Dawn Damon: Hey, beautiful, bravehearts. Welcome back!

My guest today is a mother of six and also a trauma survivor whose mission is to transform personal hardship into inspiration and advocacy. She is the CEO and founder of the Colin James Barth Outreach, a nonprofit dedicated to helping women-led households with resources and aid necessary to find security and stability in times of crisis. Her mission is to encourage women to think resourcefully and always protect themselves without stigma or feelings of selfishness.

Welcome, Julie Barth.

Julie Barth: Dawn, thanks for having me.

Dawn Damon: Absolutely. So Julie, I could not believe it when I was reading your story that you became a caregiver at such a young age. I mean, you have an incredible story. Share with the audience your story, how it shaped you, your perspective on love, sacrifice, all the things, and perseverance.

And when we used to have this huge Halloween party, the day before the Halloween party, Colin, who's my husband, just, you know, he wasn't acting like himself. Clearly, something was up. And so long story short, he went into the hospital and within, you know, a couple of hours, we found out that he had stage four pancreatic cancer. And they said he has two weeks to live and, you know, take him home and let him say goodbye. So it wasn't a very positive outlook for either one of us at that point.

Dawn Damon: Wow. I can't fathom getting that kind of news. And what did you do next? How do you not fold up in a ball and just. Opt out of life. You had to be resilient. You had to stand strong. You had children to take care of. How do you handle it when life continuously throws these unexpected challenges your way?

Julie Barth: I think, you know, it was a blessing at that point, which eventually probably turned into more of a curse. But I had this ability to, you know, so many things that they told me would happen with Taytem never did. So whatever. The medical community, I had a very different vision of the medical community at that point, and I came to understand that no one can tell the future, you know, they don't have a crystal ball. They can give you their opinions, but kind of came to a place in my heart where I was like, you know what? You can tell me what you wanna tell me, but I'm going to believe what I wanna believe. And I'm going with that.

Dawn Damon: This is, yeah. Taytem, your daughter.

Julie Barth: Yes. Taytem is my special needs daughter. That's okay.

Dawn Damon: And so you did discover that she was not growing correctly, and all of the things that led to an eventual diagnosis for her. Is that what? You found out?

Julie Barth: Yes. Okay. So again, you know, there was no Google, probably thank God, because that probably would've driven me insane. But people kept coming up to me when we would meet in the store, and they would say, Is your daughter the one on that Discovery Channel show? And you can imagine, I had not seen it. I don't know what they were talking about. And I was like, no.

And one of my best friends called, you know, and she said, I think I know what Taytem has. And I was like, well, good for you. Because we had gone to major hospitals, such as the Mayo Clinic, no one could diagnose her. I Googled something called primordial DSM, and you know, she was already four years old. The trach was out, and she's doing better. And there was this belief by me that eventually, 'cause that's what they tell you, you know, she'll grow out of it. You won't even know she had a rough start. Kids are resilient, you know. And in that moment, I recognize that she was not going to outgrow whatever we were, you know, she was better, she was doing better. But she still had this pretty grim diagnosis at that point. Just, you know, a lot of things that come along with it. So, you know, after coming off of that and kind of recognizing that, you know, globally, it really didn't matter what was going on with Taytem. We had to be in the here and now. That is the way that I learned to navigate life was, you know, I'm not gonna think about the gravity of something because.

You know, it's that book, like what to Expect when you're pregnant, you know, when you're expecting, and you read all these things and you get yourself so caught up in what could happen and all the bad, and you know, could go this way. It could. I've always tried to shut those things out and just say, okay. I'm dealing with this and trying to find that one thing that I can control or one thing to throw my energy into. Just throwing your energy into things that are just wasted energy and worry that may or may not come true. I don't know where that ability came from. Maybe just from fire drill after fire drill. I've learned to, you know, take; it's not that I ignore what people tell me, but, you know, I do to this day. I try very hard not to do it anymore, but you know, I'll go. You know, I'll list it and I'll go, okay. And then I'll walk out and go, no, that's not for me.

