day.

I'm like, I want to act.

I want to be involved again.

It goes back to that servant leadership.

I saw what was modeled, and there's so many personal ties to what I did in the Air Force as well, the gunship mission.

And we can talk a little bit about that.

But my dad, you know, just seeing what he did and understanding the things he went through and how vital gunship is to bringing soldiers home, and I wanted to be a part of that, and this platform allowed me to do that.

So it took a. I can say all that now in my 30s, and be very reflective.

But when I was 18, I was like, get me out of my small town.

I want to go fight.

You know, the war was ongoing, and my mindset was very chaotic.

Yeah, tell me a bit more about that, your role.

When you went into the military, then you said about the importance of a gunship.

Yeah.

So I did eight years at Hurlburt Field, Florida, on the AC130U gunship.

What it is, is it's a platform that provides close air support to ground forces.

We can do a variety of things depending on what is needed on the ground.

And so we are able to stay overhead missions, which is a little bit different.

You know, we hear a lot about fighters and fighters.

Amazing.

But the mission set is so different.

And anyone that's had a gunship overhead knows.

But we stay.

We stay.

And we can build, you know, situational awareness over what's going on.

There's a lot of trust, and the dynamic there is so complex.

But again, it goes back to when these guys on the ground are in trouble and they need fire support, which is what we bring.

We have.

There's a 25 millimeter, a 40 millimeter, and a 105 millimeter on the U variant.

And so depending on what we need to do, we can, you know, keep guys alive.

We can be overhead so they can sleep.

And I think that one Hits home for me.

Because when you're in a combat situation and you are fighting for your life and survival, something as simple as sleep, it goes a long way.

And knowing that we can just be overhead when things perhaps aren't going great or nothing's going on, those are the best nights when nothing's going on and we're overhead.

This is, you know, this is not my story, but this is what I see is when I look at it, a gunship were overhead, it would have been different.

And so seeing that and the ripple effect of what those kinds of operations have on families because of the loss and the tragedy that occurs and then the fight for country, all of that went into this big decision to, to do what I did on the gunship.

What's it like hearing the story of that, knowing that he was part of it?

There's two lenses.

There's a family lens and a military lens that I have seen with it.

Because even when I went through certain trainings, there were references when I was in the military to the tactics that were taken out of that.

And so there's always a learning point.

But then you do see the family dynamic of it, which is it.

It's different.

It.

It hits different.

What was the thing that the military offered to you at 18 years old that nothing else did?

Purpose.

Purpose.

You know, I was very externally focused for a very long time because I saw it in the external leadership of what was demonstrated in my home.

And I never really developed that internal leadership yet at that point when I was 18.

But I saw, okay, if I want to lead, I need to do these external things.

And this is going to give me mission purpose.

I'm doing good things.

And that's what really drove me to make.

To go in.

You said in there the words internal leadership.

So a lot of people obviously think about leadership and they think about leading teams, leading groups, or leading individuals.

What's internal leadership to you?

It's one of the most underrated things, I think, that we overlook.

Like you said, we hear all day long how to lead a team, how to lead people.

We don't hear conversations relating to how to lead ourselves.

We hear self help and more of that mindset, but we don't hear internal leadership.

That word is never.

I've never really heard that thrown around.

And so when I looked at it, I can pour out.

But if I don't know how to lead myself, My thoughts, my day to day activities.

That's.

That's the foundation.

That's where it starts.

And so really learning, okay, who am I?

What are my core values?

Am I doing things every day that align with that?

Am I talking to myself the way I would talk to my team?

All of those things come into play.

And sometimes we just don't have the tools.

For me, a lot of times it was just that little bridge and connection for all these external tools.

I was like, oh, you can, I can apply that to my mindset because I do get rigid sometimes.

And we do with the mission, especially in the military, we're trained so much to go, okay, mission focused, external drive, drive, drive, drive that home.

And no one tells you, hey, you can apply that to your mindset, to your relationships, everything.

And that little piece, that bridge helps because I again, I can get stuck and go, okay, this is mission.

And then this is not mission.

And so it's about learning how to be creative with these tools and use it for yourself.

And I think that's how you start to create that internal leadership landscape.

Having like a blueprint for yourself and working out what you want to do, where you want to get to.

And like you said, you can break that down into whatever.

Yeah.

Aspects of your life.

That's what Dakota was speaking about on this podcast a few weeks back was it's day to day.

Waking up with a blueprint for the day.

Well, to go bigger than just the day.

If you focus in on an area of your life, what's the blueprint for that?

What was the least expected lesson that you got out of joining the military?

The, the way I think I.

That's probably one of the least expected things as I've transitioned.

