You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Girl, Welcome back to I Choose Me.

I'm Jenny, and today we're talking about one of the most intense, demanding and loving things we can ever do, caregiving.

I want to start by acknowledging that November is National Caregivers Awareness Month.

That is a whole month dedicated to the more than fifty three million Americans who are juggling careers, parenting, and caregiving responsibilities.

Think about that number, fifty three million.

It's huge.

I've heard this called the sandwich generation, when you're squeezed between caring for your kids and caring for your parents.

But it's not always parents.

It can be a spouse, it can be adult children with special needs, or even a close family member who needs extra help.

Whatever the scenario is, it's heavy, all consuming, and it's something I've been thinking a lot about lately, mostly because I really connect with this personally right now in my life with my mom Mimi as you all know her, as I watch her go through these different phases of her life.

But also you know, it's just going on in the news lately, like with Bruce Willis and his whole story.

It brings up all of these thoughts on emotional balance and what we owe to the people we love, and maybe the right word isn't oh.

For me, it's trying to find the space between feeling okay to choose myself but also choosing to do the right thing for the people that I love.

That space of peace around all of it is really moving hard for me to settle with because it's a big deal.

It's a profound commitment.

My guest today understands that commitment one hundred percent.

She is a beloved TV host, a journalist, and personality who's made a decision that so many people want to make that also may dread at the same time.

Please welcome my friend Debbie Matnopolis.

I'm so happy to see you.

My friend Jane.

Last time I think we saw each other was on the set of Home and Family, Right, yeah, probably the good old days.

I actually drove past the house today.

I was up the Universal lot and I had people in the car and I said, you know what, I'm going to take you up to my old house.

They're like, wait, what I said, you have so take off.

Meanwhile, one of the people in the back goes, oh, that's good.

Debbie just drive around Universal without access.

Oh, that was a great show you did that with.

Yeah, I went there a few times to visit with you guys.

It was always such a good time.

No, we cooked together, remember we made something in the kitchen.

It was delicious.

Oh my goodness.

Well, you were at the top of your game last time I saw you, your successful.

Host a journalist.

But then things shifted for you, and that's what I really want to talk about today.

So can we just start the beginning.

What was happening in your life and in your career when you first realized that your dad needed more care than he was getting.

Well, you know, I was living in Los Angeles here.

My parents are in Virginia where abouts in Virginia in Richmond, and my sister and my brother are also in Virginia.

My sister's in Richmond, like twenty minutes from then.

My brother is in Virginia Beach, which is a few hours, and so they saw my parents more often than I did.

You know.

I would always come home for every holiday, birthdays, weddings, whatever.

Whenever I could get back East, I would go.

And I started noticing that my dad was like, he started like kind of limping and dragging his leg.

Said are you okay?

He said, yeah, no, one finds something wrong my leg.

I don't know.

I'd go back, you know, there'd be Thanksgiving, I'd go back for Christmas.

Suddenly his speech is learning, and I'm like, Dad, what's going on?

No, nothing, I don't know.

And I would talk to my sister and brother and they'd say, oh, Dad's just getting older.

I said, Dad is not just getting older.

This is not a sign of getting older.

Something is wrong.

Maybe he's had a stroke, maybe something else is going on.

We should start doing some tests.

So we started over like a period of about six seven months, doing every test under the sun that you possibly could do.

And of course I'm here worried, sick and calling back every single second I have free to find out what's happening, talking to doctors there, et cetera.

And you know, he was getting the best medical care he could and Richmond at the time, and I was talking to the doctors and they were saying, Okay, we just tested in for a mess.

He doesn't have a mess.

We test him for Parkinson's.

He doesn't have Parkinson's.

We we've done brain scans.

He didn't have a stroke.

I thought, maybe it's a stroke, So through process of elimination, they finally diagnose him with ALS, which most people know is Lugerrig's disease.

So if you know anything about ALS, Stephen Hawkings was probably the most famous person next to Yeah Lugarig to have it that really made people know what this disease was.

It's a brutal disease.

It's brutal.

It's one of the most hateful things I've ever seen in my life, Jenny, It's say was so sad.

