Ep. 26 Geralyn Ritter

On this episode I am joined by Geralyn Ritter. She has recently released a book: Bone by Bone a Memoir of Trauma and Healing.  She was on her way home from an ordinary business trip when Amtrak 188 derailed outside of Philadelphia. She was crushed in the crash, which killed eight and injured hundreds. A hundred percent of the proceeds from the book will be going to trauma professionals, medicine and survivors as well.

We talk about what the immediate aftermath of the accident was like for her and her family.  She shares her experiences with trauma, resilience and gratitude. She also shares how devastating and depressing this time was for her and her loved ones. The resentment and pain her and her husband endured trying to find a way to go from a typical husband and wife to a care-giver and patient. The overwhelming support of her community and how it really helped her prioritize relationships in a way that most of us take for granted.

Her experience really shows that two things can be true at the same time. You can wish something didn't happen and be grateful for some of the lessons it brought as well.

About the Book | Geralyn Ritter
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Filled Up Cup - Unconventional Self Care for Modern Women

Transcript

0:00

Welcome to the filled up cup podcast. We are a different kind of self-care resource one that has nothing to do with bubble baths and face masks and everything to do with rediscovering yourself. We bring you real reviews, honest experiences and unfiltered opinions that will make you laugh, cry, and most importantly, leave you with a filled up cup.

Ashley: 0:32

I am very excited today I have joining me is author Geralyn Ritter. Geralyn miraculously survived the notorious 2015 Amtrak derailment in Philadelphia. She's telling the full story in her new book, Bone by Bone a Memoir of Trauma and Healing. A hundred percent of the proceeds will be going to trauma professionals, medicine and survivors as well. Thank you so much for joining me today. For anybody who maybe isn't familiar could you explain exactly what the 2015 Amtrak derailment is?

Geralyn: 1:08

Sure. This is a train that thousands of people take up and down the east coast between Washington, Philadelphia and New York. I had probably taken it a hundred times myself over my career because I live in New Jersey, but I was responsible for folks working in Washington. On an ordinary day on an ordinary business trip May 12th, 2015. I was returning from Washington. Took a stop in Philly, got back on the train, texted my husband, leaving Philly home soonand to cut to the chase, the train derailed right outside Philadelphia going 106 miles an hour on a curve designed for 50, a maximum of 50 8 people were killed in the crash. Hundreds were injured. The first car was the business class car where I was riding, where many of the deaths occurred. If you look at photos after the accident, it looks like a debris field. It's you almost can't recognize that it's a train car. It's twisted, it's split open, kind of like a crushed tin can. I am just incredibly grateful to this day that I survived. I have been told by a number of doctors and surgeons that was extraordinarily unlikely. My family was informed at the time that I was not expected to live.

Ashley: 2:41

How gutting for them to be able to get that news. And it is really true what you say when you look at the pictures, it is just horrific that really, that anybody survived it. Can you explain a little bit what your injuries were?

Geralyn: 2:58

Sure. The easiest way is probably to put them in two categories in terms of my internal organs. The force of the crash was such that all of my abdominal organs we're thrown up into my chest. So the diaphragm that thick leathery muscle that separates your lungs and your chest from your abdomen was ruptured very significantly. My stomach was up above my heart and my colon was under my armpit. My bladder was ruptured. My lungs were collapsed. My intestines were. perforated, lacerated. You name it? My spleen was destroyed, was bleeding uncontrollably. So my understanding was when they took me into emergency surgery that night, the first order of business was stopping the bleeding and getting my spleen out and getting my organs back in the right part of my body. In terms of orthopedic injuries. My chest was crushed. They call it a flail chest where I broke almost all of my ribs, but broke them in so many places and in such a way that they would never heal regularly. They ended up plating the individual pieces of bone to kind of make a rib cage again. So I had a plated chest for about a year and a half. So that I could breathe on my own. My pelvis was one of the most serious life-threatening injuries I had as well. They call it open pelvic ring fracture which basically means that the right side of my pelvis was not connected to the left side. So, if your pelvis, you envision as a ring or a lifesaver, it was broken in half. And in addition something extraordinary. We don't know what had penetrated the left side of my body. And so crushed the pelvis on the left side. That wound was very open and very dirty. I could go on, I broke several vertebra, C7 and L 2, 3, 4, but miraculously, I broke them in such a way that they did not impinge on my spinal cord. I was most certainly concussed, but. Again, by the grace of God, I did not have a major brain injury. So took a lot of time, a lot of pain. I have had at last count about 31 surgical procedures. I'm due for another one in a couple of months. So my body will never be the same, but I did heal. I am back at work after two and a half years on disability and all of those surgeries I did heal, I did heal, but I have had doctors tell me, you know, very straight-laced doctors that are, by the book that they have no medical explanation for how my body could have absorbed that much force to produce all of those injuries, do what it did to my pelvis. And not shaken up my brain so badly that I didn't have a TBI.