And when you're I, you spent eight years with people that all kind of think the same way, and then you come out and it's it.

And it's not a bad thing.

It's just, it is what it is.

But I noticed that it taught me how to evaluate things just a little bit differently.

And it might be hard to conceptualize what all of those things are.

I'd have to think of a good example of what that would be.

But yeah, could you think of an example of when, of how you would now look at a situation or a problem in your day to day life?

Things that people listening who aren't in the military may come up across.

I think looking at things.

So I'm a type A creative.

That's how I describe myself.

One of the biggest tools, and I've wrote about this recently, is the debrief.

So in the military or anywhere, even in healthcare, we do it.

You know, debriefing is a way to come out of something, look at it, non emotional lessons learned, take it, come back in.

And that's something I think that I don't, I haven't seen as much and the civilian side and maybe there's not words to it or framework.

And then the creative side of me really in my head I'm picturing my own little earth and like I'm popping out of my earth, I'm watching the situation.

What can I learn from it?

Oof.

What did I do wrong?

And then what can I do?

Move moving forward and then I pop back in.

So those are kind of the two, you know, if you're more analytical or you're creative, you know, that's how to evaluate it.

When we start tying emotions to things.

Perhaps that's the other thing that I didn't realize that the military taught me is there's a lot of emotional ties to situations, communication, you know, when you're in some, a place where mission is so important.

Like there were times flying where we were yelling at each other, but if someone else was on the plane, they'd be like, these people hate each other.

And it's like, no, we're trying to get stuff done, done and it's okay and we're gonna fist bump at the end of it.

And that isn't always something that perhaps I've seen as much.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like Michael Jordan when he did his documentary saying about how they would argue almost because they want each other to be better.

You're holding people to those higher standards around you.

And the idea of the debrief, absolutely, when you, when you speak about it like this, right.

It's so easy, it sounds so easy.

You're like, well, just take a step back, look down bird's eye view of the situation and think logically.

But it is so hard for people to do that, especially in the moment and the debrief side of things.

Me personally.

Here in the uk we've got a charity called Samaritans that people who are going through mental health crisis, suicidal feelings, can call 24, 7, 365 days a year.

And there would be volunteers on the end of the phone to pick up and listen to them.

And that's all they do is just listen.

No advice.

And I did that for a year.

And people would always ask me, how can you listen to some of that stuff and not be affected?

And the answer is the debrief.

Every single shift, you have to do a debrief with each other and with someone who's not there via the phone.

And you sort of speak about what you've.

What you've experienced.

You let it all out so that you're separating that space from the rest of your life.

And exactly what you said.

You take the emotions out of it.

You think logically about it.

At the end of the day, I'm just a voice on the end of the phone.

I can't change what's going to happen.

Yeah.

That's incredible that you did that.

Yeah, it's, it's a, it's.

Even though I only did it for a year, I learned so much out of it.

It's a really.

I can only imagine.

Yeah.

Special part of.

Yeah.

What I've done.

Yeah.

You mentioned about sort of transitioning from the military into civilian life in that.

That's something that loads of people do struggle with.

Right.

I've.

You hear many stories of people leaving the military and there's the identity that goes with it as well.

And we see it as a firefighter.

We see people retire from 30 years of being a firefighter.

It's the identity they lose.

What was it like for you leaving the military and going back into civilian life?

So when I first got out, I was in the reserves and I was kind of playing with the transition, not all the way, dipping my toes in to kind of ease it.

And then I was also in nursing school.

And then the time came where I completely separated, went full on for nursing.

And what I realized, hindsight's 20 20, is I left a really high stress job for another really high stress job.

And I went, oh my gosh.

You know, this is in the last couple years.

I'm like, okay, I see what I did.

Um, so I feel like I didn't transition because I first I got the reserve.

So I got this kind of like slow step down.

And then I went into healthcare and it was right after Covid.

And so it was like so, so much high stress.

Yeah.

And I learned I was still doing a lot of external focused things.

I still hadn't made that, that connect for the internal.

And like what I was really doing in that transition, which is what I think people struggle with, is again, we go back to that external leadership model.

Well, that goes to Everything you were taught, that external life, the mission, this exterior stuff.

So if you don't have this established in here, the transition's going to be hard.

And I learned that a few years later.

And because then I was like, oh, okay, I see what happened.

So I was just going for the next stressful thing, avoiding myself, really.

That's what it was.

And so shifting that focus back on yourself and asking yourself, what is your purpose?

This one, that will make that transition easier and just be okay, like, know it will change.

Don't set these hard parameters.

Get a good baseline, get a good foundation, and know that, like, life is going to throw things at you.

But if you know in your heart you can answer like, okay, what's my purpose?