It basically robs you of all of your nervous system, like any neurotransmitter in your body, your neuro like system completely breaks down, completely breaks down, because it kills nerves one by one by one, and you become a prisoner in your body.

But the only thing that still works is your brain, so you're fully aware of what is happening, and you become a prisoner and you cannot even speak at the end and restoration.

I can imagine.

It's just so hateful, And I was thinking to myself, I don't know what's worse, Alzheimer's or ALS, because Alzheimer's the person was Alzheimer's many times doesn't know what's happening, but the people around them know.

Well, with als, you're fully aware of what's going on, and you know you're a prisoner.

So anyhow, I was at that time like everything was going like could not have been going better in my career.

And I came back after one visit and I said, I can't, I can't continue to be here anymore.

So I was on E at that time, so I left E.

When you know, everything was huge John E, all the Red carpets, all the Oscars.

I was hosting Fashion Police, I was hosting The Daily Ten.

And I came back and I said, I I have to leave and I have to break my contract.

And I'm really sorry, but but I said, you know, there'll be a lot of shows even if you won't have me when I come back.

But I only have one dad, and the way I was raised was very I mean, it was all about family all the time.

So this was something that wasn't even a question in my brain.

I was going to do this regardless.

And my boss at the time said, well, just so you know, you won't have a job when you come back, and you're ruining your career, as did my managers, and as did my agents.

They were like, no one will hire you.

And I said, well, you know what, I'll have to take that chance.

And if I come back here no one hires me, then guess what.

I don't want to work for someone who has so little empathy to understand that.

I went to go do something out of love for my family and to be there for my dad, who basically the doctor said, make arrangements.

You have a few years and it's over.

There's nothing we can do.

We don't have any we don't have anything to stop the progression.

We don't have anything to stop the disease.

Every month he will get sicker and sicker, and he will eventually perish.

How old was he at this time?

This was when he was sixty eight and he died when he was seventy one.

So for Alist, yeah, he got diagnosed really late.

Actually, they usually you're the diagnosis for als will be between like early forties and into fifties.

But for someone at his age should be diagnosed, they were kind of perplexed.

They're like, that's weird.

So and if he hadn't been as physically fit as he was, he would pass away much sooner.

I mean it's it really takes a toll on their body, and it goes really quickly.

I mean at the end, I had to feed him, I had to help bathe him, I had to lift him and put him in the car and take him to Pete.

And you know, I so you were full time.

I was full time, and my sister and my brother couldn't do it because I didn't have a family at that time.

I was, you know, not dating anyone.

I didn't have a child, I wasn't married.

My sister is the works in the legal department at a bank, has three children.

My brother has two children and works for a pharmaceutical company.

Neither one of them were in a position that they could say, Okay, we're just gonna walk away from our careers and go, you know, take care of dad.

I was the one that could say, okay, yeah, I could do this.

Yeah I can do this.

Yeah.

You've talked openly about the fact that you had the financial means to be able to make that decision, that huge move, which is a blessing that not everyone has.

But even with that, I mean, let's be real, it's still a monumental sacrifice.

At the peak of a successful television career, something you've been working really hard for.

I know how hard you work.

Yeah, but you know what, it didn't even matter to me.

It didn't matter.

No, it wasn't even a question.

I was like, here's this person who if it wasn't for him, Oh my gosh, cried, here's this person if it wasn't for him, And my mom having so much belief in me and saying, no, go do what you want to do.

You know what I mean, they I'd be fine.

Virginia.

When I was seventeen, I went to NYU, I worked at MTV and you know, did all that and then said, oh, I'm coming out West.

And had I not had that support from them, and knowing, knowing in my heart, if I fell flat on my face, I had somewhere to go.

I mean, maybe I wouldn't have a penny, but at least I can move back with my parents.

But knowing that, I thought to myself, how could I How could I live with myself if I won't go help someone I love.

That that has been with me my entire life.

Transition into the next life.

It's it's wild, Debbie, because I'm in the same boat as you right now.

That you're describing.

You know that this is a huge thing, This is a huge choice, this is a huge change.

I don't know if it's a sacrifice.

I mean, it feels like a sacrifice, but at the same time it doesn't, because it feels like what needs to be done, what is inside of me, my truth?