Yeah. So that's kind of how I handled it with Colin. You know, they said he had two weeks left, and I was like, okay, we'll see you next year. Like, I wasn't believing in it. And his mother had ovarian cancer, and she actually got 30 additional years and was the oldest surviving ovarian cancer patient at one point. So, we kind of hope that the same would happen with him.

Dawn Damon: Yes, you'd have the same story. You've seen it, you've seen that miracle. It can be his story, his miracle, but it wasn't to be what happened.

Julie Barth: He ended up surviving for about 16 months. I mean, some of them are good, some of them were terrible, you know. And, you know, I was kind of juggling, trying to thank God Taytem was on the road to recovery, and she didn't really require a whole lot of my energy at that point, whether it was because, you know, I had bigger fish to fry and the focus was taken off of her, or, you know, I, God gave me a break for a little bit.

Things kind of eased up with her, and I was able to focus more on him. He was in a trial, and he was that gold, you know, he was a golden child. Like for anyone who has gone to chemo, you know, you walk in and they give you these little rooms, you know, or two, not even a room, you get a chair and maybe a chair to sit in front of whoever's in chemo. And he was doing so well that they actually would've scored us in and given us our own private room, like we were rock stars. And we really thought that he was headed to surgery. And, you know, something went wrong. And within, you know, I think two weeks, three weeks, we went from, you know, the superstars being ejected from the study itself, and that's when things went really bad.

Dawn Damon: I'm so sorry. You've experienced just profound loss from your husband's passing and your daughter's challenges with her health. And I'm just gonna ask you again, you know, what helped keep you going during those darkest moments?

Julie Barth: I think, you know, my children, I've always been in it for my kids. You know, ironically, the mother of six, I never thought that I would have kids.

So, you know, they're the things that pull me through that keep me grounded. And also, you know, I looked at 'em and I thought. You know, you only have one life to live. Not just me, not just Colin, but these kids. And yes, it's sad. Yes, we're going through a lot of gravity, and you know, but I couldn't get stuck in it. So, you know, I would try, and when I was with them, focus on just them, like I was able to put everything else behind me and whatever else was going on. Just, you know, live in my fantasy world, whatever that looked like, I would sneak downstairs with them and just play with them and just, you know. Focus on the future because they were always my future. They've always been my future. They still are my future. Um,

Dawn Damon: Yeah.

Julie Barth: So they really are the thing, you know, a lot of people say, what do you know? What do you do for yourself, you know, how do you get away from your children? I think, you know, if it were not for them, I don't know that I would be here. Yeah. I enjoy, you know, every minute of the chaos and, you know, of course, not every minute, most minutes. Yeah, yeah, pretty much, you know, whatever. I think, because I've seen how bad things can go, how quickly they can go badly too, is, you know, I try and live every moment knowing that, you know, life is to be lived.

It's not to be, you know, saved. You can't put it, you know, your moments into a piggy bank, you know, I think a lot of people wait until retirement. They wait, oh, till this point, or to live and, you know, you're not guaranteed two minutes from now, a little less a year from now. So, I'm a live-in-the-moment kind of person.

Dawn Damon: I'm sure you've definitely learned that during, you know, your experiences because you had to, and I don't know how your daughter is today, but I imagine that you have unique challenges with a special needs child, both emotionally and logistically, all of those things.

Julie Barth: She's 24 now, and she's a software artist. Right from the get-go. When I had her, I had a lot of people telling me, you know, what was good for her, what their, you know, goals and objectives were for her. And I fought it very hard as a special needs parent to say, Well, those are your goals. They're not mine.

So, you know, she went to school until it really was just not conducive, and you know, she's just found her way in the world. So as far as a special needs kid, you know, it's funny 'cause you know, none of us look at her like she's special needs, and sometimes, you know, almost like you walk into your house and you don't smell whatever certain, you know, characteristic.

Yeah. I forget that she has special needs, and sometimes I'll see a picture of us, you know, like a family picture, and I'm like, oh my gosh, I forget. She's so small. You know, because she's just Taytem to us, and she, you know, is every bit a normal child, you know, she interacts and is a part, a huge part of our family.