Am I aligning with it?

Those things are really important for anyone.

Transitioning transitions are hard, but you have to know yourself.

If you don't, that's that I can speak from personal experience.

That's what's made it hard to really see, okay, where do I fit in in this world.

Now.

When you say about the.

You came out and you're still looking at external.

The external things in life, was there a pivot point for you when you first noticed and you made that realization that you needed to look internally?

Probably within the last few years, I was probably repeating the same patterns in my life.

I wasn't really going anywhere, and I was seeking validation from everything else except myself.

And when you do that, what I'm recognizing is like, I did not want to sit with myself.

I didn't want to look in the mirror.

I didn't want to see who I was.

And once I recognized that and I just had some things in my life really shift and change, I had no choice at one point but to look in the mirror.

And I said, okay, it's me and you and we're going to figure this out.

Once you get down to that point and you recognize that it is you with growth and internal leadership and figuring out your purpose in life, it's not your job, it's not your friends, it's not your family, you know, the woe is me.

And all the.

The world is doing this.

Once you recognize that shift and it's you, the only place to go is up.

When you look at your transition, you said, you speak about, you spoke about how it was from a stressful environment into another stressful environment.

They're both forms of service, I suppose, in different ways.

So you're still serving people right to the extremes, let's be honest with it.

And intensive Care puts you right next to the fragility of life.

You sort of come across everything, I imagine.

How did that shape the way that you looked at control and uncertainty in your life?

I don't think I grasped it initially.

This could go down a whole different rabbit hole of like.

I think there was a point in my life where I was really numb to myself and I didn't see it.

But I think what it did teach me was about people.

And when I was in the military, we can be.

Or any kind of first responder job, even nurses, you know, we have this kind of mindset where maybe not necessarily rough around the edges, but we can joke and be a little bit harsher, if that makes any sense.

Yeah.

And then once you are taking care of an individual and you're face to face and looking in their eyes and you see their humanity and it makes you take a step back because you're taking care of people in nursing that are homeless, that are on welfare, that have no health education, all the way across to affluent individuals who want to biohack and do all the things.

And so you have to learn.

And then you see, okay, this is life, this is people.

And so.

Yeah.

Did that answer your question?

Yeah.

I mean, in terms of like seeing the humanity in those people, it must be really difficult to.

We spoke earlier about trying to disconnect yourself from the emotions, especially more in the debrief, I suppose.

How, how did you find that on the emotional side whilst working that role?

It's hard.

So like anything in hospital or inpatient, family care, anything like that, especially family care.

What I did notice was a trend.

And one of the, my preceptors was a physician.

He's been a doctor for almost 50 years.

His patients have been with him for 40 years.

Like they're, wow, you know, that's a relationship.

And so it's a life.

It's a life.

And so you get to the point where you see people start to pass and it's, it's.

I don't know how he carries it, but I think.

Cause he feels that he did so much in life.

But I saw it and then I think for me, I really had to tell myself I'm doing the best I can in the time I have with this person and I'm going to utilize it to educate, help them in any way, shape or form for their health or what's the one piece of information that I can give them that they can walk away with.

And then just.

I have to stop.

You have to stop it right There, because if you start ruminating and going down, it's not healthy and it's not professional.

And so stop it right there.

That's.

That's what I would say.

Yeah.

And then you transitioned into a slightly different area of nursing.

Right.

So you went into medical aesthetics.

So I switched to more of a medical spa setting when I was working in the nicu, the neonatal intensive icu.

Again, it was right after Covid.

My daughter was a year old at the time, and it was.

I was working night shift and I did not have the capacity for that position.

There's so much.

Again, nothing prepares you for anything until you are in it, especially in healthcare, and you start to see things and you go, okay, I. I'm gonna burn out.

Like, I felt it really quickly.

I was like, I have to transition.

And so I started looking at jobs, switched to the medical aesthetics side side of healthcare.

I really like, like, I like patients, my patients.

I like to talk to them.

I want to know them.

And so that's what you get to do in medical aesthetics.

You're not constricted to this, you know, a 15 minute.

Okay, I have 30 patients today.

I've gotta go, go, go.

You get a little bit more because services are based, are time based.

You can talk to them.

And I just loved it.

And then I also work as a sexual assault nurse examiner, and I live in Florida for a nonprofit.

And so that's what I've been doing for the past couple months too, where we get called in after an event occurs.

And so I really enjoy getting to be there for women.

And I've just primarily worked with women since I've been in the civilian side of things.

And I. I love getting to help and be there.

I feel like the military made me really strong, and it made me really strong for a reason.

So why not me do these things?

And there for people.