Like there is no decision right you had you felt that like this is what's going to happen.

That's what's going to happen.

And you know what it's not.

You're right, it's not a sacrifice.

It seems like a sacrifice on the outside, but the truth is on the inside, there's something And Jenny, you will not be sorry if you're caring for your mom or your father, you will be when they pass.

You will feel so at peace because something about it is so bittersweet that you've been given a gift to be able to be there, where so many others don't have that opportunity.

They don't have the option.

My sister didn't have the option, my brother didn't have the option.

I did.

I said, okay, yeah, and I would have done it for ten more years if I could have just kept him alive.

I mean, it's that time that you get to spend with them where it was so strange, like I almost connected more and became closer with him than I ever had been in my life.

Yeah.

And it's the circle of life.

It's the beauty of life, and it's every day I thank God for that time and I say, gosh, that was beautiful, as tragic as it is, because you know they're at the other end of life.

It's also it's tragic and sad, but it is.

It's beautiful when you are able to be able to be there for someone and hold someone's hand and let them know that they are safe and they're loved and everything's going to be okay as they transition out of here, off of this planet.

I mean not to sound too woo woo, but look, we're all headed there at some point at the end of the day.

I would hope that someone would be there for us.

Yeah, I mean, that's that's the goal.

That's how we have family.

Yeah, exactly, So we're not on.

If you've been ghosted, divorced, or left for someone else, snap out of it.

It's time for you to give them out by listening to us I do part two.

Listen to I do Part two.

Of the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

There had to be that part of you, that woman who has made her way all this time and done all this work to get this kind of security that you had.

I used the word security loosely exactly soever any but did you have those moments when you're like, I'm giving everything up.

This could be it, you know, as far as like your career and your your journey.

When I was looking in the eyes of my bosses or a manager or an agent who said to me, what are you doing?

What are you doing?

And I thought, yeah, this could be it?

And if it was, here's what was so cathartic and like so may I guess because it's who I am really at the core.

Like at the core, I'm like, yeah, this is great.

I mean, Jenny, we are so fortunate that we get to play in this in this play on this playground and do all these amazing things and live out these fantasies, these childhood fantasies and these dreams that we had.

So I thought, you know, what, if this is it, I'm okay because I feel like I set out to do something, I did it, and it was one heck of a ride, and what a life and what a lovely experience that I'd been given the opportunity and the lovely fortune to be able to be part of.

And I thought that was enough.

I was fulfilled enough to know that if it all ended there, then I would have been able to say I tried, I did it, I succeeded.

How much fun was that?

What have I loved to get a great ride?

What a great ride?

And I would have been okay, Yeah, I would have been okay.

And I really also felt that, you know, say whatever you want about Hollywood, about this and that, but the truth is we're all very, very emotional, loving people at the core.

We wear our hearts on our sleeves, you know what I mean, we do and you know there's a whole spectrum of personalities and this and that and this business, but we're good people at the core.

We're good people, and we're storytellers, whether it's being a journalist telling a story or doing what you do and being an actor and telling a story.

So you have to have some emotion, you have to have something inside of your heart, you know what I mean.

So I thought, if I come back and my people who I have given so much to since I was seventeen at MTV and working and going to going to NYU turn their back on me and can't understand why I did what I did.

Then I don't want to be part of that.

I don't want to work for you anyway.

And thankful, thankfully they weren't, I mean, anyone.

When I came back, I almost got more jobs, you know, because good I was sitting in Virginia taking care of my dad.

And you know, again, if you work in this business long enough, we know everybody.

We've worked with everybody at some point, We've been at a party with somebody.

There's not one person that we haven't cross paths with eventually, you know what I mean.

That's just how whether the producer or an actor or a journalist, whatever, anybody a singer.

So I'm sitting there, my dad is beside me, he's you know, at that point, it was full on.

I had to be there, and we would take shifts and then my mom would come home and I would leave.

And you know, if you know anything about caregiving, which you clearly do, because you're like, from what you're telling me, you're in that position, it's a full time thing, and it's gonna be very taxing on the individual.

