Motherhood, Caregiving and Courage with Julie Barth

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. I'm your host Jen Ginty and today we have an incredible guest on. Today's guest is Julie Barth, a mother of six, professional writer and author of Notes from a Blackberry, From Blackberries to Thorns and the Upcoming From Thorns to Blossoms. Julie's storytelling is as real as life itself, shaped by love, loss and resilience.

She's also the founder and CEO of the Colin James Barth Outreach, a nonprofit supporting women led households in crisis. Through her writing and advocacy, empowers others to face life's hardest moments with courage, resourcefulness and unapologetic self-worth. Welcome, Julie. Yes, thank you for coming on the show. So.

Julie Barth (01:40)
Hi Jen, thanks for having me.

Jen (02:03)
Let's get into your

story. What is your origin story?

Julie Barth (02:07)
⁓ So, you when you asked where I wanted to start, it's, you know, it's been a long one, as anyone's life has been. I married my grammar school sweetheart ⁓ about, well, it would have been 25 years ago now. But we met in fourth grade, and he ended up being my first kiss in sixth grade. And. ⁓

We took time off, we went through middle school and high school and then off to college and parted ways. And I met back up with them in a small town bar, well actually in downtown Chicago, but everything feels small when you go downtown for school. saw them there and from that moment on, it was like I had found kind of the piece of me that I hadn't known was missed. we...

We moved in together, we had my first son, and at that point we decided it was time to move back to the suburbs. And so we ended up moving back to the very place that we both met and grew up in and started just building a life there and thought it was time to expand our family. We had two miscarriages, which were difficult early on. I was still in my 20s. And then I got pregnant with my daughter Tatum.

Like right out the gate, I was extremely nervous just after having the two miscarriages, but it just was like, she wasn't growing. You know, I went in at six weeks and they were like, congratulations, you're six weeks pregnant. And then 10 weeks, congratulations, you're six weeks pregnant. And by 12 weeks, ⁓ I just kind of, you you could brush off instrument error until a certain point. And then I was like, I just felt like something was wrong. So it led to probably eight months of testing and

different diagnoses that could or couldn't be. And it was in 2001, so the technology was not all that fantastic. There was no Google. I would say probably thank God, because I probably would have made myself crazy. But we didn't know. She was perfectly formed. I had an amniocentesis, everything looked fine. But when she came out, she was only three pounds. we thought, she was early, she was about two weeks early, but we thought that she was more like five or six.

the people that delivered her just weren't prepared for it. And right away, we were whisked away to the NICU downtown Chicago. honestly, I don't think anyone expected her to make it through the night. They used the wrong size innovation tube and they messed up her throat. And it really just led to a comedy of errors, but nothing funny about it that led to a trache, that led to us going from hospital hospital, probably until she was about

three or four. And, you we were at big hospitals like Mayo Clinic and Children's Memorial and nobody knew what was going on. You know, they could, they, you know, we tried to fix what was, what we could see at that moment, but no one knew globally until when she was about three, people started coming up to me and saying like, that your daughter on the Discovery Channel? And I was completely unaware of what they were talking about. It wasn't just one, it was like two or three people.

when finally my best friend called and she said, I know what Tatum has. And I was like, well, good for you. Cause you know, I have all these specialists that I've seen and no one else does. And she said, he has something called primordial dwarfism. So I looked her up and popped Tatum and all, you know, picture that looked exactly like her, ⁓ her history could be explained through this one, you know, definition of what it was and what it did. ⁓ so at the age of about four or five, we kind of,

We knew what she had. ⁓ We knew that she's going to be a little person. And she was doing so much better though. And things were starting to take off and life was getting back to normal. So true to me, we had two more children. We added to our family because I had always wanted a big family. And I never wanted medical issues with Tatum to define who we were as a family and to stop me from achieving what I had always wanted and what I wanted for my children.

⁓ unfortunately when my youngest was six months, so we had four from ages 10 to six months. ⁓ Colin, who was my husband just wasn't acting like himself. He was a trader on Florida trade and they knew that trading was very stressful, but he just stopped. You just, you know, when you're best friends, somebody can just kind of tell something that's not right. So he had been backing for the disaster and we were supposed to have a huge Halloween party. I said to him, you know, just.

go to the doctor, figure out what's going on, don't come out until they tell you. And within four hours, we found out that he had a tumor, an inoperable tumor on his pancreas and several lesions on his liver. So about three days later, we found out he had, they said, they said he had two weeks to live, know, take him home, let him say goodbye to his children. And that's kind of the beginning of my origin story. He did end up living 16 months.

Jen (07:07)
us.

Julie Barth (07:16)
Some of them are good, some of them are bad. And then he ended up passing in 2009.

Jen (07:23)
Wow, you have a lot on your plate and you know that loss of someone who has been your best friend for so long and who has been helping you through this medical journey that you have with your daughter, I can only imagine is gut wrenching.

Julie Barth (07:26)
Yeah.

