Defying the Odds: Resilience Through Adversity with Dr. Gloria Vanderhorst

When Not Yet Becomes Right Now (00:00)
Welcome to When Not Yet Becomes Right Now, the podcast where we dive deep into the moments of transformation, the times when not yet shifts into right now and everything changes. I'm your host, Jen Ginty, and this podcast is all about those pivotal moments in our life journeys. You know the ones, when the hesitation fades, when we take that first step, even if it feels like a leap. It's in these moments that growth and healing begins. Each episode will explore stories of resilience,

moments of clarity, and the sparks that ignite real change. From personal experiences to expert insights, we'll uncover how people navigate the complex journey we call life and come out stronger on the other side. Whether you're searching for that spark in your own life or just curious about how change unfolds for others, you're in the right place. We'll discuss the ups and downs, the breakthroughs and setbacks, and how to embrace the right now, even when it feels out of reach. Because sometimes,

The hardest part of the journey is realizing that the moment you've been waiting for has already arrived. So take a deep breath, settle in, and let's get started.

Jen (01:09)
Hello and welcome to When Not Yet Becomes Right Now. Today's guest is someone who knows firsthand what it means to defy the odds and turn life's toughest challenges into purpose-driven passion. Dr. Gloria Vanderhorst was born with spina bifida and doctors warned her parents she might never walk, but she did at age three and she hasn't slowed down since.

Despite medical barriers, social doubts, and even a life altering accident later in life that left her in a wheelchair, Gloria earned her PhD in psychology, raised a daughter against all medical expectations, and built a decades long career dedicated to healing, growth, and emotional resilience. In her private practice, she began by working with preschool boys, but quickly saw the deeper emotional needs of the fathers raising them.

That insight launched her into powerful work helping men and boys reclaim their full emotional range and rewrite generational patterns. Her bestselling book, Read, Reflect, Respond, the three Rs of Growth and Change guides readers through understanding how our earliest experience shape us, often without us even realizing it, and offers a path toward healing and transformation. Welcome, Gloria.

Gloria Vanderhorst (02:31)
Thank you so much. That introduction, when you talked about my daughter and being pregnant brought tears to my eyes. So I have to start there, right?

Jen (02:46)
Well, you

are a woman who has defied all odds.

Gloria Vanderhorst (02:50)
I have defied all odds. It's just, it is just a miracle, really.

Jen (02:53)
Yes, absolutely.

It is. So

let's get into it. What is your origin story?

Gloria Vanderhorst (03:06)
Well, ⁓ my mother was, my mother was a nurse, a very competent, successful nurse. She's long gone now, But she was pregnant with a boy and that boy died in utero. She gave birth to that boy with the help of my father.

My father buried that boy in the backyard. And then they immediately proceeded to get pregnant again. And they got pregnant with me. So think about it. My mother was pregnant. That puts a drain, a strain on your body.

she got immediately pregnant again and actually didn't make kind of any changes in the way that she, you know, nurtured herself or related to nutrition. And so she didn't take the right medications, the right things, the right vitamins, if you will.

right, to facilitate the birth of this next child. And she was in labor for two days, right? This is 1946, right? It's a completely different birth experience. Nobody is in the room. Fathers are not allowed in. And you stay in labor.

as long as it takes, right? And so she gave birth to me. They whisked me away. She never saw me. And they never told her anything about me. And of course, after two days of labor, she's exhausted, right? So they just kind of take care of her, make sure that she gets rest. it...

This is a time when there were not individual birth rooms. You are in a large room, curtains between other mothers in beds all along. You're in a ward. And they bring the babies the next morning. So they bring all the babies. My mother unwraps me and starts screaming for the doctor.

Right? I have an open spine. Lumbar two, three, four, not closed. Right? An open spine. And she knew nothing about that. I mean, think of the emotional experience of unwrapping your baby. You're looking forward to this beautiful new person. Right? And...

It's a tragedy. All right, this person is hurt. This person is injured. This person has a problem. So she starts screaming for the doctor and the nurse. And that's my initial experience of my mother. So think about that, right?

Jen (06:44)
Yeah.

People don't think about that at all, what their very first experience is with their mother.

Gloria Vanderhorst (06:51)
done.

They don't think about that, right? But we know that children come into the world brilliant in terms of emotional intelligence. That's their survival skill. We can't walk, we can't talk, but we can read the environment. We can read every emotion that exists in the world around us with pinpoint accuracy.