And you don't even realize you are a caregiver until you're out of it and you say, oh, I was caregiving for somebody, but you were just doing what you do as a as a child to somebody you love, you know, or a member.

So I'm sitting there and I get a phone call from my friends or are producers at entertainment tonight, and they say to me, Hey, how are you doing, how's your dad?

Blah blah blah.

I'm good.

I'm just kind of chatting with them.

They're like, so listen, I hate to say this because I know that you know you were You're dealing with real things in life, but this is also very real for us.

Right now, we are trying to get to do an interview with Simon Cowell.

He won't call us back.

Jeffrey told me that you know him.

Well.

Oh, they were like, let's call Debbie to get to Simon, even though she's a little busy right now.

And I'm like, yeah, hold on, because I'm like whatever, So I call him.

I'm like, Hi, Entertainments, nice, trying to do an interview with you.

He said, I know they've been calling me out of He said, well, you do the interview.

I'm like, yeah, let me ask my mom if she can't come to It was like literally like I was in high school again, so I was living in my high school bedroom, no joke.

So it's so fun.

It was actually talk about that.

So I called and I'm like I called him and say, yeah, I'll do it, but he wants me to do the interview and they're like, great, can you get on a plane and fly out tomorrow.

It was like that.

I flew back to LA I did the interview, got back on a plan, and flew back like within twenty four hours, so I wasn't gone for that long and that's literally how it ended up.

It continued like that, so I was able to be sleeping in my high school bedroom in Richmond, Virginia and flying around the world for entertainment tonight.

Because then they were like, well, we go do this one, we go do that one.

I was like, okay, if I can do it in twenty four hours.

So that's basically how I started to get back in.

And that was like that was later.

So I'm curious, so at the beginning, like what were those first few weeks or months, like when you did move into your childhood bedroom.

I mean practically and logistically, I know it's messy, it's it's but it's emotionally and personally.

How did that transition feel for you?

Well, I think, you know, kind of like when you go home and you like for Thanksgiving and you fall back into that role of whoever you were in your family at that time before he left.

So that's like a weekend, that's Thanksgiving.

Well, I became that seventeen year old girl who had just you know, graduated and was moving to New York.

I became that person and I was like, oh my gosh, this is so funny, and I found myself being likesh mom, might hear like I have to be home by eleven.

I mean the friend I still have in Virginia.

We're like, this is hysterical.

You were a grown woman, And I was like, I don't want disrespect my family.

But you chose to stay in your in the home, so you could be even that much closer because you could have stayed at a hotel.

Yeah no, but I wouldn't because my dad.

The whole reason I came back was because my father was he would not have ever wanted to be in a living facility and like one of those rehabilitation facilities, and I knew that he would.

That's just not what he wanted.

And so I wanted him to be able to be as comfortable and as happy as he possibly could be in his final moments.

And so I said, Okay, I'm going to live at home.

We're going to do what we can.

We sort of we redid the house in a way that because at the end he was in a wheelchair and then he and then he couldn't even get out of the bed, so there was a lot of things.

So I refitted the house, retrofitted it so a wheelchair could get through the doors.

I built a whole bathroom downstairs so you could use a wheelchair in the shower and things like that.

So it was the first few weeks were me coming in there and I agree it and figuring it out, and having my having the background of being in this business and having a journalism degree, and which came in very handy for the doctors, well at least for me.

The doctors weren't happy because I'm sorry, according to this statistic, you've got.

A lot of questions, a lot of data.

They'd be like this girl.

But if you don't have an advocate or yourself, when you're in a hospital, or you're in a position where you have a terminal illness, you're in trouble.

I mean, it's unfortunate and no disrespect to our medical community.

But they are understaffed, they are overworked.

They have a million patients.

I had one dad, You have one dad, you have one mom.

If you can't advocate for them, I certainly hope there is somebody that can just to get through all the minutia and their red tape and make sure they're taken care of.

Like I mean, I slept in the ICU with him for probably a month, and you know you're not supposed to sleep there, and the doctors would be like, you have to get out or in call the police.

I said, call the police.

I'm not leaving.

I wouldn't leave his side.

And finally one day I went downstairs to go get, you know, something from the cafeteria and I came back and I still don't know who did this, but oh it makes me brings tear smise.