Yeah, it's all service all the way through, isn't it?

Helping others, that's.

That's the core, like, people, like, helping people is my.

My niche.

Yeah.

And it might look different throughout my whole life, but that at the core, I know that's my purpose.

Yeah, I can see that.

You said about how you get to speak a bit longer to these people.

Obviously it's not an immediate emergency moment.

So you do get that opportunity to sit down with them, get inside their minds a bit.

And obviously with this sort of, this area of work, I suppose you see a bit about the mindsets of the people you're treating.

Was there common things that you Saw about how these people are speaking to themselves internally about what they're coming to you for.

Yeah.

So this one, it's so relatable, too.

One of the.

The common themes I always see with women is how we speak to ourselves.

So, you know, patients will come in.

I'll just make up this a scenario.

A patient comes in and they want something done, and they sit down and you hold the mirror up to them, and they.

The way that they speak to themselves is not the way that they would speak to their children, their best friend or their mother, but that's how they talk to themselves.

And it's very negative.

And I'm going, wait a second.

Why are these thoughts driving?

And I've been there, you know, as I think as a woman, I'm.

I'm speaking because this is where my perspective is built and what, what I've worked with and then who I am.

And so I'm going, why are we talking to ourselves like we're worthless?

Like, this is not healthy.

And I'm seeing it over and over again.

And what I've.

At this point, what I've come to realize is two things are going to happen.

You're going to either be really negative all the time, or you're going to wear a mask.

And when you're in a certain place, you're going to portray confidence and then have anxiety in those thoughts in the background.

But that's.

That's.

No, I don't want to live that way.

I want to speak to myself the way I would speak to my daughter.

And why would I. I'm still playing with, like, the psychology, perhaps, behind it, but I think within that, you're gonna have so many things that leak into your mindset if you don't fix your internal dialogue, negative thought patterns, anxiety.

Then we're going into prescription medication, you know, and it can lead to suicide.

And I say that, like, wholeheartedly, sincerely, as a healthcare provider.

Like, that's tragic.

And that it all goes back to mindset.

And the first thing I can do is pause and go, how am I going to speak to myself?

Because that's.

That internal framework is going to.

Eventually it's going to be the thing that radiates off me externally.

And I want them to mirror one another, not be a mask.

Yeah, yeah.

You say about speaking to, like, loved ones or friends, but also some of the things that we say to ourselves, we wouldn't even say to our worst enemies.

Like, you said them out loud.

I hope not.

Some of the stuff that we say to ourselves really is awful.

And I mean to.

Obviously you said about your perspective working with women, but men as well suffer massively with this.

And also with, yeah, we're looking at the bodybuilders and the adverts of men with these chiseled physiques.

It can be really intimidating to then think as a man.

Like, that's what I need to look at, look like.

Are there any causes that you see as common causes for these sort of mindsets?

I think there's a few.

I think there is some social conditioning that just, it happens.

We see things online, on the Internet, and we build this conditional reality in our head that is not reality.

And we think everything is perfect.

And then we start.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

And you start looking at something and you go, I'm not, I'm not that way.

And then that little leak is the first thing.

And then it starts to build and you cannot go down that path.

The next is, I think for women, we always, we're.

We categorize, we're always looking, we're very observant.

You know, we look in a room and we find every single thing.

We've already filed it in our brains of where it should go.

And so we're doing all of this on top of this conditioning, if you will.

And then we start getting things like anxiety and depression.

And so I think we don't realize that it's our thoughts.

We think, oh, it's the world.

And it's, you know, with social media, people are so quick to say how negative it is, but it's like it's all.

You're dry, you're driving it.

I, I have found so many wonderful things through social media and inspiration.

It's all about where you look and how you, how you talk internally.

So I want to talk a little bit about the writing that you do.

Obviously, you've got a number of publications and the space, the.

You writing about the space about getting back up again.

Right.

So those words, what do those words mean to you?

So this goes back to me always seeking the next external thing that is fast paced to keep me focused, away from myself.

Right.

And I had a moment in my life where I really, you know, I went through a divorce and I lost my job and I was like, whoa.

And I saw myself kind of almost outer body, like seeing myself about to get ready to start running for the next thing.

And I just, I, I felt this pause where I had to stop and go, wait a second.

And it's.

The pause is something that's very deliberate.

And it goes back into debrief and all of the things that we've touched on, you know, And I had to say, wait, before I get back up, what, Why'd I fall?

And it's very intentional.

This is where instead of ruminating and just going, well, okay, that didn't work out.

I'm just going to go to the next thing and put the blinder up.

I'm going, wait a second, let me logically look at this.

And before I start running to the next thing, let me learn lessons so I don't fall or I fall less at least.