All right, we are brilliant in terms of processing feelings. And so it's tragic that there was no preparation for her, which then led to this traumatic experience for me of mother screaming at the first time that she interacts with me.

⁓ It's a birth story that is worth telling because the process then of my parents relating to me in 1946, they had a choice between taking me home and leaving me in the hospital.

So they could have abandoned me. They didn't. And fortunately, my mother was a nurse. So it was just right up her alley to take care of me. And she did that with great efficiency and provided the practical care that I need. And my father provided the emotional care.

that I need. And so that's my beginning story. That's where I start. And I think that piece is a very tender, loving, supportive experience once we get past the immediate trauma.

and the immediate trauma makes perfect sense. Any mother should have been screaming at that result.

Jen (09:28)
It does.

It's so difficult to look back and realize the way that medicine worked back then is it was, it feels like it was more along the lines of let's get this done rather than let's help these people.

Gloria Vanderhorst (09:46)
Mm-hmm.

Right,

Yeah, it was just much more, know, this is happening. We'll kind of stay connected to the process. And they didn't have a lot of resources. If you really look at it, the resources are tremendously limited and they didn't have a lot of awareness of how

powerful and important it is to have both mother and father in the birth room and to go through that process together. It's a real bonding process, but they weren't aware of that. They didn't apply that.

Jen (10:36)
Wow, so you go home with your parents and they're telling you that you may not walk ever, but amazingly, by three years old.

Gloria Vanderhorst (10:40)
Mm-hmm.

Right. That's right. But amazingly, at

three, so think of it, all right? So you have an infant, right? And you end up carrying this child around for three years, You make multiple efforts to facilitate standing.

Jen (10:57)
I've had a few.

Gloria Vanderhorst (11:13)
moving, strengthening, And somehow, miraculously, at three years of age, I start walking.

it is miraculous, right? I mean, it's beautiful. And from that point forward, I function, I look, I experience completely normal.

Jen (11:28)
Yes.

That's beautiful.

Gloria Vanderhorst (11:45)
It is beautiful. It is absolutely beautiful. And I'm so grateful to the support of my parents and the persistence and the belief that I could. It takes the belief that I could. Otherwise, they wouldn't be kind of ⁓ attempting. They wouldn't be giving opportunities. They wouldn't.

Jen (11:46)
Yeah, it is.

Yes.

Gloria Vanderhorst (12:14)
be hoping, right?

Jen (12:16)
And

it's so easy to fall into a victim mentality. think there are, unfortunately, there are a lot of parents out there that fall to the, I'm a victim of what happened and therefore I'm unable to give to my child.

Gloria Vanderhorst (12:31)
Right, right. And you know, fortunately, these two people from farm country, my parents were the first ones to leave the farm and come into the city. My mother was warned that the city was dangerous. And within a few weeks, she would return to the farm. And she never did.

Jen (12:53)
No.

Your mother is a very strong, powerful woman. I can't imagine that you would back down from the city.

Gloria Vanderhorst (13:06)
She would not back down. She was the youngest of I think 12 of them. But she had courage. And so she would take on anything.

Jen (13:11)
Wow.

Yeah, absolutely.

So

your life is now on a roll. It's not stopping. What happens next for you? College?

Gloria Vanderhorst (13:24)
Yeah,

College, graduate school, I loved education. I loved learning. I still love learning. I love learning and writing. I do a blog ⁓ every week. I just, you know, I love educating others and educating myself. So I get my PhD. I fall in love with a wonderful man that I am still married to.

it is beautiful. ⁓ and we are married for seven years before. ⁓ I say, I would like to have a child. Now I grew up with my mother telling me I could never have a child. Right? I mean, that was her message. You're not capable of.

Jen (14:01)
That's beautiful in itself.

Gloria Vanderhorst (14:28)
you can't have a child. So after being married for a while and longing for a child, I decided, let me do research. I mean, that's my story. Mother tells me I can't, but let me do research. And so we started visiting different obstetricians, And

We must have gone through, I think the guy we ended up with was number six. A lot of research, Before this very effective, really bright obstetrician said, I think we can do that, I'm willing.

Jen (15:05)
So a lot to sift through.

Gloria Vanderhorst (15:25)
to take the two of you on. We can do that. So we got pregnant. We had a perfect, physically perfect, beautiful baby. Just wonderful person who is now a mature adult. Still a wonderful person.