Yeah, it was, you know, I think that it's almost like being in a war-torn city. You know, we had been in the trenches together. yeah, that was it was it was a tough loss, you know, where if you're for people who have been in the NICU, you know, you're surrounded by all these families and everybody so you can smell the stress, you know, and I saw a tendency of couples to either kind of turn on one another, you know, throughout stress or like kind of

bind and fight against the world. And that's kind of what we always did. And, you know, suddenly I was fighting for him without him. So that was, you know, a very hard dynamic to switch out.

Jen (08:24)
Yes, absolutely. And I don't know ⁓ anything about your daughter's diagnosis. And I'm sure the listeners probably don't either, because it sounds like it's pretty rare. Is it rare?

Julie Barth (08:36)
You know, that's the thing about it is, you know, so we're talking about, we found out maybe 2003, 2004, and I mean, AOL probably told me just with one page. I do think it is rare, but there's no genetic marker for it. And they don't know why, and they don't know if it's hereditary. don't, you know, there's not much that they know about it. They just know that they define it by...

certain parameters. So the reason why she was never diagnosed is because she was always one inch taller than she should be. you know, there was, she was always just like outside of those parameters of whatever it defined someone as being. So I would say that, yes, it is rare, but I would also say that if she didn't have her rough start, you know, there's, there's a good chance that she might've just been really, really small. And they would have said, ⁓ cause I knew that I had a placental tear. They, know, they were trying to explain it as

She had a placental tear. She didn't get the right amount of cells. She had a rough start. So if she did not have the trach and all the medical stuff, there's a good chance she might have never been diagnosed with it. And I would believe that there's probably many people out there that, I believe it's a spectrum and they might not know they have it because there's no genetic marker. There shouldn't have been anything really, she's got some joint issues and some memory issues, but again, you don't know if you explain it by her very rough start.

because she's just in and out of hospitals for the first three years, either with pneumonias, I think I've lost her four or five times, ⁓ and a lot of medical malpractice that really did some damage. So we're not really sure what's what. So I think that at the time they said it was like one in a million. I will be honest with you, I don't really look it up anymore.

I figure it is what it is and I try to stay away from stuff like that because once I read something, get it stuck in my head. So, they had some pretty, pretty grim statistics for her, ⁓ you know, life expectancy. And ⁓ so ⁓ a lot of it is just that she's very small. Unfortunately, after Colin passed, which is the second part of the story, when we got, I moved out of where I was from.

And when we got to Charlotte, She came down with a rare connective tissue cancer. Now that one is very, very rare. So was not anything related to her beginning or her start or her condition. And it was, you know, we found it, which was miraculous that we found it. And the only...

way to treat it was removal. So she had to have her right side torso removed and her legs grafted to fulfill that space. Now that cancer, she was 13. The cancer that she had, there's only 30 cases of it in the United States a year. And 99 % of them are in geriatric patients. So Tatum's always on that like unbelievable scale. ⁓ Sometimes I say I can't.

I don't know she's the luckiest of the unlucky or the unluckiest of the lucky. ⁓ It just seems like she's always on the unbelievable scale of everything. Sometimes good, sometimes bad.

Jen (11:54)
And when your husband was going through his cancer, where was your daughter at at that time?

Julie Barth (12:03)
You know, it's funny to me the way that the universe kind of gives you a break sometimes. And she had just started doing much better. She was attending regular school, you know, albeit she had an assistant with her. But it was almost as if when his problems really ramped up, I guess we got a break. know, she started doing better. started, you know, maybe a lot of the focus was taken off of her too. So she was able to just...

I always had this mindset with her that got me into a lot of trouble. had nursing care and I had people in her life and they always, they wanted me to protect her in ways that I just thought, one of my biggest thing with her, really anyone is what use is it to preserve a life that you can't live? So she was never like, I wasn't supposed to go to pools. I wasn't supposed to take her, cause she could have drowned if she fell in.

I shouldn't have taken her into crowds because she could have gotten. And I guess like after watching her fight so hard to stay here and she did die so many times in front of me that I just came to a place where I stopped seeing her as something to be fixed or someone with complex medical needs or whatever they say nowadays. And I just saw her as Tatum and I wanted her life to be as rich as anybody else. So I fought very hard to not label her to

have her attend normal school, to be in her own grade, to be around kids her own age. And ironically, when she turned 21 and I had to have her declared disabled, I had jump through. And it took me like six months to get her ⁓ labeled as, you know, special needs or disabled. And I just thought that was so funny because I was like, you know, the stubborn me in my 30s who would not have her labeled, I had to fight to say, no, she's...

She's disabled. the flip flop of maturity, I guess, is a funny one to look at.

Jen (14:06)
It's so interesting labels can help and hinder so much throughout life, right? ⁓ When my son was going through mental health issues when he was young, ⁓ it was easier to label his, give him his diagnosis so that he could get these treatments, the things that he needed. But at the same time, you don't want to put that label on them because it's not them.

they're not their diagnosis. They're not what they've, what they were given. They are their individual selves. So yeah, labels are really complicated and messy, and I don't like them at all. ⁓ But yeah, they are.