Ashley: 6:05

I can't even imagine just the pain of going through just one of your individual things I think would be almost mentally, too much to handle or physically such a long recovery. So to go through all of those over the last, like, like you said, two and a half years of surgery, It just must have been one of those overwhelming, very hard mentally things to overcome at the time.

Geralyn: 6:32

Oh, and then I did not, in some ways I would say I'm continuing to overcome it. It changes you and some changes you can find some positive in I think I have a much sharper perspective now of the things that really matter. The things I will spend my time on during this. Second chance at life, if you will, the relationships that really matter. I think my family feels that way as well. I have three sons, they were young teens at the time of the accident. My youngest was only eight actually. I think it has changed their perspective as well. And most certainly my husband's, but I cannot. Gloss over the fact that absolutely. I struggled with my mental health. I remember one of my trauma surgeons asking me how I was, this was a couple months after the accident, a couple of weeks after I'd gotten out of the hospital and. I had started to think of myself as a collection of body parts because I had every specialist in the world. You name it, that body part didn't work would go to the hospital for follow-up appointments and have seven appointments back to back to back to back, you know, with the vascular surgeon and then the orthopedist, and then the pulmonologist and the, neurologist I remember the last appointment of the day, my original trauma surgeon who took me off the life flight helicopter that night said, how are you doing? I started going into what hurt and she said, no, no, no, no. How are you doing? It stopped me in my tracks. I realized that. Number one, nobody had asked me that, you know, they had asked me how my hip was or my arm was, or, whether I was wearing my brace, I was supposed to wear. I realized, I didn't know the answer. And I just started crying. She said, you know, I really recommend that all of my trauma patients get treatment for PTSD. I couldn't accept that, that applied to me

Ashley: 8:49

yeah,

Geralyn: 8:49

and I, kind of collected myself and I said, that's for people like combat veterans for people who have been the victims of domestic violence, or I said, nobody tried to hurt me. This was just an accident. Accidents happen. And I'm sitting here trying to convince, I mean, I realize how ludicrous it sounds now.

Ashley: 9:10

I don't think it does sound ludicrous. I think a lot of the times we tend to think other people's suffering is as bigger than ours. Trauma isn't necessarily the act that happens, but it's really. Our reaction to it. What does the trauma look like after were we supported? Did we have the resources that we needed? Did we have the capacity to even take in everything that happened? I think something like your accidents, I don't know that you could really mentally take it all in because it would be so much in so many different factors that I do think even for people listening, that haven't experienced anything similar, I do feel like all of our individual trauma can definitely be important and something that we do have to give ourselves credit and let ourselves off the hook that way of however we experience it afterwards is how we experience it. We just have to figure out the best route forward

Geralyn: 10:09

you're so right. I think also we need to recognize the important. Of time and I'm an impatient person, and that was hard. That was really hard for me in the very beginning, when I was not expected to live. And I'm on a ventilator in the ICU and immobilized I looked, I was so covered up in machines. And so beaten up that, honestly, at first, my husband didn't recognize me when he found me. I was a Jane DOE initially which is kind of scary. But if you think about it, if a guy gets thrown out of a train, he probably has a wallet in his pocket. If a woman gets thrown out, her purse was probably on the floor or on the luggage cart. So. That's a separate story, but it was a long time until my husband could even find me. He didn't recognize me at first, when he became convinced it was me because they gave him the jewelry that they had cut off me. He recognized me by the jewelry. My own brother came in and he was relieved. He flew in and he was relieved because he realized that it all been a big mistake because he didn't think that was me either. From the depths of that sadness, one of my brothers packed a dark suit because I mean, my family all flew in expecting that they might be going to my funeral and it still is hard to comprehend that, but we were so grateful when I started to get better and it became apparent. We didn't know if I would walk. We didn't know what issues I would have. But it became apparent that I was probably going to live, that I had, some of the worst parts of it I had gotten through. We were just so grateful. It wasn't a false gratitude, but we just kept saying over and over. Isn't it amazing that I'm here. Isn't an amazing that I don't seem to have a major brain injury and that I wasn't paralyzed and that gratitude sustained me. Sustained my family. We were kind of on a high of just being grateful, not withstanding, you know, the difficulties and the pain. But ultimately it's hard to be grateful for pain for very long.