But the process of that actually terrified my parents. They were constantly afraid that carrying a pregnancy would end up damaging that part of my spine back that didn't exist and would then leave me without the capability

to walk. That did not happen. Praise God that did not happen. And we had a wonderful time raising our daughter. So I am completely grateful for that physical physician, for his support, ⁓ for his

Jen (16:22)
Yes.

Gloria Vanderhorst (16:46)
confidence and for my husband's confidence because it was really scary for him too.

Jen (16:54)
can imagine. And you bring up a very good point. ⁓ We don't have to take the advice or whatever it is from the very first person that you see, the very first physician you see. If something doesn't work for you, it doesn't mean that you can't do something. ⁓ You tried and tried again and you found a empathetic and kind and

Gloria Vanderhorst (17:23)
Right?

Jen (17:24)
intelligent physician to guide you through this.

Gloria Vanderhorst (17:30)
Yeah, my message would be, you know, if you have a goal, don't give up at number one. Right? If number one tells you, that's crazy. You can't do that. You shouldn't do that. It's dangerous to do that. I mean, every entrepreneur in the world has come against that message.

Don't do that, that's stupid, that'll never work, you can't make money at that. Right? Every entrepreneur has come against that wall. Walls can be made of tissue paper. Just walk through, see what's on the other side.

Jen (17:56)
Yes.

Yes.

That's the truth.

Gloria Vanderhorst (18:19)
Yeah, it's very important that you figure out what is in your heart. What do you want to commit yourself to? And then just do it.

Jen (18:20)
100%.

Yeah. So did you start your private practice after birth or before birth?

Gloria Vanderhorst (18:47)
Let's see. ⁓ When my daughter was born, I was an academic at that time. I was a professor. And after getting tenure, which is a seven year process, I decided I would much rather do independent practice than do the teaching process.

Jen (18:53)
Okay.

Gloria Vanderhorst (19:14)
I wanted to teach people one on one. And so I started my private practice seeing preschool boys. This is a great story. All right. I had a friend who was the director of a preschool. And of course, most preschools, I would say all preschools probably, are run by females. Right? Now boys,

Jen (19:25)
I love that.

Gloria Vanderhorst (19:44)
are more energy filled, more active, ⁓ and so preschool teachers tend to pick out the boys as problems. So I started evaluating preschool boys at the time for attention deficit disorder and loved it.

It was just a great experience to interact with all of these little boys. But the bonus was that the fathers of these boys who had never been diagnosed, identified, treated in any way for attention deficit started to put themselves on my calendar. So I had a full calendar.

Jen (20:39)
That's great.

Gloria Vanderhorst (20:41)
of adult males looking to discover themselves.

Jen (20:43)
Wow.

You are so important in this and the practitioners who choose to work with this demographic are truly saints as far as I'm concerned. My first son, he had a lot of emotional ⁓ issues right when he was born. ⁓ It was a difficult pregnancy and it was a difficult

Gloria Vanderhorst (21:11)
Mm-hmm.

Jen (21:17)
time in the beginning. And ⁓ he was that kid. He was that kid in preschool. And he was the one who was thrown out of daycare, out of two different daycares. And he was the one that was slippery and would get out of the preschool. Escape? Yep. He was the escapist. He was the biter.

Gloria Vanderhorst (21:18)
Mm-hmm.

in the preschool, right?

Mm-hmm.

I know this boy.

Mm-hmm.

Jen (21:46)
and at four, he was diagnosed with Asperger's and ADHD. And this was 2008 or nine. you you'd think that it was, that they knew what they were doing at that point, but it still was so difficult and hard to cope with not knowing.

Gloria Vanderhorst (22:16)
Right.

Jen (22:16)
the best way to take care of your child. And also yourself, so I, with my complex PTSD, this caused me so much, so much pain, right?

Gloria Vanderhorst (22:27)
Absolutely. It's it's true. It's real

trauma and so many relationships, marriage relationships break up over this because they cannot emotionally support each other. It's tragic.

Jen (22:37)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it's true.

Yeah. So you found that you were treating both son and father?

Gloria Vanderhorst (22:51)
and father, which was fabulous. I learned so much about men and boys and about how our culture relates to them and about how kind of the entire history of the world has shaped men and we actually require them to shut off their emotions.