Julie Barth (14:41)
Yeah. They are useful. mean,

yeah. And I have a son who I never, you he went to private school, so we never really had him tested. And Colin was extremely, his father was extremely dyslexic, like beyond.

And I knew that growing up, but I kind of forgot about it because he, you we were older and he was in the world and he was gone by the time I was having problems with my other son. to this day, I'm sure he has either dysgraphia, dyslexia, but he is never diagnosed. And some of that, think, you know, didn't limit him, others, I think like you, you know, he probably could have gotten better services or somebody to teach him how to navigate whatever his

is glitches where I was, you don't look at them as disability, they just look at them as glitches. They just have to figure out a different way to relate to the world ⁓ because they see the world in a different way that doesn't make it bad or, you know, less than it just makes it different. So.

Jen (15:46)
And I love that you put mama mode on for your daughter and said, wait, wait, wait, I'm not going to pull away from fun and amazing stuff that she could do because they say no, no, It's defying that no is actually something that's so powerful for you. You used your motherly intuition and knew what you could do and what your daughter could do. And I think that's really beautiful.

Julie Barth (16:00)
Yeah.

thank you. Yeah. And I had a lot of people, you know, I always, I always wanted Tatum to be all that she could be, but not, not for me. You know, I didn't, I've never really worried about what other people think of her or what she can do or what she can't, but I had a lot of nurses that would really

not like the way that I approach things. I would say, do not pick her up and carry her around. She was so tiny. was like eight. So everyone wanted to pick her up. That's your instinct. That's your natural response. And I would say, she can get up. She can move. And they would just get so like, they thought I was being mean or that I was being negligent or that I somehow had my head in the sand about what she was or what she could be. And I will tell you that anytime

someone said she couldn't do something, she did it. And she made every one of her milestones and all those women who thought I was being really cruel, all I could say was, you know, it's my job as a mom to make her be able to navigate the world in the best way that she can so that she can be independent. I never wanted her to not be able to do things, not because she couldn't, because other people told her she couldn't. So yeah, she's still a feisty little one.

Jen (17:28)
Well,

you've taught her resilience, right?

Julie Barth (17:29)
She

definitely is resilient, yes. I would say, well, and you know what? I think she's taught me resilience too. So I think it's a symbiotic relationship.

Jen (17:40)
it's beautiful. And I'm sure Tatum appreciates the mother that she has. And she sounds, she sounds like a wonderful woman.

Julie Barth (17:46)
Sometimes.

She is, she is, she's a self-taught artist and she's a go-getter. I mean, she sells stuff on Facebook and she's just very, ⁓ you know, she had not had the rough start. She'd probably be the head of a CEO company right now. She's just very, very witty and very creative. So yeah, she's an amazing girl.

Jen (18:11)
That's wonderful. Good for you, mama. You helped her along with that. You know, I think we don't give ourselves enough credit. have got our children, you know, with my now ex-husband and I used to say to each other, if we can make it to 18, right? Get them to 18, get them to 18. And, you we did. And I think we deserve to say, wow, we did a good job with our kids.

Julie Barth (18:14)
Thank you.

in.

Yeah.

I

Jen (18:41)
You know, I feel confident in saying that and I hope that you feel confident as well. And give yourself that pat on the back because again, especially us as women, we don't do that for ourselves.

Julie Barth (18:53)
Yeah, no, and I think that another thing is we're so willing to accept the bad things, you know, like if someone says like, you're so creative about it, I'm like, no, I'm not. But if somebody says like, you know, you really have bad handwriting, I'm like, I do, don't I? You know, it's like, we're just so it feels right to accept those things that we fail at and admit it rather than, you know, to boast ourselves and the things that we're good at or that we've achieved. So I'm there with you. I'm not one. Yes.

Jen (19:22)
Yes. now Colin, you had four children when Colin passed. Yeah. And were you at home when he passed? Were you working a job? Were you at home with the kids?

Julie Barth (19:29)
I did, I did.

Well, no, I was at home with the kids and I was very, very fortunate. We had an amazing community that came out to help because the minute that he stopped working as a trader, he had no sick pay, vacation pay or anything like that. actually, it was a really good time in the economy. I ended up selling things on eBay. So I would go downtown at like five in the morning to thrift stores and pick stuff up and then I would come home and resell it.

So that floated us for a couple of years, just probably till the end of his illness. And it was a good distraction, I suppose. But yeah, I was pretty much juggling kids and him. And it got to a point about three months before he passed where he was just so, so sick. And I broke my leg. it was finally the time where I had to throw up my hands and say, I just can't do this anymore.

I would leave him in his room because I had to take care of the kids or I'd be neglecting the kids to take care of him. And it almost became a very dangerous situation because my youngest was quite a hellion. So she would sneak into his room. And ⁓ so at that point, his parents were gracious enough to take him to their townhouse and have hospice come into their home to do that. Our house was, in spite of everything that was going on, ⁓

We kept a really good level of normalcy for the kids. And so I don't really know how much they knew what was going on. ⁓ did a, spent a lot of time trying to pretend, you know, that nothing was happening and everything was fine. And you know, dad's just sleeping and, they don't think that they really felt the gravity of all of it. They were very, very young too. So when he went to stay at his parents, we kind of all just.

found our roles, you know, being at home. oldest by that point was about 12, 13. He was really, he was very instrumental in, you he was, he grew up very fast, but he's always been a very resilient kid too. And he helped me a lot just trying to get through those years of helping, you know, shuffle kids around. And he was, he's always very good at, mom, forgot, you forgot. He was, he's very regimented and he's got the schedule down.