And then if I do fall, I can start practicing getting back up quicker.

Quicker by running through a loop of sitting with myself evaluating things.

Non.

Emotionally figuring out who I am.

Are my actions aligning with my purpose?

And if not, where can I adjust?

And then go, okay, look around.

Okay, I can go back forward.

And I think there's this disconnect too.

With reflection is discipline.

Yep.

And you have to practice it.

And we get so caught up in looking back at things, but we're not really present.

We're just reliving them in the passenger seat instead of driving and going, okay, I looked at it, I evaluated it.

I can put it back down and I can keep moving forward.

Every frame.

Sorry.

Every fall that we make is an opportunity to learn from as well, isn't it?

It's a reflection to be had.

And it comes down to self awareness, like, do we have a realistic view of ourselves and can we look at ourselves with that bird's eye view and take the emotions out of it?

And all of that even goes back to the internal dialogue.

Because what happens too is people, they can do the bird's eye view and they're shitting on themselves the entire time.

And that's not discipline.

And so you just keep repeating the cycle.

And that's when I first noticed, wow, I'm really not nice to myself.

Let me focus on that.

And it's changed my life.

Changed my life.

Why do you think people do that?

They're constant running from one thing to another and not experiencing that thing before moving on with those blinkers.

As you said, they don't want to sit with themselves.

They're scared of what they'll see.

I think I. I was not comfortable in my own skin for a long time, and I did not.

I was scared if I saw, looked, I. I wouldn't match what my values were.

And I didn't.

And so there's like another breaking point within that.

But Again, once you break all of that, you can go back up.

And.

Validation too is another thing.

With my worth was tied to anything and everything external, not to me.

Yeah.

And so why would I sit with myself when my brain thinks the only way I'm gonna be validated is on the outside.

And once I recognize that it comes here first, I went, oh, okay, that makes sense.

And then you just have to keep practicing it.

Like, if anyone's listening, this is not a one time realization.

The what cap, where the change happens is action.

And so even if it just looks like one thing a day, eventually you're going to replace it.

It didn't happen overnight to get somewhere where maybe you're lost or you're about to get back up.

And it's not going to happen overnight.

Like, it's taken me years to get to this point and get to a point where I can sit with myself, love myself, talk kindly to myself.

It's not, you know, a one and done.

Yeah.

I suppose it's easier to start by almost looking back at situations that have been and gone because you know that you made out the other side.

Okay.

It's always difficult when you're in the moment to think ahead.

And it's always worst case scenario in our mind.

But if you start by looking back at those ones and then evaluating those, get that process laid out, whatever that looks like, and then move forward to your current predicament.

Maybe.

Yeah, I think maybe ask yourself if part of being in that mindset and that space means you're.

For me, I hear you're in survival mode.

So I would ask to evaluate why are you constantly in survival mode?

What is, what are the things playing in your life to constantly keep you in survival instead of thrive mode?

Maybe figure out a way to get out of it.

Are there any things that you've used that have helped, like journaling, meditation, anything like that?

Or is it just.

Oh yeah, you know, writing is one of the things that helps me.

I'm sharing literally the real messy middle of like here's my thought and what where a season that I'm closely in and I want to share it with others because, you know, being silent, it's not going to help anyone.

So I'm putting it out there and that in turn helps me.

Um, another thing, you know, I'm really big on faith.

I believe in God and that has been an anchor for me as well as good community, surround yourself with good people.

And then one thing I do do is I have a little notebook and every night I write down three things that I was.

Was grateful for that happened, and one thing that I look forward to the next day.

I've done this for months, and I love it, because, again, we can.

If we want the bad, we can find it.

And if we want to be grateful, we can find it too.

So how are you gonna train all your little neural connections to connect?

And I want mine to find the things I'm grateful for and looking forward to.

And so that has been so helpful.

Yeah.

It just shifts that mindset to a positive looking for, okay, what were the good things about today and what have I got to look forward to tomorrow?

Because you wake up the next day going, right, I'm looking forward to that thing.

Yes.

And then whatever else happens, happens.

And, yeah, it shifts that mind straight away, doesn't it?

Yes.

And we get so caught up in this, finding the negative.

And I have to.

I always take a step back.

If you have a home, air conditioning, water, food.

Oh, my gosh, like, 200 years ago, people were fighting for that.

And so just always to have.

Have that attitude of being grateful.

Yeah, absolutely.

It just snaps you back into it, doesn't it?

When you think about what we actually got at our disposal, and if we're.

If the hot water goes off and we're complaining that we've got to have a cold shower, it's like, well, not that long ago, no one could have a shower, full stop.

So, no.

