Speaker 1: You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Girl. Welcome
Speaker 1: to I Choose Me, the podcast about the choices we
Speaker 1: make to redefine what it means to evolve and thrive
Speaker 1: on our own terms. From reluctantly agreeing to an on
Speaker 1: air mammogram that ultimately saved her life, to weathering a
Speaker 1: very public departure from network television to finding love and partnership.
Speaker 1: Amy Robach exemplifies what it means to be a role
Speaker 1: model for choosing Me, I'm so thrilled to have her
Speaker 1: with me today. Hi, hello, beautiful. When's the last time
Speaker 1: I saw you? Was it jingle Balls?
Speaker 2: Was it? I feel like we saw you for a
Speaker 2: fleeting boat. Yes, but it was like and I thought
Speaker 2: we would see you again and then we never did.
Speaker 1: No, it was literally a drive by.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's exactly.
Speaker 1: It is so funny. You are beautiful, you are glowing.
Speaker 1: I think, oh, love looks great on you.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: You know. I was thinking life changes so much and
Speaker 1: love looks so different at our age, and it will
Speaker 1: when we're eighty two. What does love and connection look
Speaker 1: like at this stage for you compared to when you
Speaker 1: were younger?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I understand it now. I think I did
Speaker 2: not know what love was. I was in love with
Speaker 2: my career, I was in love with ambition. I really
Speaker 2: didn't focus on giving and actually loving someone until I
Speaker 2: found the right person. And it's amazing when you realize
Speaker 2: you didn't know what you didn't know until you actually
Speaker 2: find it. And for me, love is about respect, It
Speaker 2: is about trust, and it is about friendship and compatibility,
Speaker 2: and just for me, it's just so beautiful to want
Speaker 2: to be with someone and never wanting to leave their side.
Speaker 2: It's just it's I've never had this experience before, so
Speaker 2: this has been it's I saved the best for last.
Speaker 1: Well speaking and not leaving each other's side. You guys
Speaker 1: are always together, your life partners, your business partners, you
Speaker 1: do the podcast together.
Speaker 2: Some people pull it unhealthy. Yeah, you know, it's funny.
Speaker 2: We spent eight years being each other's really really good friends,
Speaker 2: and I'd say the last two years of that were
Speaker 2: being each other's best friend and missing each other and
Speaker 2: always wanting to try to hang out and just chill
Speaker 2: and go do our thing, and never being able to
Speaker 2: actually figure it out until we ended up in our
Speaker 2: romantic relationship. And now it's kind of like almost if
Speaker 2: we're making up for lost time.
Speaker 1: That sounds so fun.
Speaker 2: We have fun almost every day. We try to make
Speaker 2: it a priority.
Speaker 1: Okay, so aside from work, how do you guys find
Speaker 1: a couple time?
Speaker 2: You know what? It sounds funny because we already gethered
Speaker 2: twenty four to seven, and yet we will look at
Speaker 2: each other and say I miss you, and we have
Speaker 2: tried to. We have our spots. On the weekends, we
Speaker 2: always try to go to a brunch just the two
Speaker 2: of us, and we try to make a rule no
Speaker 2: talk about work, and I'm usually guilty. I'll start saying
Speaker 2: something like it is hard and we have to make
Speaker 2: an effort. So we usually go to any big horror
Speaker 2: movie that's coming out. That's like a date afternoon for
Speaker 2: us because we get up really early, so date nights
Speaker 2: are like date late afternoons for us.
Speaker 1: And wait, did you say horror movie?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, we're obsessed with horror movies. Okay, any horror movie.
Speaker 2: In fact, that was initially in terms of our friendship,
Speaker 2: something that connected us immediately because we didn't know a
Speaker 2: lot of other people who liked them, and when we
Speaker 2: found that we both loved I mean upset why why?
Speaker 2: Why are you obsessed with them? Since I was in
Speaker 2: second grade and sneaked to my neighbor's house and saw Poltergeist,
Speaker 2: I have been hooked thrill. I think what it is
Speaker 2: is you get to experience heart pounding fear and like
Speaker 2: a thrill, a high and adrenaline rush without actually being
Speaker 2: in danger. And I don't think I knew that initially
Speaker 2: what attracted me to horror movies, but I do think
Speaker 2: it's this excitement and this you get to experience fear
Speaker 2: without being threatened. Actually, and there's this, I see it.