So we'd get in the car and he'd say, mom, Piper forgot her backpack or whatever. And I'd be like, ⁓ thanks. You know, and I'd run inside and get it. So everyone just kind of took their role in the house and helped as much as they could for as little as they were and really just, you know, made it through brilliantly. I don't, everyone asked me how I did it I don't know. You know, you just do. I don't remember consciously ever saying that I'm going to do something. It just, we just did and it just worked as well as could.

Jen (22:28)
Hmm, sometimes I used to just close my eyes and be like, okay, you know, it's gonna get done. It's gonna get through and we're gonna get through this. So yeah, I understand that completely. So when Colin passed, what was the path that you started down and, were you holding back on, getting into a new part of life?

Julie Barth (22:53)
No, I think it was the opposite. Everyone knew us in the community and we were very involved. Colin was, we had four children, so everybody knew our kids and he was a football coach and a basketball coach and he was just a really good guy. ⁓ So everyone was involved in our story. And when he passed, everybody kind of stepped in and

they were just then starting to grieve, you know? And I was on the other side of it where, I grieved every day for 16 months. I lost, bit by bit by bit of him. So when he passed, I was kind of like, I can't do this anymore. I've grieved, I need to move forward. And other people, would see me and they'd start crying or they would, I'd say my name and whoever didn't know me, their face would instantly go,

Oh, and it was just this whole, my everything around me was wanting me to slow down and grieve and sit in it for a while and process. I, I couldn't, I, I emotionally was like, I'm done. I have to move on. I have to, not, not be here anymore. So I think that that led into my second part of my origin story is meeting a gentleman who was working at my home at the time.

He was 10 years younger than me and he didn't care about my past. He didn't want to hear my feelings. He didn't care how I felt really. And at the time that was very, very liberating. It was like, you don't want me to talk about it? Great. Cause I don't want to, you don't care how I feel today? Great. And he, everyone else is trying to tell me, you know, just slow down, don't make any major changes, you know.

he was more than happy that I wanted to move away and leave myself behind and all the baggage that came with it. And that's kind of what we did. So met him and ⁓ I just, we decided to have another child and we moved away. I picked up, left my family, all my friends, and we moved to a house in the middle of nowhere up on a mountain with just, our little family. So it was, was a tough, a tough transition, but at the time,

I just really feel like I ⁓ was drowning and smothered where I was at.

Jen (25:14)
So you moved away from home, away from your family and set up shop and had you ever been to this area before?

Julie Barth (25:25)
No, I, we, I, I'd always wanted to move to Colorado. So that was initially where I was looking at, ⁓ Denver, Colorado, but we ended up in close to Denver, North Carolina instead. So, ⁓ you know, I, had always been more of an outdoorsy, you know, I lived in Illinois my entire life and I love Chicago, but I had always wanted to be around mountains and, or beach and, where we lived, it was ideal. We were like two and a half hours from anything, you know, whether I wanted to go hiking or whether I wanted to go to the beach.

The house that we bought was beautiful. It was just very, very secluded. It was up on a mountain and it was just, for very kind of broken children, ⁓ me who was trying to make everything rosy and okay and ignoring the fact that nothing was okay and with a new baby on the way.

Jen (26:14)
Goodness, so overwhelm, just packed on to overwhelm, just more and more.

Julie Barth (26:20)
Yeah,

yeah, and I think that, I just really truly believe that if I didn't acknowledge it, it didn't happen. I took all of everything of my own life and pretty much, it's kind of an analogy is ⁓ I took all the pictures and our wedding, everything and put it into a tight little bin, plastic bin. And it went to the, the bottom of our basement. And I thought if I packed it all away.

It couldn't touch me. couldn't hurt me. It wasn't unless I acknowledged that it was. So I spent the first probably two or three years, you know, just not having the family I wanted, but pretending that the family I had was what I wanted and making the person I was without to be somebody was not. I was more in love with the idea of what I wanted rather than the person that was with me. So ⁓ that got very exhaustive because he was nothing.

like what I thought he was or who I thought he was, but I kept trying to make the mold of what I needed in my life right then to fit. it just, you know, it's kind of like watching a three-year-old try and put a square peg into a circle. And I think everyone outside of me thought I could see it. ⁓ And I lost a lot of friends during that time. I'm sure I came across as very erratic and, ⁓ but you know, I dealing with...

He abandoned the minute we were there. I had nobody. So it was me up in the sound with a baby and a special needs kid and no, no help whatsoever. No family, no community. And just really, you know, if I thought I was drowning in, in, the small town that I was from, I definitely was over the edge when we moved away and ill equipped. And, know, he kept telling me that I'm going back home, hated me and I couldn't go home.