And even to.

Even today, you know, there's people that aren't afforded that.

So I always just try to pull myself out of that.

If you ever get caught in that kind of spiral.

What do you get out of your writing then?

Because you obviously write longer pieces, but that, in its own way, is getting what's in your mind out onto paper.

Right.

Well, writing it.

There's the creative aspect and then the discipline aspect.

And I do struggle with the discipline aspect of drafting and going back and forth because I will rewrite things.

But it is kind of fun because I try to prepare my pieces, and I get them, like, 80% drafted, and I wait, like, a week or two, and I go back, am I still in this space?

Have I had any other thought that's come up?

And so it's helped me not only with practicing a discipline, which I enjoy, which I think is important for everybody, um, but then seeing is what I'm writing reflective of what I'm actually feeling, like one of my core values is integrity.

And so sometimes we can write stuff or say things and we don't even realize that they're not really us.

And what I do with my.

What I've been doing recently is I. I say say it out loud before I share it.

And I go, does this sound like something I would say?

Is it reflective of, you know, my thoughts?

Does it bring something good into the world?

All of these things.

And that's what I really enjoy about writing.

Yeah.

Do you say out loud to just yourself or other people as well?

Yup.

For now, just myself.

And it's fun because then I can.

I see where I would inflect and I would have more of my personality come through.

And sometimes I always wonder about the internal monologue of everyone.

And you can't do that.

That's one of the things I'm also working on, is, like, just create your piece and don't stress about how it's necessarily going to be.

It's art.

It's.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's.

It's a nice medium as well, because obviously, like with the podcast, it's.

It's a live conversation.

Yeah.

The listener is like a fly on the wall, essentially, like listening in, hopefully learning lots of things and things I can then go and speak to other people about.

But as you said with writing, you get to write it, sort of empty your mind onto it to start with.

And then just how you explained it there.

Go back a week later and relook at it.

Am I still in that same place?

Is my mindset shifted?

Did I learn something this week that's changed my mind on it slightly?

And you get to revisit it before it sort of goes fully there?

Yeah, I think it goes.

I think you asked me about control earlier.

Yeah.

So I have a history of anxiety.

I don't think I do anymore.

I really.

There's a whole.

That's a whole side topic.

But coming from a place of anxiety and wanting to control things, writing has really helped me reframe because then I see that I do have control over my own thoughts, if that.

And it's helped me in those ways to settle into it.

It's something that people have to go through themselves to learn as well, isn't it?

Yes.

That you can control your mindset.

And jumping back to the Samaritan stuff.

It's the reason you only listen and don't give advice is because there's no power in giving people advice.

If you give them the answer straight away, A, they're probably just gonna ignore it and tell you that it's wrong.

But also they see that you're not listening, and they see you as not caring, maybe.

And by helping them explore their own mind, you help them come to the answer themselves.

However many conversations I was in where the answer was really obvious, maybe it wasn't like, it was quite a minor thing potentially, to some of the other things that I heard.

But rather than just saying it, I'm there.

Like, it's so simple.

Come on.

But just by asking questions, you help them get there.

And, yeah.

The power of people finding their own way through it are super important, I think.

Wow.

How do you personally tell the difference between resilience and avoidance?

I think there's a feeling that comes to mind, you know, when I avoid something, there's dread.

Um, that's like the biggest thing that I notice.

If I'm avoiding something, there's.

There's something dreadful where I'm pushing it to the side.

And resilience is.

Okay, I. I'm in the suck and let's go.

And I have my tools.

I have my backpack with my tools on.

And we're gonna go where Avoidance.

You're just kind of shielding it.

And it's like this looming shadow that's the biggest thing in myself.

And so if I see that shadow start to pop up, I'm like, we are gonna go and face this head on.

No matter.

Sometimes it's little stuff, you know, you're like, I just don't want to do this.

It's like, no, just do it.

Yeah.

It's like putting it in a lockbox and then closing the lid on it.

Versus, okay, let's get that thing out and put it in the boxing ring and just have it out and work through it.

Yes.

Yes.

It's just gonna keep shaking in that box.

Yeah.

And every time you cram new things into it, it's gonna overflow at some point.

Right.

That's a beautiful description.

It's an easy way to sort of visualize it, I suppose, and to think about it that way.

How important is it for you to face things as they come from your own experiences that you've gone through in life?

So this goes back to developing that mindset.

You know, what I do now really is I'll look at something and I'll go, okay, well, first let me back up and say, be careful.

Setting expectations for things, having good expectation management.

You know, a simple example would be if you go somewhere and I'll use one like if.

If you're have a hair appointment and it has to get rescheduled and you plan your whole day around it, you could get angry.