Somebody from the hospital roll to bed in there, roll to cotton there because they knew I wasn't leaving.

I've been sleeping in the chair for a month and then oh man, you know brought me a cotton.

It was like thank you.

No one ever mentioned who did that, but I'm sure somebody was like, just give the girl a cot.

She's not going anywhere, right, yeah.

I mean, if you've ever been in the situation I've been.

You know, I lost my dad a number of years ago, and there was caretaking before that happened.

But just that, there is no way I am leaving this hospital none.

You're not feeling I will.

I will wash myself in the sink.

Ye I care what, I'll find something to eat, it all, as long as I have water and a pillow and a blanket.

And you know, like you're not going.

You just don't care what they say, like well visiting hours, I'm like, well those not for me because I'm staying here.

I don't think you understand who you're talking to.

You I'm going nowhere, call the police.

So it's not like you're creating, you know, something that they can't work around.

Just there to be with him and you're helping them.

I mean there were times where you know his vitals were dropping.

Had I not been in that room to be like you guys, you guys, who knows, Oh my god, who knows?

What it makes me?

Just remember all the times that I've been in that situation with my dad and now with my mom.

The last time she was in the hospital, the same thing.

I wouldn't leave.

And if I hadn't been there, I don't think she would have made it.

Yeah, just because I was there to put her favorite music on next to her ear and while she was seemingly just in a comar or whatever it was happening with her, Like just seeing that little flicker of the life that I knew was in her come out through the music, Like I feel like that.

You can't get that from somebody that doesn't know, you know, the way that we know our parents.

No, it's so true.

How long have you been a caregiver for your long?

Well, it's progressed and it's becoming, you know, more involved on a daily basis.

My sister's been doing the brunt of the work and that is not working out for our family anymore.

For her health and if just reach to impass as far as their ability to get along in certain frictious situations.

So we're on the precipice of making a big change, and my family's about to make a big accommodation change for her.

I'm going to be moving he inter my very small house, and we're all very, very very nervous about it.

I just had even Nicole Brown on the podcast.

He is a wonderful woman.

She had the ability to kind of stop everything and make that choice to be with her dad and be his full time caretaker too, And she really did talk about like the reality of just being exhausted mentally guilt.

See what ends up happening is that being in the caregiving position, you feel this intense amount of guilt which is indescribable until you live it.

And you'll see, like you feel like me just leaving the house even to go get groceries.

I felt somehow if something were to happen, I would be completely responsible that something has happened to my father and the fact that he couldn't leave, Like my father couldn't get out of bed at the end, and I thought all he would ever want to do is be able to get out of bed.

And here I am getting up walking going about my life.

You know, he couldn't eat, and I would feel bad, like I don't even want to eat in front of him.

This is awful.

I mean it's but.

It's so it's so layered, it's it's so emotionally layered and physically taxing that Yeah, you don't really know until you've done it, but it can wear a person out.

I just was wondering, like, did you have those moments where you thought, what have I done?

Or did you like, do you truly wonder would you ever be able to go back to your life or your career again, because looking back, you know that's where you want it to be.

Yeah, and I don't.

I think I was very very aware of the limited time I had with him, Like I was given a timeline.

Yeah, and every day you wake up, you go, okay, we're one day closer.

You know, we're with other diseases, you're not necessarily given that kind of timeline.

You know.

Yes, times with cancer they can say this person is three to six months whatever.

They were very definitive and they said, first you will start losing his gait, Then he's going to start losing his speech, Then he's going to start losing his motor functions.

Of his arms, that he's going to start losing just everything.

So every day as I saw it progress, it was like I was watching a clock that was just ticking and saying, this is it, you know what I mean.

So during all that, were you able to find the support that you needed?

Well?

No, not really, And I think because I didn't realize I needed support, you know what I mean.

I wasn't reaching out for support.

It was me and my mom, My sister, and my brother would come in when they could, but you know, as me and my mom taking care of him.

Mostly we had doctors come to the house.

I would have all the doctors come there three times a day.

There's a doctor.

Each doctor came once a day, but there were three of them, and no, I just didn't.