So I really believed it. thought I didn't have anybody literally but him. And he used that to every advantage that he could to control me and manipulate me.

Jen (28:16)
⁓ so devastating it sounds like he prayed upon you at a time where you were, where he was able to do that. It's hard when we're stuck in these emotions and in these situations that people can't see that and want to pray on.

Julie Barth (28:37)
Yeah, and I don't, I can honestly say I don't know that it was ever conscious. Like I don't, I don't, I know a lot about narcissism and ⁓ almost to the point of I would say sociopathic, but I haven't really, and I don't know that I ever will know whether, you know, it's intentional or if they just find something that works and goes, go with it.

it was hard for me to think that it was intentional. ⁓ You know, we were not a good mix to begin with. I was very, very empathetic and he had no empathy. you relationships fail for two people, not just one. there were many times when I should have walked away, there were many times, you know, I was not 100 % innocent in any of it. I made a lot of poor decisions. ⁓

And ironically, toward the middle of our relationship, he was telling people that I prayed on him, that he was just this young kid. And here I came in and I prayed upon him, which I always thought was the way that people can twist things to their advantage. to be honest with you, there is that part of you that's like, our views and our perspectives on things are so far apart. Like, how can they be that?

far apart and then you kind of do say, is there some legitimacy to what he's saying, you know, because I was older. And so I think there's a lot of back and forth and who's responsible. And I think that that's part of the reason why you get stuck though, is because you do worry so much about who's right, who's wrong, who's to blame instead of just saying, it doesn't matter. I'm not happy. You're not like, we need to get out of this for whatever reason.

this is not working for me and it's destroying me. And even if it's my fault, it doesn't matter. If it's destroying you, you have to get out.

Jen (30:33)
You have vulnerability and I think lack of listening to our instincts really can hold us back from choosing the best path for ourselves.

Julie Barth (30:45)
Yeah. Yeah. And I, you know, I'm a pleaser. I do care a lot about what people think of me. that, that thought of, my gosh, I expose him for all the things he's done, I, I'm going to expose myself. you can't point the finger at somebody else without pointing it back at yourself. And, looking at all the, I did a lot of crazy emotional things because I was, so caught up in trying to keep this thing alive that I pretty much would have, the

the the chasing, just I became someone that I didn't recognize. And if I had to be honest and get out of it, I was so afraid that people would know that I did stupid things or people would see my text messages or, that people would think less of me. And that really kept me stuck in a really bad relationship when it should never have been about what anybody else thinks of me. And it's taken me all my years here.

to kind of say, it's a thing that you have to tell yourself every day. If I'm good with me and I know I'm a good person and the decisions that I make and the actions that I take are done with goodness in my heart, then you can't blame yourself for them. And it doesn't matter how anyone else sees you. If you know who you are, the only person you're accountable to is yourself.

Jen (32:07)
Yes, and it's interesting, I think that that lesson, that life lesson comes with age, that we aren't born with that understanding, with that knowledge, and it takes ⁓ experience to learn it. And unfortunately, many times that experience is negative.

Julie Barth (32:20)
Yeah.

Yeah, well, it has to make an impression on you, unfortunately. I will say, ⁓ my children, I think, they learned it very young. Thank God. ⁓ You know, I think that they saw me and they saw all the things that went on in their house. you know, ⁓ one of my daughters lost her best friend because her best friend was telling everyone how terrible her stepdad was. I think that that was a hard lesson for her to go through at that point.

She's come out the other end and I wouldn't mess with her. She's very self-aware. She doesn't care. ⁓ And she's a great human. She shouldn't care. It's not like you can step all over anyone, everyone and say, I don't care what you think of me. That's not the, I think sometimes people use that as an excuse too. I can be terrible. don't care what you think of me. ⁓ Yeah, but she, I hope that my children learned really hard lessons, because he was very cruel to them.

Jen (32:54)
Hahaha!

Julie Barth (33:21)
But I think that they will be better for it in their future lives and in their adulthood. I see that we're all recovering in our own way and moving forward. And I think the resilience that they learned early on will serve them very well. And they're very happy now. So it was terrible, but it was something that we all had to learn the hard way.

Jen (33:41)
Yeah, yeah, those lessons. Ugh, I hate those lessons. So tell me about your first book, Notes from a Blackberry.

Julie Barth (33:44)
Yeah, I do too, I do too, I do too.

So when Colin first got sick, we would go down to chemo on Tuesdays and we had these four small kids and ⁓ I just had, ⁓ I have a writer's mind. So in my head I was like, we're gonna go downtown, it's gonna be time for us to connect. And we went downtown and he was so sick and he couldn't stand a lot of motion around him. So I had a Blackberry and I was really unpacking everything that happened with Tatum.

because it was four years of hospitals and different procedures and medical malpractice and just crazy stuff that, you know, I felt was, I just felt this need to like write it all down. And then it just flowed into his story. And I would take my Blackberry and I wrote, you know, stories every time I was there. And then I would email it back to myself and I pieced it all together. So it sat at my computer for about 12 years. And I became a writer by trade.