You could go, oh, my gosh, my day's ruined.

And, you know, get mad at the situation.

Or you can look at it and go, okay, well, I'm just gonna pivot, because this is life.

And even for something that small, how you handle the small stuff is how you're gonna handle the big stuff.

So just going, well, I have to pivot.

What can I do that's positive?

That still does, you know, bring something good in, is productive or disciplined.

Those kinds of shifts have been very helpful.

And then going, well, what can I learn from this?

It's okay to have a little bit of an emotional tide if it's a bigger situation, and go, let me process my emotions.

Okay, I did that.

Now let me evaluate it.

And the timeline gets shorter.

Instead of ruminating in something, the more you work on being active, it's all about being active in your own brain all the time.

And so that's the kicker.

And just doing that will help navigate those challenges.

What about the words letting go?

So people will often say, you need to let go of that thing that maybe someone's been carrying for a while.

Sam, I don't believe in letting go.

I don't.

So I understand the intent behind it.

However, for me, when I hear letting go, I think of, like, very slippery language and, like, very adrift.

There's no action.

And what happens is I start to go, wait, what do you mean, let it go?

Where does it.

Where does it go?

And I can say, okay, all day, but it never leaves me.

I don't think anything in this life ever leaves us.

I think everything leaves a thread in.

One of the.

My analogies that I use from healthcare is like, I just think of the human body.

You know, there's thousands.

Excuse me.

Trillions.

Trillions and trillions of cells, and there's trillions and trillions of threads that make us up.

And all of these cells in our body, they.

They all are different, but they all work in unison.

And some are more important to survival.

Some are, you know, different organs.

All of that same thing with the threads that we carry.

And if you let go, where does it go?

Yeah, And I think of.

So I love Marvel.

If anyone's seen Loki, the Loki series, I've seen it many a time.

You can't prune your memories, guys.

You have to face them, say.

And so even with, like, business books I've read, they talk a lot about pruning.

But we.

We are people, and we are dynamic, and we cannot prune ourselves in this way.

So we must learn how to.

What I believe in is to choose not to pick things back up and to choose to grow bigger than them.

Because when you use language like letting go, the brain loves to pick the easiest way out of everything.

And letting go sounds like avoidance.

So that means for me, I'm just gonna put it in that box, and I'm not gonna look at it.

It's not addressed, it's not fixed.

It's just over there, and it resurfaces, it comes back.

But if you choose to not pick something up that is active, you know, forgiveness is a big thing that I think comes up sometimes when you forgive people, it's not like, oh, I forgive you, and you move on.

It's active.

You have to continue to choose those kinds of things.

So that's where I see the real growth in.

Because then you can integrate those threads appropriately.

If not, they just become big, giant threads and big parts of your body and life or big boxes that will overtake you.

Yeah.

Everything we are today and who we are today and where we are today is because of everything that's happened up until.

Up until this point.

Right?

So when we look back at everything that's happened, the important thing is that we've processed stuff correctly.

And that's what you've just been talking about.

And with the resilience and the avoidance thing we spoke about before, if every time this sort of thing happens, you face it, you evaluate it, you learn what you can from it, and then you put it to the side.

You can, like you say, you can never truly let it go.

And it makes me think of a conversation I actually had with a music producer on this podcast who.

One of his closing lines of the episode was, music is a time machine.

And I think music and other things, smells, views, certain locations, they can all bring you back to a random moment in your life.

And some of those will be bad moments, some of them will be positive moments.

The important thing is that when those things happen that you cannot control, you can say, okay, that thing just come to my mind.

But I have processed it.

Okay, I've done the.

Done the work required, and now I can just let it go to the side.

Not let it go completely.

It's saying, okay, I can look at that, and it doesn't control me.

And that's the real thing.

One of your other publications, I wanted to speak about Faces of the military community.

So you chose to create this space for other members of the military and for their stories to be shared.

Why was it important for you to share other people's stories.

So this was really what sparked my unfinished business to kind of come to life.

When I first started this blog, it was a way for me to give back to the veteran community and military spouses, anyone involved.

I love military spouses and veterans.

I think they're phenomenal and showcase them.

I also the last question on all of these blogs was, what's your key to resilience?

And so what I was really doing too was I saw all these people who, you know, for veterans, you know, Tyler Gately is someone that I know and he is an artist.

But to watch someone who was in the army, deployed to Iraq get out and not be tied to that identity because we do see kind of an identity crisis.

And to see now he's this incredible artist.

He painted this.

I'm gonna shout him out.

He's phenomenal.

And so that kind of starting and to see, okay, well how did you do it?

What was the one tie?

And what I find too, in just life, we all have different perspectives and we relate to things differently.