And so I guess, you know, I have been blessed that I think the work that we put into her early on to make sure that she was. Independent and self-sufficient, you know, we pushed her very, very hard at the start, which is hard to do because when you have a special needs kid who's in pain and suffering, and you know, it's very hard to push them to be uncomfortable.

And unfortunately, you have to because that's what you know, uncomfortable is what makes us all grow. And we all try to avoid it. No one wants to be challenged or suffer or, you know, but those are the only ways to grow. So as hard as that was, you know, she is. Suffered like, um, when she turned 13, she also came down with a rare form of soft tissue cancer, which is completely unrelated to what she was, you know, it's just, yeah, if you can choose your path 'cause people say that, they say, you know, like, you choose the path. Well, she definitely wanted to learn the hard lessons the hard way because she's been learning since she came outta my womb.

Dawn Damon: So bless her heart. So things changed for you. Came into a second marriage, and that was okay for a while. But you experienced an entirely different kind of challenges. Tell us what happened.

Julie Barth: Yeah, I think that, you know, coming out of the first marriage and you know, losing Colin, like I said, those things, it seemed to serve us very well in some moments, tend to really disservice us a disservice and others if you don't adapt, and you know, I had. Lived 10 years of, you know, everything's fine. Don't look over there, everything's fine. And I was living in this fantasy land where I didn't acknowledge it. It wasn't happening. And when Colin passed away, you know, everyone in our community knew us and were very good to us. And they just started grieving, you know, and I had been grieving for 16 months. I had been, you know, I lost my best friend, a little piece of him every day.

So when everyone else was just starting to grieve, I was like, I can't sit in this anymore. I can't do it. There was a gentleman who worked in my house as a contractor, and you know, he was 10 years younger. He was, you know, very cute, and he seemed to be exactly what I needed. He wasn't, when everyone else was like, slow down, take the time, grieve, you know, and I didn't wanna, and he was just fine with me, not grieving, not talking about it, really not caring at all how I felt. I did need that at the time, but it felt like he was honoring my space, and you know, not trying to cross boundaries. By the time, I recognized that he really just didn't care. You know, he really didn't want me to talk. I was in it so deep that, you know. With so many, you know, so much baggage from the past, you know, survivor's guilt and attachment disorder. 'cause I didn't wanna lose one more thing in my life that, you know, it was really a decade of trying so hard to make something work when the person you're trying to make it work is doing nothing but sabotaging you at ever turn. And so, yeah, it was a really tough decade of my life.

Julie Barth: You know, everyone always asks me, What are red flags?

Dawn Damon: Mm-hmm.

Julie Barth: And I don't think I need to tell anyone because I think that everyone has that gut reaction yet. We all have instincts, especially women. We are very intuitive. And I think the best advice I can give to someone is not to ignore it. You know, don't excuse it. Don't try to make nice for everyone. It's not your responsibility to keep a relationship going. It takes two people. And if you're working overtime. You're not getting where you want to be, you know, then it's not working. And I spent a lot of years wondering, is it me? Am I causing this? Am I, you know, to blame? And when you know, push comes to shove, and you get on the other side of it, it really doesn't matter. If you're not happy, whether you're the villain or the hero makes no difference. You're not happy, and you need to get out because again, you only have one life to live. Your children are living in a toxic environment. And another thing you know is that you do need to protect yourself, you know? We as women, I think, we tend to give up a lot of our autonomy, a lot of our financial security, thinking, you know, that we're being selfish by holding something back or, you know, having our own account seems to be like we don't believe in our marriage, maybe.

And I will say that my first marriage was everything that I ever wanted anything to be. But I didn't protect myself. And looking back on it, you know, I want everyone to have the dream. You know, it's a beautiful dream and I hope everyone finds love, but it's okay to, you know, that things can go south. Whether that means illness or divorce makes no difference, you know? And Colin passed away. They called me a week later and they said, Those credit cards aren't yours. Ripped them up. They were your husband's. Because I didn't have a job. I was a stay-at-home mom. And you know. I think it's great to want. I've always wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, but it's kind of like when people have a dream to wanna be a professional sports star, what do we tell them? Like, well, make sure you have a backup plan, you know, things, but we don't tell women that. You know, like, make sure you have a backup because it might not work out the way you want. And it's almost like if you do think that, then you somehow aren't committed to your marriage, or you know, you're somehow protecting yourself because you're not fully committed.