Speaker 2: I get excitement about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you guys connected over your love of horror.
Speaker 2: Movies one hundred percent. That was one of our I
Speaker 2: think the first thing were like you two, and then
Speaker 2: we just started listing like like deep cuts and then
Speaker 2: you know, if someone is a true horror fan, like, okay,
Speaker 2: you're legit. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I definitely wouldn't connect with somebody based on my horror
Speaker 1: film knowledge.
Speaker 2: I get scared. So yes we are. We're slightly strange,
Speaker 2: and we've been judged for our love of horror movies.
Speaker 2: So yes, we had that in common.
Speaker 1: Oh I don't want to who's going to judge you
Speaker 1: for what kind of movie you like my mom?
Speaker 2: Oh why in the mom? Well would you get like
Speaker 2: any sort of pleasure out of that? I don't understand.
Speaker 1: Yes, you said before you were driven by work and
Speaker 1: by achieving. Where did that come from? Did that come
Speaker 1: from your upbringing?
Speaker 2: Yes, my parents were. My dad was cut off from
Speaker 2: his family financially, and not that they had a ton
Speaker 2: of money. And my mom came from nothing that in Harbor, Michigan,
Speaker 2: one of nine children, and my grandfather I think made
Speaker 2: fifteen thousand dollars a year as a home builder, not
Speaker 2: college educated, and the children of immigrants. So yes, they
Speaker 2: came from nothing. And then my mom got pregnant with
Speaker 2: me at eighteen and had two kids by twenty one.
Speaker 2: They were on food stamps and built themselves up slowly
Speaker 2: but surely. But I saw the struggle. I was in
Speaker 2: a household where we were always worried about money, and
Speaker 2: my mom and dad really invested in my brother and
Speaker 2: I in our education and not they actually couldn't afford college,
Speaker 2: but invested in the support of getting good grades and
Speaker 2: accomplishing and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. And so
Speaker 2: they sat as sound and said, we have no money
Speaker 2: for college, so you got to get all you got.
Speaker 2: You have to get an academic scholarship or you'll, you know,
Speaker 2: you'll have to take out loans. And so it was motivating.
Speaker 2: And so I just think that mindset of I got
Speaker 2: a hustle, I got to make this happen, and it
Speaker 2: just it moved me. It stayed with me, it's never
Speaker 2: left me. And that my dad. I watch my dad
Speaker 2: get his master's degree, become an amazing microbiologist. So you know,
Speaker 2: I saw people because they were so young when they
Speaker 2: had me. We grew up together, all right. I mean
Speaker 2: my parents were empty nesters at thirty seven.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that sounds amazing.
Speaker 2: My friends were having children at forty two, forty three,
Speaker 2: and there's nothing wrong with that, but it's just so
Speaker 2: funny because my grandmother was a grandma at forty.
Speaker 1: It sounds amazing because I mean I had kids young too.
Speaker 1: Now I was twenty three, I had my first daughter,
Speaker 1: so and I love loved every second of being a
Speaker 1: young mom. And like you said, I fully just grew
Speaker 1: up with my kids along the way.
Speaker 2: So that you know, I think seeing them struggle and
Speaker 2: seeing them work their way out of struggle was a
Speaker 2: lesson that didn't have to be talked to me because
Speaker 2: I witnessed it.
Speaker 1: Right at fifty I know you're at the same age
Speaker 1: as me. At fifty three, I'll say my age, but
Speaker 1: I won't say your age.
Speaker 2: I'm oh, I just turned fifty three. I forget it.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to like say it if you don't
Speaker 1: say it. Yeah, So at fifty three, do you ever
Speaker 1: step back and be like I just I'm tired of
Speaker 1: the hustle.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, but the cool thing is right now, I
Speaker 2: teach and I are, we're our own bosses, and so
Speaker 2: we're hustling for us, and we're hustling in a different way.
Speaker 2: Initially it was rebuilding what we had lost, not just
Speaker 2: financially or but like credibility wise, like rebuilding our our
Speaker 2: trust and ourselves are our audience that we had built
Speaker 2: and spent three decades building almost. I mean, my goodness,
Speaker 2: I had been in the business for twenty seven years, hustling, hustling, hustling,
Speaker 2: and you feel like in one one fell swoop unfairly
Speaker 2: all of a sudden, and everything you work for just crumbled.