But I never, ⁓ again, with the what do people think of me, I didn't write the book for anything more than just a chronicle for my children to know of Colin's strength and of Tatum. And I knew that they would probably never get to know him, and I wanted them to. So that really was the intent behind the book. But I let it sit, like I said, for 12 years and finally tackled it after my divorce and ⁓ just got to the end of it and thought.

this is just something that I feel could help other people. It's such a story of resilience. My daughter also, who I said was, she does art. I saw her art and I built a website for her because it's really, really good and it's good art. But then after building the website, there was something in me that thought, when you see her art, you think, that's good. But when you then read her story and you understand,

everything that she had been through that it's truly a miracle that she's still alive. It just brings it so much more meaning to it. Which then the book, I released the book and the proceeds from the book go to help the charity that I run and her website also, her art, a lot of the proceeds go to fund the charity as well. you know, it's kind of like a roundabout story of Colin and Tate and their resilience and hopefully,

my purpose is to give back in all the ways that so many people gave to us. so many times we've been, our family in general has been, in some really dire circumstances and people have stepped in and random people, know, strangers, people didn't know very well that had no obligation to help us. so that's my hope with the charity is to be able to make something so meaningless and losing him into something meaningful.

Jen (36:41)
our experiences, sharing our experiences, like the why I made the podcast to help others feel less alone and to share our wisdom that we learned through these experiences. So that must be an absolutely incredible book. And you wrote two other books too

Julie Barth (36:49)
Yeah.

Thank you.

I did. So, most of Blackberry ends with the loss of my husband. It literally is the eulogy is where it ends. And I kind of hoped that that would be the end. ⁓ And after I read it on my laptop, I thought as crazy as it was that the whole book, that the craziness didn't even start yet. So I got busy writing the second book, which is From Blackberrys to Thorns, and that is ⁓ my second marriage, Tatum's Cancer. ⁓

and getting out of my second marriage. It was a tough fight to get out. And then my third book is going to just be, you know, unpacking and kind of making sense of all of it and hopefully, providing people with some tips and, just kind of trying to find community for those who are either dealing with somebody who has a sick, you know, who's being a caregiver, being a caregiver themselves. The one thing that most people say after they read my book is,

Gosh, I had no idea. You were just so lonely. And ironically, if somebody came and said to me, you know, those years that you were in caregiving Colin what was the worst thing? I would have never said that I was lonely, but now looking back on it, starting so hard not to be lonely, but it was, it was very isolating. And I think had I acknowledged a lot of the feelings that I had as a caregiver, I probably wouldn't have bounced into the second marriage as quickly as I did. So.

Hopefully, you know, it's an endearing love story, but there's also hopefully some lessons to be learned in it.

Jen (38:33)
Yeah, again, sounds beautiful. Sounds like a book that could help so many people to better understand their own experiences.

Julie Barth (38:41)
Thank you. Yeah, I know

it just came out on audiobook. So that's kind of I'm not a I'm not a reader. Don't tell anyone. But ⁓ I can listen to a good audiobook. So for those of you who aren't readers, the audio book was actually done by my high school, my grammar school best friend. became a voice actress. So we kind of met up and clapped. And it's nice to hear her doing it because she knows us and the story and everything else. We all grew up together. So.

Jen (39:08)
⁓ that's wonderful. ⁓ still, you so you have a lot of friends from childhood still or?

Julie Barth (39:10)
Yeah.

I don't. ⁓ when I walked away, there were, he was going back home and telling people all sorts of things about me. know, I, again, I think on the outside, I'm sure that it probably appeared that I was, and I wasn't telling my side of the story. I wasn't being honest about what was going on. I just kind of walked. So.

You know, I would say I pushed them way more than they did me, but at a certain point it just felt like I, it was too toxic for me to try and stay in that. I do miss, a lot of them. ⁓ But when you go through things, sometimes you just got to let go of the things that are hurting you. And I just felt like, and it was my take on it. You know, I felt like I was constantly trying to apologize and explain. And, and I just.

got to a point where I just got tired of apologizing for being who I was. So I just walked away again.

Jen (40:11)
Well, you chose to give yourself some self care and self love. I can't imagine trying to stay in toxic relationships with people that I don't have much in common with anymore, honestly.

Julie Barth (40:24)
I think when you go through crisis, it's almost like being pregnant and you're out with people and, the night starts out great because you're all talking the same language and then all of a sudden they start drinking and you can't and they're talking a different language and you're like sitting there thinking, this is not fun anymore. I don't fit in here. don't, I, I,

Yeah, they're all just speaking a different language that I don't get anymore. And I think that I spent a lot of years in that feeling like I just don't fit in here anymore because I'm not me anymore. And that's not a bad thing. And I thought it was a bad thing. And I always wanted to try to get back to the person I was before. And I failed to recognize that the person that I became, is OK. You know, she she wasn't lacking in anything. It wasn't like I lost something by.

growing out of whatever stage that was, it just means that we all change and have different paths that we should, we're all on. So it's okay sometimes to just say they were great friends and I learned a lot, but we just went our separate ways. And again, it's kind of the same thing as what I said with being in a relationship with. ⁓

you know, is it my fault? it your fault? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whose fault it is. You know, it's just time to move on and it's okay. And I hold no ill will toward anyone. You know, it is what it is. So.