And that's, you know. The average woman, when they gets divorced, their standard of living goes down 43%. The average man goes down 10. You know, men are almost set up for divorce. And you know, I'm not saying they do it on purpose, but it's just the reality of what we live with. And it continues, I think, to get worse for women out there who, you know, are stuck in these situations.

Dawn Damon: Yeah, I couldn't agree more. You know, I know when I went through my divorce, incredible statistics that that's kind of the highest population of impoverished people or divorced women, especially over a certain age. And thank God, you know, it didn't become my story, and I'm so grateful to the Lord for that.

But you know, you talked about red flags and not dismissing them. Are there any subtle signs that you know that you saw that, looking back now, you're like, I should have seen that? Are there some that we can warn women about?

Julie Barth: Again, every situation's different. You know, my situation was that he just didn't care about me. You know, I was always a drama queen. He was planting seeds behind my back, and he wouldn't come right out and say, You're crazy. He would say, Do you think maybe you need to go see someone? Everything was an argument. Everything. I lived in this complete state of confusion. Because what I would say is like, Oh, the sky is blue. And he'd be like, No, it's orange. And I'd be like, No, it's clearly blue. And he'd be like, Nope, it's orange. And if somebody does that, then you know. That's the big phrase now. Gaslighting. Gaslighting.

Dawn Damon: But yeah, classic.

Julie Barth: Classic it is. Yeah. And if someone keeps telling you something that you know not to be true, don't alter your opinion on it. Don't, you know, say, well, you know, maybe we're just seeing if you are living in confusion, there's a reason why. Because I would go to him with like the simplest of arguments, like, Hey, can you not come home, you know, four hours late? I would approach it like, okay, I have all my plan in action and I think about what I was gonna say, and within two seconds, you know, we're no longer talking about him coming home late, we're talking about, you know how I'm such a bad wife and I can't keep the kids, you know, quiet or whatever it was. It was just like, I would be here and the next thing I know, I'm turned around three times and I'm in tears and I'm like, Oh, why didn't I just keep my mouth shut? That's what they do. They want you to keep your mouth shut. So if you can't seem to find resolution with anyone in your life, that's not just, you know, nurses come in all different forms, your bosses or what, but if you can't find resolution, then you have to safely assume if it's a cycle, that it is not you, and that you cannot have a conversation or relationship with somebody who is so hell bent on sabotaging and manipulating and controlling you.

Dawn Damon: Yeah. Man, you have experienced so much at such a young age, and now tell us how you find the healing? Are you writing? Did you do some writing in your healing process?

Julie Barth: Well, it's funny because I'm a writer now, but I wasn't, and when Colin had cancer, I wrote my first book at the time though, so it's just coming off the throws of Taytem and I was just having such a hard time processing 'cause I would take her in for like a cold and the next thing I know she was, you know, flat lining. It was a crazy, crazy four years. So when I would sit in a chemo with him. You know, he was so sick he didn't wanna talk. So I had my Blackberry and I started writing Taytem because I was just on such a rollercoaster ride. So I emailed it back to myself, and at the end, it flowed into Colin's story. You know, I had it sitting on my laptop for 10 years, the whole time I was with my second husband. And, you know, he always told me I was a terrible writer. I was terrible at everything, I'll be honest with you. And so I really didn't have the confidence to, you know, I wrote out the other people's names. I wrote for other people. But I read, you know, when we got divorced or when we were in the throes of it, I finally came to a place where I was. I read it, and you know, I got to the end of it, and I thought it ended when Colin passed. It's called Notes From A BlackBerry because it's my notes from my BlackBerry. And I thought, gosh, you know, the crazy didn't even start yet. Like it didn't even, you know, begin. And then I started recognizing that, you know, nothing that happened to me in the first 10 years of that, you know, those memoirs were something I could do nothing about. I didn't make any conscious decisions about, you know, cancer. But in the second relationship I did, you know, I consciously, maybe not, you know, in my right mind, you know, I made conscious decisions that led to where I was at. So I sat down, and after I released the first book, I thought, I'm really seeing my second memoir. Which will be out this fall, and it's called From Blackberries to Thorns. And it's really a recount of, you know, getting into a situation that before you, you know, and I, I hope when the readers read it, they will see that, you know, they don't come to you and say, all right, I'm gonna make your life miserable. I'm going to treat your children horribly. I'm going to make you as crazy as I can, and then I'm gonna tell everyone how crazy you are. It's like a progression of. Wait a second, wait a second. And then you're in so deep you can't, you don't know how to get out of it.