Speaker 2: So you're fighting for your reputation, your credibility, and now
Speaker 2: we feel like we've built up a really cool audience
Speaker 2: where we get to tell the news with our perspective
Speaker 2: and give folks updates. We've kind of created this little
Speaker 2: mini news network here out of our apartment, in our
Speaker 2: podcast room, and it's fun because the hustle now is
Speaker 2: for us. It's not for someone else, and I'm not
Speaker 2: proving anything to anyone else. Now, we're actually just doing
Speaker 2: what we love. When we get to do it together, that.
Speaker 1: Makes a big difference.
Speaker 2: It does.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't imagine what that must have been like when.
Speaker 2: It was hell. It was worse than it was, worse
Speaker 2: than cancer. It was the hardest, hardest year of my life.
Speaker 2: And I think anyone who has had who's been misunderstood,
Speaker 2: who's had a who's been judged off a false narrative
Speaker 2: that you can never reclaim, I've learned even though I
Speaker 2: was in the business of communication and certainly in the
Speaker 2: business of media, I did not realize what it was
Speaker 2: like once someone else tells your story, once it's already
Speaker 2: out there, you can never you lose control, you lose
Speaker 2: your narrative, and you'll never get it back. So there's
Speaker 2: this acceptance that has to follow. That is really hard,
Speaker 2: and it's a part of what we all have to
Speaker 2: learn in life that we actually don't have control. And
Speaker 2: as long as we're so obsessed with making sure other
Speaker 2: people look at us the way we want them to
Speaker 2: or see us the way we think we should be seen,
Speaker 2: we're always going to be frustrated and angry because it's
Speaker 2: never gonna happen. You have to let it go. You
Speaker 2: have to know who you are, respect you are, love
Speaker 2: who you are, and just be okay with that and
Speaker 2: have that be enough. Because if you're constantly seeking approval,
Speaker 2: which I have done for my entire life, I'm working
Speaker 2: on it, but I'm all of this pain that I
Speaker 2: have been through over the last several years has just
Speaker 2: broken me open in the most incredible way. But it's
Speaker 2: been painful.
Speaker 1: Well, growth is painful, that's for sure. When you when
Speaker 1: that all happened, did you kind of like lose a
Speaker 1: sense inside yourself of who amy was like or what
Speaker 1: what like? Did you did the negative voices that you
Speaker 1: heard outside or even in your own head? Did they
Speaker 1: convince you?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yes, of like bad messages?
Speaker 2: One hundred percent? Yes. Oh, I'm telling you I had
Speaker 2: to go into therapy and I had. I had been
Speaker 2: in it actually after both of my divorces, so it
Speaker 2: wasn't a foreign concept to me. But I am still
Speaker 2: actually in therapy just because I was so scared of
Speaker 2: I'm somebody who is a very positive person. I'm just naturally.
Speaker 2: I think I've got maybe even an annoying amount of
Speaker 2: positive energy that I was just born with. It's hard
Speaker 2: to bring me down, it really is. I had never
Speaker 2: had any sort of negative thoughts about myself, not wanting
Speaker 2: to get up in the morning, not wanting to live,
Speaker 2: wanting to have another day of pain and doubt, and
Speaker 2: feeling like I was being chased. We were both being
Speaker 2: chased by the paparazzi every day for a year, like unrelenting,
Speaker 2: and it just became to a point where you actually
Speaker 2: feel like you just wanted to go away, You just
Speaker 2: want pain to end. And those thoughts scared me. I'd
Speaker 2: never had them before in my life. But I started
Speaker 2: feeling incredible anxiety, and it was I had to deal
Speaker 2: with it. And I think what happens is so many
Speaker 2: times your value and your sense of self is wrapped
Speaker 2: up in all the things that it shouldn't and it
Speaker 2: was wrapped up in my career, and wrapped up in
Speaker 2: my title, and wrapped up in what I thought people
Speaker 2: thought of me, my status that I thought I had
Speaker 2: in my career, in my profession, in my life, in
Speaker 2: my friend group, all of that just blew completely open
Speaker 2: and I had to actually recognize that I was putting
Speaker 2: my worth in something that was completely worthless.
Speaker 1: You had to start at the bottom and work your
Speaker 1: way back up.