Boys are born, believe it or not, with a broader range of emotional expression than females. Yep, let me say it again. Boys come into the world with a broader range of emotional expression than girls do. It is, but ⁓ by and large, both boys and girls in their

Jen (23:41)
That's fascinating.

Gloria Vanderhorst (23:50)
early stages are interacting most of the time with women. Right? So women are comfortable with an emotional range that is female. They're not as comfortable with an emotional range that goes higher than the female or lower than the female. And so as mothers interact with boys, they actually shape

their emotional reactivity to be narrower than what is natural for a boy. And then of course the culture layers on this male that any emotions on the sensitive, tender end of the spectrum should be eliminated. All right.

Jen (24:46)
It's a tragedy.

Gloria Vanderhorst (24:47)
We

do that, I think, for a very rational reason, right? We have used men to defend the culture from caveman forward, right? The caveman gets a spear, goes out to hunt because mother can't. She's in the cave nursing the infants. And so the man can't be squeamish.

Right? He can't be sensitive. He has to be brave and aggressive. And we've just carried that forward. Logically, it makes sense that we would. But I would say in the current environment, in the current culture, we don't need to send men out in that way. Right? We've developed a process for annihilating each other by pushing a button.

right? In a cubicle someplace. So it is time for us to give men the opportunity to experience the full range of emotional expression.

Jen (26:03)
Yeah, it really is the tragedy, the repression. And it's hard to watch. ⁓ Because of the way that I grew up, I so much wanted to break the generational trauma and really give my son something that I never felt, which was love.

Gloria Vanderhorst (26:06)
Yeah, it is.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that is so powerful. And just that conscious decision that I am going to give to this son, the things that traditionally we have not given to boys, right? That sense of love, acceptance, and the range of feeling. It's all, you know, ⁓

It's all right to cry. All right? There is a ⁓ Rosie Greer ⁓ recording on the internet that you can hunt up. Rosie Greer was a huge football player, right? ⁓ Just a huge masculine football player. And he sings, It's All Right to Cry. It's just, it's very tender. It's a...

Jen (27:17)
⁓ I definitely want to hear that.

Gloria Vanderhorst (27:22)
horrible video because it's so old. But it's still kind of just a beautiful experience to see, you know, a big hulking male singing, It's Alright To

Jen (27:43)
that is. And through your work with the fathers and sons, did you decide because you have been on the other side, the academia side of things, was there something that clicked with you that you wanted to create?

Gloria Vanderhorst (28:02)
I am in the process of creating a book for fathers about raising boys. All right? And it's kind of like how not to mess up raising your boy. Air Quotes. And that will be out within the next six months. Yeah.

Jen (28:29)
fantastic.

I can't wait. That's wonderful. So let's move forward in your life. Now I know that throughout, you know, you were raising your child, your daughter, and something terrible happened to you, unfortunately.

Gloria Vanderhorst (28:50)
It did. as a function of being a psychologist, right, we go to continuing education workshops. And I was at a hotel for one of these workshops. And at that point, ⁓ I was moving around with a walker.

and I was going up a handicap ramp and one of the hotel workers had a stack of chairs that he ran up the handicap ramp without checking to see if anyone was on the ramp and rammed into me and damaged the nerves in that sensitive area where the spina bifida is and

landed me in a wheelchair. So that's how I function at this point is moving around in a wheelchair. It doesn't stop my thinking.

Jen (29:58)
But again, this never slows Gloria down.

Gloria Vanderhorst (30:02)
It

never slows me down. Doesn't stop my brain, just stops my body. Maybe in some ways it has spurred me to be more focused on communicating the things that I believe in, really making sure that I am

Jen (30:05)
You triumph in so many ways.

You're a triumph.

Gloria Vanderhorst (30:31)
working with couples and families to help them improve the way that they build their families and their relationships. It just increases the passion. It has not stopped me.

Jen (30:48)
Yes. And I think that is a testimonial to your grit and having this nothing can hold me back attitude in life. Things get thrown at you, Gloria, and you seem to just roll into a new role, right?

Gloria Vanderhorst (31:03)
Mm-hmm. Right.

I'm gonna ⁓

punch through. I'm gonna keep going.

Jen (31:15)
Right, right, right.

So the book that you wrote, Read, Reflect, Respond, The Three R's of Growth and Change, how did this come about?