So that's my second book, and then my third book, some thorns to blossoms is where I kinda unpack all of it and trying to make some life lessons and, you know, discuss really the, the key points and, and give people practical advice about what to do and how to set it up so that you know you are protected and you can do something that makes you feel powerful. And when you feel powerful, you know, you come to the table with a much different perspective than when you feel helpless.

Dawn Damon: Beautiful, and you've done so much since then. Tell us a minute, we have our time going, but the Colin James Barth Outreach, a nonprofit, you started that. Why was it so important for you to do this?

Julie Barth: Well, you know, I think, like I said, coming off two situations, actually, I've been in many different Julies, you know, the special needs, the caregiver, you know, in all these situations I found myself in, when you hit crisis, you don't even know what you need. Right? A little less where to go to get help. So you turn to the government, you know, government programs, that's what we all think about. And unfortunately, they won't help you until you have nothing. So you have to lose everything to get everything. And then they're like, Oh, we'll help now. So the organization was founded on, you know, trying to provide that canopy for people, finding them the resources that are already out there, 'cause we do not want to replicate anything. And you know, so when you come to us for kind of like a concierge service where we know what you are, we tell you what you're eligible for, we say, fill this out. You're gonna need this. You know, we give you what you need before you even know it. We tell you what you're eligible for. So you're not searching all the time and wasting time and energy, and really, we just wanna provide you with a safety net to, you know, so you're not starting from poverty, which is where most women start after they go through this. It takes you, you know, the average woman a decade to recoup, you know, just to, to stand on two feet. So that's kind of what our organization is dedicated to, is women who find themselves in times of, you know, severe crisis, and they don't know where to turn.

Dawn Damon: Wow, that's important work. Thank you so much for doing that, and I hope that in the show notes, we'll be able to give a link.

So, if women are interested in finding you or finding the Colin James Barth Outreach that they can do that, what does life look like for you today? What brings you the most joy?

Julie Barth: I wake up in peace. You know, I say to people a lot, everyone's looking for happiness. Happiness is great, don't get me wrong, but I'll take peace over happiness every day because you can't even find happiness if you don't have it. So I wake up and I'm not worried who's doing what behind my back, lying, cheating, stealing, you know, sabotaging. I just have peace in my heart. And when you have peace, everything else just seems to be more manageable. You know, you can't really do much when you're sitting in a bed of chaos all the time.

Dawn Damon: Yes. Very good. How can women find you if they'd like to read your books, learn more about you, or the Colin James Barth Outreach?

Julie Barth: My website is called juliebarthauthor.com, and from there, my daughter's art is featured. On the website, there's a tab for her art, which is Hope4 Tayt, and some of the proceeds go to fund the charity. And there's also a link there for the CJB Outreach. There's plenty of tabs where you can, you know, get involved. Um, reach out to me, you know, I man it all. So if you need help, I'm also there to help. We're really focused right now on, you know, mapping out South Carolina, but I hope to be a great resource to people so that I can help. You know what you don't even know, 'cause that's sometimes the hardest part.

Dawn Damon: Yeah. Thank you so much for being here today.

Hey, Bravehearts, you've heard a story of resilience and courage today of turning tragedy into triumph, and perhaps you need to find that piece as well. I invite you also to my website, where I have a free download for you, lots of opportunities for you, and learn about true peace.

And I'm gonna leave you like I always do. This is Dawn Damon, your Braveheart mentor, asking you, is it time for you to find your brave and live your dreams?