Speaker 2: In a way, and I thought I had done that
Speaker 2: work when I had breast cancer. I had a you know,
Speaker 2: I had a year of hell of surgeries and chemo
Speaker 2: and uncertainty, and then all the years that follow you know,
Speaker 2: you're always worried about remission, sorry about recurrence when you're
Speaker 2: in permission, And so I thought that was that was
Speaker 2: my rock bottom. That's where I learned. You know what,
Speaker 2: just when you think you've you've did it, life will
Speaker 2: remind you that you can still go lower things. Life
Speaker 2: course things can and I and I actually know that
Speaker 2: in a way that it's almost freeing because when when, honestly,
Speaker 2: if you could ask me what the worst possible thing
Speaker 2: would have been like to go through a divorce, to
Speaker 2: go through it publicly, to be publicly humiliated, shamed to
Speaker 2: have your face plastered across tabloids with the scarlet letter
Speaker 2: over you, having your teenage daughter see it all and
Speaker 2: have to live with it among their friends, losing your
Speaker 2: crew job, losing your career. It all happened at the
Speaker 2: same time. It was about short of losing someone you love,
Speaker 2: and of course you could always go short of having
Speaker 2: something happened to a family member. It was like the
Speaker 2: perfect storm where everything that could have happened short of
Speaker 2: death happened. Isn't that interesting?
Speaker 1: I can kind of relate to that because after my
Speaker 1: divorce my dad died, or just before my divorce, my
Speaker 1: dad died and my daughter got really sick. I thought
Speaker 1: she was dying, like it all poured down like a
Speaker 1: torrential rainstorm. And I honestly, I've had other times since
Speaker 1: then that have been challenging and have been, you know,
Speaker 1: not great, but that made me kind of realize, like,
Speaker 1: you can survive pretty much anything.
Speaker 2: Yep, that's short.
Speaker 1: I mean it's short of like losing a child. I
Speaker 1: don't know about that.
Speaker 2: To me, that is every time and every time I
Speaker 2: see a story and I've covered obviously of those moments
Speaker 2: and had to speak to parents and grandparents who've just
Speaker 2: experienced it thin well, and I did. That perspective has
Speaker 2: always stayed with me. I always appreciated that part of
Speaker 2: my job because it was always the ultimate perspective of
Speaker 2: at least my children are healthy, like I get that,
Speaker 2: and that Honestly, my children were what kept me saying
Speaker 2: because I knew, no matter how horrible I felt and
Speaker 2: how weak I felt, and how much I wanted the
Speaker 2: pain to stop, I knew I had to figure this
Speaker 2: out for them because I had to show them. I
Speaker 2: had to show them that you're stronger than you think.
Speaker 2: I had to walk the walk that I had been talking.
Speaker 2: It's my cancer diagnosis. This is the biggest irony, Jenny.
Speaker 2: I was actually giving a motivational speech. It was Breast
Speaker 2: cancer Awareness Month. I was standing at a podium in Washington,
Speaker 2: d C. Talking to I don't know, five hundred and
Speaker 2: seven hundred and fifty people, giving them advice, telling them
Speaker 2: how to live better, when that tabloid was publishing those
Speaker 2: photos that were completely misleading. Because I just want to
Speaker 2: say here and now, and I've said it publicly. TG
Speaker 2: and I both have, but we had been out of
Speaker 2: our marriages for many, many months. We both had our
Speaker 2: own places, we had divorce attorneys. Mine was actually close
Speaker 2: to being wrapped up when those when we were followed,
Speaker 2: when those pictures were taken, we just weren't public with
Speaker 2: our relationship yet. But this was not what it was
Speaker 2: sold to be. This was just them catching us in
Speaker 2: a relationship. It was not catching us in an affair.
Speaker 2: But it didn't matter because that's how it was sold.
Speaker 2: So here I am standing at this podium and my
Speaker 2: phone starts just ringing, ringing, and I'm just like, what
Speaker 2: is going on? And I were walking out of there,
Speaker 2: like just everyone I'm handing taking pictures with people, and
Speaker 2: I walk out of there and I I couldn't have
Speaker 2: known at that point, but my entire world just completely collapsed.
Speaker 2: And oh the irony of me telling people how to
Speaker 2: deal with adversity. I had no idea what I was
Speaker 2: about to just actually have to deal with for the
Speaker 2: next you know, two solid years. It was just one
Speaker 2: of those watershed moments that you will need.
Speaker 1: Please explain to me how a false story can lose
Speaker 1: you your job, Like, how couldn't how can that happen?
Speaker 2: Yes, I would like to know the answer to that.