Gloria Vanderhorst (31:30)
So I started kind of maybe about three years ago, for some reason, I started writing blogs, single page, and just pushing them out there. And then it seemed that they just kept accumulating and accumulating and accumulating until one day I said, well, why don't I put these together?

into a book that people can use to challenge themselves to think, to reflect, to grow. Right? We grow often in response to reading something that challenges us. Right? We start thinking.

We ask ourselves questions. We share it with somebody else. So I decided, okay, I'm gonna collect 52 of these. So there's one a week. And the interesting part about this book that's very different from any other journal book is that the facing page is blank. Most facing pages have stimulating questions and lines for you to write on.

Okay, I know, all right, that we come into the world with knowledge that is not programmed in language.

right? And so I want people to be able to tap into that early knowledge as well as their current knowledge. So the facing page has a couple of stimulating questions, but it's blank. You can scribble on it, you can draw on it, you can write words on it, if you want to tear it, right?

cut it up in some way, feel free. You will run the blog on the other side. But you can glue it back together, tape it back together, and then go at it again. So I want people to be able to access kind of early pieces of themselves because when you can do that, you can grow.

Jen (33:45)
No!

That's true.

Gloria Vanderhorst (34:11)
it is, it's absolutely true.

Jen (34:15)
So when did you put this book out?

Gloria Vanderhorst (34:19)
So let's see, I published this book maybe about three months ago at this point. Yes, it's very fresh.

Jen (34:27)
Okay, so fresh. Fresh and new. I can't

wait for people to find it.

Gloria Vanderhorst (34:34)
It's

available on Amazon, so just go there, buy one. I'll show you what its cover looks like. All right, so here's its cover. It's a wonderful cover, and I have decided that I'm going to do it again because I'm constantly sending out these blogs. So I'm deciding I'm going to collect 52 more of them.

Jen (34:41)
Yes, let's see it. Ooh, ooh, I love it. Absolutely love it.

Gloria Vanderhorst (35:02)
and publish that for next year so that it becomes an annual event.

Jen (35:09)
That's great, looking forward to it. So what advice would you give to someone who has been through these kinds of physical limitations that you were able to overcome and thrive?

Gloria Vanderhorst (35:30)
I think the key for any human being, whether it is physical, emotional, social, the key is keep going. Right? You with your son kept going. And as you do that, you grow, you learn, you get support.

And life changes, right? Things open up. So the key, think, for any human being is to decide. And it is a decision. You don't have to keep going. It truly is a decision to keep going. Take that next step. Move forward. Figure out what next.

whatever you're coping with, all right? Whatever emotional stress you have, whatever social difficulties you have, whatever physical difficulties you have, decide to keep going.

Jen (36:46)
And I like your idea of the tissue wall because I think when people come up against these kind of limitations, the wall feels much harder than that to break through.

Gloria Vanderhorst (37:00)
Yeah, and the truth of the matter is that every one of the walls that we come up against is made of tissue paper, right? It looks like it's gonna stop you, but it will not stop you if you keep going.

Jen (37:19)
Yeah, that's beautiful. So where can we find you, Gloria?

Gloria Vanderhorst (37:25)
Well, you can find me on my website, which is www.drvanderhorst.com, which is www.drvanderhorst.com. And my blog is on Substack and MailChimp. So you can find those there. And you can get the book on Amazon.

Jen (37:52)
And all of that will be in the show notes. And I highly recommend you check these out because Dr. Vanderhorst has so much wisdom to share and she's done a beautiful job of it.

Gloria Vanderhorst (38:06)
And I would love to talk with anyone, work with anyone. I am open and available.

Jen (38:15)
Thank you. I truly appreciate that and I know my listeners will as well. Thank you again, Gloria.

Gloria Vanderhorst (38:23)
You

are welcome. I have loved talking with you. It's so easy.

Jen (38:27)
Yes, me too.

You have so much wisdom and it's so beautiful that you share it with the world. Thank you.

Gloria Vanderhorst (38:34)
Thank you.

When Not Yet Becomes Right Now (38:39)
Thank you for joining us for this episode of the podcast. This show is produced by Phoenix Freed LLC, and I'm your producer, Jen Ginty We hope you found today's conversation insightful and inspiring. If you have a story of your own about when a not yet moment became a right now, we encourage you to reach out and share it. You can find more information about being a guest on our show at whennotyetbecomesrightnow.com. Remember, you are not alone on your journey, whether it's a journey of healing,

growth or transformation. Every story matters. Thank you for listening and we'll catch you next time with another inspiring episode.