It's such a personal journey for everyone.

Everyone's journey as a caretaker is a caregiver is so personal depending on who it is you are caregiving for, do you know what I mean?

Yeah, and their place in your life.

And I mean when it's the dad, especially for girls, and then even the mom, Like you know, I have a kind of a I had a you know that father daughter connection, you know, unbreakable, undeniable at the end of the day, nothing else mattered.

But with my mom it feels a little different.

It has felt all my life a little different, our relationship a little bit more complicated, a little bit more troubling for me.

But now as I'm seeing her reach this point, this phase in her life, it's like, it's as if all that bullshit, anything I ever had conflicting feelings.

About matters don't matter.

All that matters is sharing the moments that you can, being patient like a saint.

Yeah.

M hmm.

And I don't know where that comes from, but it comes.

It comes, yeah, and it's I don't I think it's in us.

And I think you're right.

Any mother daughter relationship, for most of them, at least the ones I know, are always complicated and far more complicated than the father daughter or that one's just feels easier.

Usually it's if you have a relationship with your dad.

Exactly, or the mother's son.

It's always yeah, you know, it's being a different gender, I think is what is I think the mother daughter is because we are so similar.

Because I think as a mother, you see the things in you that you wish were different about you, and you don't want that to happen to your child, and the way it comes out sometimes is crazy and you're like, why are you attacking me?

Like I'm not attacking you.

Yeah, there's and there's sensitivities there that you got.

It's really tricky.

It's so true.

It's so true.

Yeah, but died also with the patients.

At the end of the day, like you said, they are our parents.

They gave us life, whatever they their lationship is.

They got us here and we're all going to eventually leave.

And all this stuff that is that is all this extraneous stuff that we fill our lives with, with TV, with movies, with music, with whatever you choose as you're given, like your chosen path in life.

Many times is just filler.

It's just filling up the time and the space while we are all here before we go somewhere else.

And the important stuff, like the most important stuff, we often put at the bottom of the list and we think, you know, I was thinking that with my dad.

I thought, who care?

Am I going to be on my deathbed one day and say, Gosh, I wish I'd done one more show.

No, oh, I wish I'd gone to the Oscars one more time.

Who cares?

I'm gonna be thinking, I wish I was there for my mom, my dad, the people that I loved so deeply.

You know, Yeah, looking back, what would you say, truly surprised you about the experience where they're like unexpected moments of humor that you can remember times when you could just feel the grace.

Yeah, time was standing still somehow, you know, I can wild.

That's why I say something about it.

And until you are in this position, you don't understand really quite what I'm saying, But anyone who's experienced this will say, yes, she's right.

There is something so beautiful and so peaceful about being able to be there with someone as they lose their life.

It sounds crazy, but I'm telling you there's something about that that is like, at that moment, you're as close to Heaven as you're ever going to be on this planet.

It is wild, and it is it's a gift.

I think it's a gift, and I feel blessed that I was able to be there for him and to be there to experience that, you know, and as sad as it is, at the same time, there was there was humor in it too, Like you know, you think he didn't know he was dying.

He knew, like, you know what I mean, even though I would I'd be like, Dad, you could be you could be in that one percent or in that two percent.

Don't listen to the doctors.

I was like, how do we know that you aren't that two percent that's going to come out of this.

I was always very just really positive, and I never let him see me cry.

I would leave the room, but no, we have this, Dad, come on, let's go and look.

The truth is.

We all knew.

You know.

There are times where he would laugh because he like he would try to lift something and fall out of his hand and be like just kind of like and we just laugh, like, okay, well this is where we are in life.

There were also times that were deeply profound.

It's like, some of the most profound moments and the most profound things that my father was ever able to tell me was when he could barely talk anymore, which is also in itself so wild to think about.

Like one day we were on our way to him, we were going to physical therapy, and I was driving him, and you know, I got to take him out of the bed.

The als Association would give us a thing called the hoist.

I would take him out of the bed with the hoist and put him in the wheelchair and put him in the car.

You know, it was very labor intensive when you're taking care of someone with als.

So I was driving him to physical therapy and a commercial income on the radio about Fiji, come visit Fiji and blah blah blah, and just making it sound so amazing and beautiful.