Speaker 2: As well. I didn't think it could. Again. I think
Speaker 2: it was just an unbelievable confluence of events. But the
Speaker 2: problem was, we of course wanted to keep our jobs,
Speaker 2: and I think we were just like, please, this is
Speaker 2: We knew we did nothing wrong. We knew we didn't
Speaker 2: violate any any ethical boundary. In fact, I my parents,
Speaker 2: my family, they had all known that I was in
Speaker 2: the middle of a divorce. But I just I really
Speaker 2: did feel and I know TJ did too, that once
Speaker 2: the truth came out, it was fine and we had
Speaker 2: I hate receipts, but we did. DJ's like, here's my
Speaker 2: new apartment. I've been here, I've been paying on it
Speaker 2: for three months, and you know, same for me. I
Speaker 2: was like, my marriage was over in the summer. We're
Speaker 2: talking about why is it there?
Speaker 1: Why is that?
Speaker 2: And I didn't problem. I did exactly, And we had
Speaker 2: every intention of going after the holidays. We were just
Speaker 2: going to get our family, our kids comfortable with it,
Speaker 2: and then we're going to go to ABC. We had
Speaker 2: our plan in place, and look, we were threatened. We've
Speaker 2: talked about this. We were threatened. We won't get into
Speaker 2: who it was, but someone wanted it to make it
Speaker 2: look the way they made it look. And once that happens,
Speaker 2: and we're talking to our our bosses and our network,
Speaker 2: and they're telling us. We had a statement prepared to say,
Speaker 2: we're in the middle of divorces, you know, all of
Speaker 2: what we wanted the world to know. When those pictures
Speaker 2: came out and we were told that we could not
Speaker 2: put out a story, they didn't want us to say anything.
Speaker 2: They said, if you put out a statement, there'll be
Speaker 2: more stories. And so we did what we were told.
Speaker 2: We did what we were asked to do, and we
Speaker 2: did not put out a story. The problem, we have
Speaker 2: learned now the hard way, is that when you don't
Speaker 2: tell the story, someone else tells it for you, and
Speaker 2: then it just builds and it builds and it builds,
Speaker 2: and once you've lost that narrative, you cannot get it back.
Speaker 2: It was excruciating not to be able to speak, not
Speaker 2: to be able to tell our side, not to be
Speaker 2: able to say, is this a joke? And we actually
Speaker 2: believed and trusted that ABC would do the right thing,
Speaker 2: because once they did their investigation, they knew that they
Speaker 2: had nothing. So you know, we got fully paid. It
Speaker 2: wasn't you know, I'm.
Speaker 1: Sorry to keep asking you questions about this, but I'm
Speaker 1: actually so interested, Like what happened between them saying don't
Speaker 1: put out a statement and everything.
Speaker 2: They let us back on the air for several days. Yea,
Speaker 2: and the weekend happened and I was getting ready for
Speaker 2: work on Monday, and they something happened over the weekend.
Speaker 2: Someone made a decision and they just said we're going
Speaker 2: and I just said, please don't do this. If you
Speaker 2: take us off beer, this is now going to become
Speaker 2: because by the way, at that point, only a couple
Speaker 2: of tabloids were covering it. But when they removed us
Speaker 2: from the air, then it became just a juggernaut of
Speaker 2: the story that we couldn't shake. And then they told
Speaker 2: us we were a distraction. They made it a distraction
Speaker 2: by taking us off the air. If they had just
Speaker 2: said we've done We've looked into it. Both Amy and
Speaker 2: TJ were clearly in the middle of divorces. We actually
Speaker 2: have proof of that, which we had and we support them,
Speaker 2: and you know, this is their private life. We support them.
Speaker 2: We hope you can wish them well. We certainly do.