Jen (41:41)
Right. Right.

Tell me all about your ⁓ outreach, your non-profit.

Julie Barth (41:58)
Well, it's in its infancy still. We've changed kind of the focus a couple times, but right now our path now is to kind of be like a concierge service. you know, just through the many ways that I've tried to help out women around me who have reached out over the past six months or so, what I found is that it's not that there aren't any services out there. It's just that you don't know about.

them. So you hit crisis, last thing you have time for is to research, am I eligible for this one? Am I eligible for that one? And you don't even know what you need. Like, you're just so caught in the thick of it, that you don't know what you need. You can't get help because you can't find help. you know, a lot of people turn to government programs. And I will say that you have to lose everything before they will help you. You know, it's like you have to take a vow of poverty to get any help. And then they're like,

Now we'll help you, but you've lost everything. So organization was founded on trying to help women led households that are in crisis, whether that means you have a sick husband or significant other, or that you're going through a nasty divorce, or there's been emotional abuse. And what we do is when they come to us, we do everything that we can to outline.

Okay, if you need housing, you are eligible for this, this and this, call this person, make networks. We're trying to work with companies who are willing to take on women. Cause you know, if you're out of the workforce raising your children for 10 years and you try to come back, everyone's like, well, where's your work experience? And you don't have any, but you do. It's just not marketable. can't stick it in and people look at you like you're not qualified for anything, but I don't know what makes you more qualified.

to be a program manager, a counselor, you know, we're all of these things in the house, but it's looked down on, like we haven't been doing anything in 10 years when we choose to stay home with our kids. And also, you know, when you hit crisis and you're trying to caregiving, you're trying to do this, the last thing you should be doing is taking your, know, pulling away from your children to be at work full time to barely make ends meet when your kids really need you at home. So we're hoping to find lucrative positions for people that are remote, that you can work around what you're doing.

know, tackle childcare and just kind of give you a roadmap because, it's hard enough to even know what you need when someone lays it out for you, tells you what you need, who you need to call this application to fill out. you can do that pretty easily. I'm going to give you this application, fill it out. And if that's as easy as it was to get what you need done, that would have taken so much off of me through the many stages of me.

Instead of fumbling through things to try and find the resources that are there because they are there. It's just finding them

Jen (44:47)
Yeah, and getting resources together, especially for women who are in dire need of being able to float their family in that crisis. It's incredible to have some resources to go to.

Julie Barth (45:03)
Yeah, it is. the other side of it is me personally. I'm very passionate about advocacy to change the fact that there's no such thing as emotional abuse in our court system. ⁓ I don't understand it. It's the craziest thing in the world. that's kind of where my passion lies as well. Financial, emotional, and economic abuse are real. And they are really, really dangerous. And they're hard to get out of. They're hard to prove. You're already

Jen (45:25)
Yes. Yes.

Julie Barth (45:33)
emotionally battered and so beaten down. And then you've got a court system who's willing to just beat you down a little bit more and make you feel like you're, you know, you're, so he was mean to you. That's terrible. It's something so much more than that. And the conditioning that goes on. And that's why women keep it hidden. And I hope to change that.

Jen (45:54)
When I hear domestic abuse, I don't think of just physical abuse. I think of the emotional and as someone who's been through financial abuse, I understand that. do believe that that is domestic abuse.

Julie Barth (46:10)
Yeah, 100%. It doesn't,

and I think that as a victim, you look in the mirror when you're when you're in again, physical abuse is terrible. When you're physically abused, however, there's a bruise, there's a scar, there's something you can look at, you watch it heal and was there and it's proof he hit me he when it's emotional abuse, they hit you so twisted around so bad and it's your fault and you're trying to seek help and you're working on you and they're doing everything they can to make sure that

You can't find peace, but there's no bruise. There's no, you look in the mirror and you think, am I crazy? You you don't, there's no proof of it. And there's nothing you can say to other people that, you know, cause when you complain, they're like, well that's just men being men or, whatever they, and it keeps you stuck because you're like, yeah, maybe it is me. and I went back to the drawing board many times, you know, maybe I, maybe I am broken. Maybe I do need to fix, maybe this is all for me. Maybe. ⁓

I really am causing all of this. But yeah.

Jen (47:07)
It's amazing

how we allow ourselves to gaslight ourselves. You know, it really is. They're gaslighting us and then we're gaslighting ourselves because we, whether it's shame or fear, we don't feel like we can be on our own and get out of that relationship. So it's, yeah.

Julie Barth (47:12)
Yes, 100%. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that, you know, when you're in it, and I don't think you can understand, it's like looking at 9-11. Like I've never been to ground zero. But, I think when you're standing in front of it, looking at it, it makes so much more sense when you're stuck in these situations, you can't see from the outside. your friends are about, they end, your friends necessarily, most of them walk away because they're like, oh my gosh, you're a broken record. I can't help you.