And I said, you know what, I'd like to go to Fiji someday.

I'd like to do that someday.

And this is at a point where his speech had really progressed to a place where he was not having He was having a very difficult time speaking at all.

So it took him about five minutes literally to get out the words that he said.

But when he said them, it has stuck with me so deeply.

He said to me, not someday to day.

And I said, Dad, today I'm driving you to the what do you mean today?

Of course I can't go to day.

And he said again, not someday to day.

And he said, look at me, Look at me.

He said, Tomorrow's not a promise.

And so I turned and again like I said, I would never cry in front of him and here I am, no, I'm stuck.

I'm in a car and I'm.

Like, oh my gosh, I'm trying so hard not to cry.

And I said, you're right, Dad, not someday to day.

Yeah, And he kept saying, look at me, because I mean, who would have in their wildest dream.

At sixty five is when he started to slow, and sixty eight is when they diagnosed him.

By seventy one he had passed.

But it's like he was so vibrant, Jenny, like he was like the pied piper, Like I laugh when I think about it.

I know he's here.

I know you're here, Dad.

He walk in a room.

Everybody loved him.

He just had this energy.

It was so funny.

He just had this energy where he just attracted random people at all times.

Say to my mom, how are you married to this man?

We can't walk down the strees like the mayor.

Everybody just wanted to talk to.

And so to see somebody that's so vibrant, so full of a life, that does anyone lose all of this the motor skills, etc.

And to really slip so much as sad, but to see someone who is almost in your brain can't.

Die, right, It's like your hero, You're everything.

Yeah, I mean I'm crying because I can remember it's probably over fifteen years ago.

I don't try not to keep track.

But when my dad passed away.

It's just and it's grief is a funny thing.

It's not something that ever goes away.

It's just something that changes.

It's just ebbs and flows and it changes.

And you think you're fine, and then you're in a car and you hear a song and suddenly you are bawling, or you see something that only you and your dad or you and your loved one used to talk about, and you go, oh my gosh, and it just hits you right in the heart, you know.

Yeah, And I think that's a testament to how deeply we can love someone, Like, how fortunate are we that we loved someone so so deeply that it literally brings you to your knees when they're not here anymore.

I mean, I think that in itself is beautiful.

Yeah.

How did the role of being his caregiver change your definition of love and success?

Well, I think my definition of love became It was already unconditional, but at this point it was like there is love at its at its purest form, is simply just all all of the feelings and everything you have for a human, all of it, the good, the bad, the ugly, the difficult.

Being able to be there for a human at such a raw level is like that.

There's no deeper love than that.

I mean it is, it is some of the honestly like, that is the deepest love I've ever experienced in my life.

Ever.

It has success success.

It changed my idea of success because success then became it wasn't what I had, you know, always like envisioned and what I was chasing so long, and what I was accomplishing.

Success became for me.

Love of family, love of self, peace, serenity, laying my head down at night and feeling like I was good, Like I was good, like I was loved, and that I loved others and I did the best I could, and that every day I tried to be better than I was yesterday, like and not comparing myself or my accomplishments to anyone else except my own.

And that became my success.

Where I was like, does matter to me?

I don't care into perspective, I just don't care.

I would have literally they will remain nameless.

I love them very much because they are my dear friends.

But they would call me and take things personally, like why is that one doing that and you're not, And I'd say, why do you care?

If I don't care?

We talk a lot about it on this show show about choosing yourself, what that looks like, and how that can have a positive impact on our lives, just you know, learning to love ourselves and choose ourselves.

And when we look at your story, we can for sure see the sacrifices that you made.

But I wonder, do you feel like I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this.

Do you feel like caregiving was in a way a form of you choosing you?

Yeah?

I do, I do.

It wasn't a form of me choosing me and caregiving him because I think caregiving for him because I felt like it's so strange, But I feel like that was, aside from having my child, the best thing I've ever done in my life, you know, And I felt like I felt it's strange, like I had more purpose caring for my dad that I'd had in anything else in my career or in my life, aside from becoming a mother way more purpose, and I thought, this is what it's about, Like, this is is heavy and is raw and is awful and painful.