Speaker 2: And if that had happened, you know, everything would have
Speaker 2: been different. But you know what, I would just say, Clearly,
Speaker 2: there were lessons that I needed to learn. Clearly, I
Speaker 2: needed to go through this, and it's hard to acknowledge
Speaker 2: that in the middle of it, but I actually I
Speaker 2: knew it in the back of my head. I was like,
Speaker 2: this is happening for a reason. It was unthinkable, it
Speaker 2: was overwhelming, it was devastating, but I kept telling myself,
Speaker 2: I know that this is happening for a reason, and
Speaker 2: I am a completely different person because of it, and
Speaker 2: I wouldn't want it any other way. What do you
Speaker 2: think The reason was that I needed I needed to
Speaker 2: reassess what was important in life. I needed to understand
Speaker 2: where I needed to grow, who I needed to become,
Speaker 2: and what I needed to let go of. There were
Speaker 2: things I needed to let go of that I wasn't
Speaker 2: going to let go of. They had to kind of
Speaker 2: be ripped from my clutches. And when they were gone
Speaker 2: and I felt like I couldn't breathe, I had to
Speaker 2: realize I'm okay. I'm still okay, and I didn't think
Speaker 2: I would be, and I was, and I am, and
Speaker 2: I'm better than ever before. I am so happy, I
Speaker 2: am so in love with my best friend, and I
Speaker 2: get to wake up with him every day, I get
Speaker 2: to work with him every day. And when we kind
Speaker 2: of take a step back, we both looked at each
Speaker 2: other all the time, say, I still can't believe we're together.
Speaker 2: And it's not how we wanted it to happen. It's
Speaker 2: not when we wanted it to happen, but here we are.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's incredible. So that all happened about the same
Speaker 1: time you found out you had breast cancer or was
Speaker 1: that before?
Speaker 2: No, I mean I thought so I had gone through
Speaker 2: breast cancer in twenty thirteen. So I when I met
Speaker 2: Tej just as a friend, it was twenty fourteen. It
Speaker 2: was a year I had very short hair, my hair
Speaker 2: was growing back. I had just come out of I
Speaker 2: think I just started my drug therapy. I'd been out
Speaker 2: of Keemo for a couple months, but I met him
Speaker 2: for the first time. So, No, that was a journey
Speaker 2: I took with just and that was a tough That
Speaker 2: was a really tough part of my life. And I
Speaker 2: went into kind of like hyper prove myself mode after that.
Speaker 2: So I started to climbing mountains Kiliman Jarrow and like
Speaker 2: literally like oh, I literally climbed two of the seven summits.
Speaker 2: I've run seven marathons all. I basically when I recovered,
Speaker 2: I just went into hyper mode of live like you're dying,
Speaker 2: live like you're in a country music. I surrounded myself
Speaker 2: with just a huge swath of friends, just was living
Speaker 2: out loud and also avoiding the relationship I was in.
Speaker 2: So I was just putting myself into accomplishments even more
Speaker 2: than I already had at work. Now I was doing
Speaker 2: it every free second I had. I was training for
Speaker 2: a marathon. I was training for climbing Coziosko, climbing Mont Blanc,
Speaker 2: climbing Mount Baker. I had my kids climbing glaciers. We
Speaker 2: were doing technical climbs in the French Alps. I was, yeah,
Speaker 2: I was running away. I was running away from the
Speaker 2: relationship I was in. I was running away from having
Speaker 2: to deal with any actual self reflection. I distracting myself
Speaker 2: from fear. And I can look back now and it
Speaker 2: was all cool and fun and amazing, and I don't
Speaker 2: regret any of it, but I can see it for
Speaker 2: what it was now. Yeah. Mom used to always say,
Speaker 2: can't you just be still? And there's a reason why
Speaker 2: I was never able to be still because I was
Speaker 2: just searching for something outside of me, and every time
Speaker 2: I found it, it ended up disappointing me, and I
Speaker 2: had to Actually, it sounds so cheesy, but I actually
Speaker 2: had to start just being quiet and being still with TJ. Yes,
Speaker 2: we travel against we have fun, but I am so
Speaker 2: still I am and it's hard for me still sometimes.
Speaker 2: But this has been the most beautiful, reflective, incredible amount
Speaker 2: of like spiritual growth and self growth I've had in
Speaker 2: my entire life.
Speaker 1: It's so beautiful how the things that challenge us the
Speaker 1: most end up teaching us the most about ourselves.
Speaker 2: You only learn when you're uncomfortable. If everything's great, you're
Speaker 2: not going to change. In fact, you might be a
Speaker 2: little cocky.
Speaker 1: Yeah, talking about your breast cancer situation. You initially felt
Speaker 1: really resistant to doing that on air, mammogram I read that,
Speaker 1: but you did it anyway because they asked you to
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, looking back, how do you process the fact
Speaker 1: that a moment of professional obligation essentially saved your life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And honestly, I've always said I can never I
Speaker 2: can never be mad at ABC News or regret being
Speaker 2: in the profession. I'm in because it absolutely saved my life. No,
Speaker 2: I was not going to get a mammogram at that point.