So I like to see pull that resiliency piece out because it could, it means something different to everyone.

And I just wanted to share their journey because it's, it's so beautiful to see the transition in the process.

And I didn't even realize what I was doing.

I think I needed to see everyone else so I could eventually say, okay, I'm ready to, I'm ready to also talk and tell my story and be a part of the community at this, this next other level, if you will.

Yeah, it helps you reflect on your own journey and prepare you for this phase of your life, I suppose.

Absolutely.

Were there any patterns that you saw repeating themselves throughout those conversations that you had?

Yes, it was seeing that there's this commonality with.

And I need to find another word besides failure.

But all of them have come face to face with things not going right and having to restart and being tough and creating something beautiful.

What we typically see is this person in the end result.

And it was really nice to see everyone kind of talk about the middle and how, hey, it did not go well for this period of my life, but it's okay.

That's what led me to, to X.

And so that was really, it was nice to find.

Yeah, amazing lessons come out of failure.

And to give you another word to use on that, this is something that Sean Conway taught me.

So he's a ultra endurance world record holder.

He's got about or had about seven world records.

Incredible guy.

Yeah, he uses the word hiccup.

Hiccup.

I love it.

He says it's just a hiccup.

He tried to cycle around the world and in America he got knocked off his bike.

Bike written off, it's a hiccup.

He still found the positives from it.

The other side of it, he didn't get the world record for that one obviously, but it's still something that he did and every other thing that he tried to do there was multiple times where the first time round he didn't do it.

He did 105 Ironmans in 105 days was one of his.

Wow.

And he.

The first time round again, I don't think he got.

I think he maybe a couple, a couple of weeks and then went over a hedge and plowed on for a few days and then that was it, it was too much.

So yeah, the word hiccup.

Dunno.

Try that one for size maybe.

I'm gonna try it.

I like it.

If you could give the listener now one question to themselves or to ask to themselves before they decide to get back up from some sort of setback or a hiccup, what would that question be?

Were you honest with yourself?

Like not just surface level, the raw, the gritty honesty.

Were you honest with yourself?

And if you can say yes and move forward in a positive way, go for it.

But if you can't say yes, there's still work that needs to be done.

Yeah.

You've got to be honest with the answer you give.

Right.

As well.

You have to if you're lying to yourself still, you know that inside.

But yeah.

What's.

I suppose what's a way to overcome that if we aren't being honest with ourselves, but maybe we're too scared to admit it to ourselves in that moment.

Is it just a matter of time, the time being right?

I think the time will be right in your life and you'll know and I know that, that I hope that's kind of not the best answer, but I think there's fear associated with being truly self honest because then what happens is we actually relinquish the false sense of control we have.

And once you realize that control is false and we have no control over anything, perhaps try, try that.

Remember that we have no control in this life.

And so when you surrender and you let go of that, that's how you can be honest with yourself.

Yeah, I like that.

Mary, it's been awesome to have this conversation with you and I've really enjoyed it.

The way I Like, to end my episodes is to ask you to leave the listener with a question.

So if they could take a question away to speak to someone, a family member or a friend or a stranger about what they've listened to today, what question would that be?

Well, first time I want to say thank you for having me on.

This was.

This was so much fun.

I think.

One question.

Did you give more than you took?

I think that's something that I have had to ask myself.

You know, again, I believe in servant leadership.

And so looking at the day and going, okay, did I give?

Did?

And that can look like reaching out to a friend or helping your neighbor at work.

Did you do one extra task?

Did you give more than you took?

Because we live in a taking society.

And so I love that.

Yeah.

And it's really easy to fall into a taking mindset as well.

Even I can think of times where I've done that.

And, oh, yeah, especially like starting this podcast.

It's very time consuming, and I've potentially taken more from friendships and stuff than I've given back to them because of that, which isn't fair on them.

So that that one just pops into my mind straight away.

So I'm gonna ask myself that.

Friendship and friendships are so important in life.

Like, you have to make the effort both ways.

And so just find, find, find the little ways to give a little bit more.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

Mary, if people want to keep up to date with what you're doing and find you online, where can they do that?

So I am on Instagram, Mary Katherine Howe, and then I have a website also, Mary Katherine Howe, and my substack is where you'll find all of my writing.

Awesome.

I'll link it all below so anyone listening can just scroll down and click on the links.

But finally, from me to the listener, if you have enjoyed this episode, please do share it with someone who you think would find some value from it.

If you haven't already, please do follow the show or subscribe if it's on YouTube, as it really helps the show grow and reach more people.

Lastly, from me, though, thank you for listening.

Stay curious and I will see you in the next one Sa.