And the minute they do try and like say something disparaging, know, there's a defensive part of you that's like, no, no, he didn't mean it. So, you you create this like bubble around yourself where you're bashing them, but you're protecting them at the same time and people don't know how to help you.

Jen (48:12)
right. And yeah, it's scary to let others know it too. I was I was always afraid to have others learn about the financial abuse that I was going through because there was that shame of we're not the perfect family. And you know, my mother always gave the impression of it's better to look good than to feel good. So you need to have that outer you know,

Julie Barth (48:28)
Yeah.

Jen (48:37)
charm, you have to have like this perfect family visage and it's terrifying inside because you don't feel like you can reach out to anyone.

Julie Barth (48:48)
Yeah, yeah, and I really didn't think anyone would believe me.

You it is. It is. you make conscious decisions that you have to take accountability for, you know, moving away, leaving my family behind, going up in a mountain. it's like, sometimes they tell my story. was telling my story to a criminal justice back test the other day. And it was like I was listening to myself and I was like, that was a dumb thing. And then you did what? And then you did what?

Jen (48:54)
Again, it's an invisible abuse.

Julie Barth (49:21)
And before you know it, you're so deep ⁓ that you have to, again, tell everyone how many stupid mistakes you did to get there. And no one wants to look stupid. Yeah. No, because then you have to admit that you're, you know, I was at fault for a lot of it, for the decisions I made, whether I made them knowingly, unknowingly, or not, you know, from the outside. It's like, well, didn't you?

Jen (49:33)
Right, right. We don't want to admit it. It's hard.

Julie Barth (49:50)
weren't you the one that said yes? Well, weren't you the one that planned, you know, weren't you? And I did. So, yeah.

Jen (49:57)
Yeah, but you were also doing that during a crisis too. I think we don't give ourselves enough grace to be like, okay, yes, I made these choices and they were the wrong choices for me, but also I was grieving and I was scared. so I think we also have to give ourselves a little bit of grace in that sense too, that we may not have been in the best mental health space in that moment.

Julie Barth (50:12)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, well, and I do now. Yeah, I'm more talking to the people out there that are still stuck in it because you have to get to the other side of it to make sense of it. And, you know, I lied awake many, many nights thinking I'm going to lose everything if I walk away from this. I'm going to start over. I'm going to lose everything.

Jen (50:28)
Good, good.

Julie Barth (50:48)
But getting on the other side of it, you realize that a lot of things that you think you're going to lose and that you think you don't want to lose, the very things that are keeping you stuck, you just can't see it. And if you really needed those things and you were going to lose everything, then you would be in a good place and you'd enjoy your life and you'd be happy. Whatever you're going to lose, you're not enjoying anyway, so get out of it.

Jen (51:14)
That's sage wisdom right there, absolutely. And I'm so glad that you want to share that wisdom with the world. It's important work and thank you for doing the good work.

Julie Barth (51:16)
Yeah.

Thank you. Well, thank you. Thank you. You're running this podcast. So hopefully reaching lots of people.

Jen (51:27)
I

hope so too. That's what I really want to get out there. All of these journeys are important because we may have some sort of unique journeys, but they're also journeys that other people have had maybe portions of, parts of, that they can better understand themselves through our stories.

Julie Barth (51:50)
Definitely, definitely. I always say that when you go through a hard time, you know, want to put it behind you. You don't want to talk about it. You're like, phew, I'm glad it's over. But if you took the time to make the, you know, the heart a little bit softer for the next person going through it, then our world would be a lot kinder, I think. ⁓ So, you know, that's kind of where the charity came in is, yeah, I'd love to put all of it behind me and just move forward. But I feel the sense of ⁓

You know, if I can make someone else's road a lot less, difficult than mine, stop them from making some of the decisions I did, ⁓ it's worth it. And there's a reason why we go through what we go through. And it's meaningless unless you do something with the knowledge that you've learned through it.

Jen (52:38)
Yeah. So tell us where we can find you.

Julie Barth (52:42)
If you go to my website, JulieBarthAuthor.com, there's all kinds of tabs that go to Hope for Tate, which is my daughter's website. you can, she has all of our art. You can take any of the art and put it on like mugs or t-shirts or, know, it's a customization website. And then there's a tab for the CJB outreach where you can reach out to me ⁓ if you are in need of help.

or if you would like to get involved. I'm the person that names it. So if you touch on any the contacts me to contact me's, ⁓ it's going to be me. So again, if you, even if you just want to talk about your situation or whatever it is, I'm available. So, and I'd like to help.

Jen (53:29)
And that's what kind of you to one, help with speaking with people who are in a similar situation.

Julie Barth (53:32)
Thank you.

Yeah, I think that when you help someone else out, you heal yourself too.

Jen (53:43)
Yes, yes, I totally agree. Well, thank you, Julie, so much for coming on the show.

Julie Barth (53:48)
Well, thank you for having me, Jen. I appreciate it in the conversation.

When Not Yet Becomes Right Now (53:56)
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 inspiring. 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 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.