Speaker 2: I think the recommendation was fifty. I was. I had
Speaker 2: just turned forty. My mom is one of nine, my
Speaker 2: dad is one of six. I have so many and
Speaker 2: so many I actually cannot even tell you how many
Speaker 2: first cousins I have. And at the time, I had
Speaker 2: all my grandparents alive. So I always kind of was.
Speaker 2: I prided myself on our good genes and I no
Speaker 2: one had breast cancer. It just was not even on
Speaker 2: my radar. And so when they asked me to get
Speaker 2: a mammogram, I was. I just said, this is I'm
Speaker 2: not the right person. I have no connection, no one
Speaker 2: has cancer in my family. I'm really healthy. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm not your girl. And that's when Robin Roberts told me,
Speaker 2: you're exactly the person who should do this because you
Speaker 2: think you don't need it. And she's like, and I'm
Speaker 2: sure you're fine, But she was like, if you walk
Speaker 2: into that mammogram or the Mammo van that they had
Speaker 2: in times.
Speaker 1: Realy one Mammo Van live.
Speaker 2: In the middle of the show of Good Morning America,
Speaker 2: she was like, if you walk into that, Mamma Van
Speaker 2: and you get a mammogram on live national television. I
Speaker 2: guarantee you you will save well life. Some woman will
Speaker 2: make her appointment, she will go and she will find
Speaker 2: her cancer because of you. That was impossible for me
Speaker 2: to say no to. At that point, I was like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'll do it. I just know. I was sitting here
Speaker 2: telling Robin I have no connection to the disease, and
Speaker 2: meantime I have. I have two malignant tumors in my
Speaker 2: right breast. I have a positive note and I'm sitting
Speaker 2: here telling her I don't want to do it, and
Speaker 2: I just say thank god I did, because yes, that
Speaker 2: led to a stage two breast cancer diagnosis and I
Speaker 2: had a double mistectomy. I had to do six rounds
Speaker 2: of chemo. My auncle score came back moderate for recurrence.
Speaker 2: So I was on the opposite of hormone replacement therapy
Speaker 2: for eight years. I was on tmoxifen, which is a
Speaker 2: rapidly aging drug. Yeah, at forty I went into menopause.
Speaker 2: You know that's I know people go they hate their
Speaker 2: period and they complain about their period. But I have
Speaker 2: to tell you when it's taken from you. At forty
Speaker 2: and you're told you cannot have children. You know you're done.
Speaker 2: It is. That wasn't the scary. That wasn't the worst part, obviously,
Speaker 2: just being afraid and concerned about having cancer and recurrence.
Speaker 2: But it's just another layer of just it part of
Speaker 2: your womanhood, your feminine way. It's a lot to take
Speaker 2: on at any age. But you know, and I have
Speaker 2: a really good your friend who was diagnosed at twenty eight.
Speaker 2: She's one of my best friends. She's Stage four for
Speaker 2: seven years now. That is static thirty five, dealing with
Speaker 2: stuff that most young women never could imagine, and so
Speaker 2: is she is an absolute inspiration to me every day
Speaker 2: and constant perspective. We complain about all the little things
Speaker 2: in life. Guess what, people every day out there are
Speaker 2: fighting for their lives to get one more day, to
Speaker 2: get one more week, one more moment with the people
Speaker 2: they love.
Speaker 1: It's so helpful for you to put that in perspective
Speaker 1: for people, because we forget, Oh what I forget? Yeah,
Speaker 1: we forget. We start complaining about things and not you know,
Speaker 1: leading with gratitude and get caught up in the all
Speaker 1: the day to day minutia.
Speaker 2: Yup, we all do it. And I'm telling you, even
Speaker 2: as a cancer survivor who is constantly reminded. You know,
Speaker 2: when you've had a double misectomy and you've got scars,
Speaker 2: you've got these like hard rocks, you have no feeling
Speaker 2: like you're I feel like I have two foreign objects
Speaker 2: like sewn onto me, Like your chest never feels the same.