Is this is right now?

This is what life is, and this is what we're here to do.

We're here to take care of one another, whoever that is in your life.

Yeah, I was going to ask you how it changed your sense of purpose?

What about like looking forward about like what kind of work do you want to do now that you know what you know?

Well?

I feel like I want to do something that look I always also after entertainment tonight, then came again home and family fell into my lap, just literally fell into my laps, and I said, they're doing the show.

Go over there?

Said what wait?

Huh?

So I go over there and then suddenly I'm doing this show that is bringing so much joy to people.

And Jenny, when I tell you, I felt like I had fallen into this place and won the lottery with that show, because that's the joy that I was able to bring someone at home and I say, I talk a lot about the noise.

There's so much noise, and there's so much noise pollution, and I don't want to be part of it.

And a lot of the stuff I'd done leading up to then, there's a lot of noise, pollution, no disrespect to any of it, but the entertainment news and the you know, the fashion police and this it's noise.

It's all so much noise.

Home and family was like, just like, oh, let's make something nice that you can make for your family at home.

Let's make it.

Let me show you how you can do this.

Let's have doctors on that are going to help you live your better life.

How can I make the person at home feel good about who they are?

And you know what I'm speaking completely honestly.

I felt that from you when you found that job and when you were doing it, I could feel just you your radiated.

I just loved it.

I loved it, and I feel like my dad, I really believe it.

Dad made that happen because I think he knew like that it was for my soul a way that I was able to do what I love but also do it in a way where I can give back to people.

Because at the end of the day, it wasn't that show was not about me or any of the people on it.

It was about how can somebody watch this?

Turn it off?

And then say, well, I feel better about myself today.

I have a new you know, feeling of energy here.

Yeah.

I love inspired exactly.

And you know it goes back to always wanting to trying to help one another.

And if there's anything I can do to continue in that path, that's what I definitely those are the projects that I want to work on.

Now understood, You've reminded us that sometimes choosing ourselves means choosing the people we love.

So thank you so much for sharing your strength and your vulnerability and your tears with me, and you know what this time has been like for you.

But before we go, I have to ask you the question that I always ask everyone, Debbie Matinopolis, what was your last I choose me moment?

My last I Choose me moment?

Wow?

I have them quite a bit, Jenny.

I know that's good.

Our listeners need to hear that from people.

I have to tell you I have them a lot.

I got invited to one of the Games of the World series here in Los Angeles and very very good seats and I said no.

But I said no because I was choosing me in a way that I know any other like people would be like, are you crazy, Yes and no, because I know that I was going to push myself in a way that it was going to be way too much for me.

I was going to be overextended.

However, also going in my brain is gosh, this person thought of me to giving the tickets.

Oh my gosh, they went out of the way.

These tickets are so expensive.

You're so ungrateful.

I can't believe you're doing this.

This person really wants you to go.

They're begging you know what I mean.

So all that inner dialogue, that inner dialogue that's like, you know that we can't sometimes stop if it wants you to choose somebody else, Yeah, choose because you're going to let them down.

You're gonna let them down.

You're awful, like we're our worst critic.

And I'm like, oh my gosh, and I'm thinking, gosh, what I sound selfish?

Now?

This is crazy again.

This person is could have given it to anybody else.

And I just I was like, I don't care, I can't.

I got to stop that voice and I just have to know my limits and thank you, but no, I'm not going to go.

Sometimes that know is the most powerful Yeah.

I think is choosing yourself a lot of times.

And that's hard.

It can be really hard.

Like you said, those voices that want us to continue people pleasing and want us to continue people, you know, putting people before ourselves.

There's a time and a place.

Yeah, but exactly.

It's good to hear that you found that strength and that clarity.

They know a lot more than I do too.

Yeah.

You know, what was that book, The Year of Yes or something.

I'm like, the Year of No.

You just write that book.

Oh my gosh.

Okay, So coming later this week, everybody, Debbie is going to share her best tools and takeaways for caregivers everywhere.

You don't want to miss it.

Thank you so much, Debbie.

Thank you, Jenny.

It's so good to see you, my friend.

Good to see you.

Love you, Love you too,