Speaker 2: It's the strange sensation. So in a way, like just
Speaker 2: from that sensation of the double mistectomy, you it's always
Speaker 2: on the back of your mind. You know that you're
Speaker 2: a cancer survivor and it and you'd think that that
Speaker 2: would just always put me like in a you know,
Speaker 2: a mood where I'm not going to complain about someone
Speaker 2: cutting me off, or it's raining, when I want son
Speaker 2: or son, sonny or whatever, I forget. I have to
Speaker 2: remind myself that, hey, I'm here, I woke up. It's good.
Speaker 2: I'm good. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Man, Okay, So from that diagnosis, you learned how to
Speaker 1: let go of control, and you actually wrote a book
Speaker 1: about it Better I did. It's called Better What does control? What?
Speaker 1: What does?
Speaker 2: Do?
Speaker 1: You still feel like you've let go of control?
Speaker 2: I still struggle with it every day. So it's funny.
Speaker 2: I know the line on my book because I did. You.
Speaker 2: I have to let go of control when you have
Speaker 2: a cancer diagnosis, because when you start being invested in
Speaker 2: the outcome, and that's all you're thinking about is the outcome.
Speaker 2: Will I live? Will I die well? And then you
Speaker 2: have to kind of get to a point where saying, yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna die, We're all gonna die. I don't know
Speaker 2: if I'm going to die of breast cancer or if
Speaker 2: I'm going to die of something else, but accepting that
Speaker 2: and recognizing that you actually can't control ninety nine percent
Speaker 2: of what happens to you. And so that did start
Speaker 2: me on that path. But Jenny, I am still having
Speaker 2: to learn how to let go of control every day
Speaker 2: in little moments, Arguments with TJ, arguments with my daughters. Wait,
Speaker 2: why do I need to win right now? Let them
Speaker 2: I actually love. I don't know if you've read s
Speaker 2: Mel Robbins, but yeah, definitely, I tell myself that let them,
Speaker 2: let be, let it be what it is. So I'm
Speaker 2: on the journey. I hope I can get to a
Speaker 2: point where I can say that I have totally let
Speaker 2: go of control. I'm I'm still working on it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think you need to worry about that
Speaker 1: being the end goal for you. I think, you know,
Speaker 1: stop controlling if you can let go of control.
Speaker 2: Right, is not going to control myself to not control anymore?
Speaker 1: Oh man, Amy Roebuck. Before I let you go, what
Speaker 1: was your last I Choose me moment?
Speaker 2: I would say my therapy session I had a week ago.
Speaker 2: I was feeling I was feeling anxiety, I was feeling
Speaker 2: like I didn't have my shit together, and I said,
Speaker 2: I'm I'm going to I'm going to talk to my therapist.
Speaker 2: And look, I walked out of that room. I do
Speaker 2: it on zoom, and I felt lighter. I felt, I
Speaker 2: felt relaxed. I felt because I felt I was. I
Speaker 2: know I'm on the path I need to be on,
Speaker 2: and I know I'm not always going to stay on it.
Speaker 2: I'm going to fall off it, but I know I
Speaker 2: how to get back on it. And so yeah, I
Speaker 2: chose me in that moment because it wasn't what I
Speaker 2: wanted to do, but I knew it was an investment
Speaker 2: in who I want to become. And so yeah, that
Speaker 2: was my last I choose me a moment.
Speaker 1: I love that. That's a beautiful moment. Good for you,
Speaker 1: hopefully somebody out there listening will yes listen to that
Speaker 1: and it'll resonate with them. Well, thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I'm so happy we got to chat today, like actually
Speaker 1: talk without TJ and Dave around.
Speaker 2: I know, I know, Jenny, thank you. I loved it
Speaker 2: talking with you two, and I love your podcast. I
Speaker 2: love how empowering it is.
Speaker 1: Wait, we didn't talk about that we have a podcast together.
Speaker 2: Yes, I do part two.
Speaker 1: I do part two.
Speaker 2: I don't because we don't get it right the first
Speaker 2: time a lot of us Nope, but the second time.
Speaker 1: Or the second time fingers crossed for the third time
Speaker 1: for both of us, that's the job. Thanks Samy, Thanks Jenny,
Speaker 1: you guys. I'm very excited to share that my book
Speaker 1: I Use Me Chasing Joy, Finding Purpose and Embracing Reinvention
Speaker 1: is coming April fourteenth, and it would mean the world
Speaker 1: to me if you would pre order a copy or
Speaker 1: the audiobook wherever you get your books. And yes, I
Speaker 1: am definitely narrating the audiobook. So it's going to be
Speaker 1: so fun.