Ashley: 12:31

I can imagine,

Geralyn: 12:33

once I got out of the ICU, then they moved me to a rehab hospital. Once I finally got home, the gratitude and the unrealisticness of my expectations, gratitude started to wear off a little bit and. I slowly started understanding how injured I really was. I'm picturing, okay. Broken bones heal in about six weeks. I broke quite a few. So I'll be worked back at work by the end of the summer. I called up my boss and I told him that, September, we had a big meeting, I'd be there by September. My family tells me now that they would get so upset when they heard me making those calls because everybody knew it. Wasn't true. But nobody wanted to tell me that no one wanted to, you know, dash

Ashley: 13:23

break your optimism

Geralyn: 13:25

but the reality was then when September came and went and I was nowhere close to being ready to go back to work, I fell even further, because I had lifted myself up with these unrealistic expectations. Yeah, I could do this. Just, with enough effort with enough mental fortitude, I didn't need counseling. I just needed a few bones to heal and I'd be back to normal. That was so wildly unrealistic. You don't have to be in a train wreck. People are in terrible car accidents all the time, or they suffer other kinds of devastating trauma relationship trauma, a major professional setback. I think the importance of having realistic optimism, you have to be optimistic. You have to feel like you're going to get through this, but you also have to be grounded in reality. Or I think you set yourself up for kind of a fall. I did fall. I went into a pretty deep depression. I was diagnosed with, with PTSD and I felt guilty about it. Eight people lost their lives. Like what right. Did I have to be grieving my pain when I had a wonderful support system, friends and family around me and good insurance benefits. And so not only was I upset not only was I in pain, not only was I depressed, I felt guilty about all of that on top of it.

Ashley: 14:51

survivor's guilt is a very real thing and something that, it seems almost frustrating, from somebody listening's perspective that the doctors maybe wouldn't. I have set you up for, success in a different way of saying, this injury you're looking at probably like nine months and this one maybe will only get you to like 70% better. I feel like there is a gap in the after care portion of the medical industry I'm in Canada. I find even with our doctors up here that it is similar that we just kind of get okay, you're out of the hospital, put this bandage on, see me in six weeks, but there isn't a lot of this is something emotionally that might come up. This is something physically that you might experience and having somebody just check in, how actually are you versus how's your bone doing? Right.

Geralyn: 15:47

You know, I could not agree more. I think you, you said it exactly right. I think that is a missing link. Especially if you're a complex patient with many different injuries, I think the reality was they didn't know how I was going to recover and it didn't help that I had nine different specialists who each, could give me a prediction of their body part but when was that going to be me again? When was the whole going to be better and they didn't know. Eventually I did learn to ask the right questions and I got better estimates, which were not what I wanted to hear, but at least I could start figuring out a plan for how to do that. When you've shattered your rib cage. Rib cages. Can't be still, you have to breathe. Right. I was on the strongest pain, drugs imaginable, you name it. I was on it. Fentanyl, oxycodone, Oxycontin, lyric all at the same time, all at maximum doses and it still hurt to breathe. I remember asking my orthopedist, like when can I breathe without pain? When he told me that it would probably be, another eight months or so. It actually really helped me. It, wasn't what I wanted to hear, of course, but then I am the kind of person that, okay, now I can make a plan and now I have an understanding of how long I'm going to have to be on all these strong pain meds. And when I can start weaning off of this, it put me in a different place and. You know, surgery by surgery, hardware in hardware, out different hardware and different hardware out. But over time I did start to make progress. I did get out of my wheelchair and I was on a Walker I hated being on that Walker. I thought. I'm not ready to be able to walker I'm not that old.

Ashley: 17:45

I would imagine that the loss of freedom would be the most frustrating part from somebody who's able-bodied and able to do all of the things then to have to rely on other people or have to rely on those devices. Must've been extremely frustrating

Geralyn: 18:00

you know, it really was my job before the accident, I'd done a lot of international work, a ton of international travel. One of the job I'd had was president of our company's foundation. So we funded a lot of projects. One I was particularly proud of was helping to end maternal deaths, preventable maternal deaths. So in a given month, I might be walking through the slums and new Delhi. You know, the outer outskirts of Kampala Uganda, or attending a diplomatic meeting, you know, in Geneva or in Brussels or in Beijing. So the disconnect between traveling all these places by myself, working full time, raising three sons, to in an instant being unable to go to the restroom by myself. I didn't drive for almost a year after the accident, every time every doctor appointment, physical therapy, five days a week, I had to ask somebody to take me. I remember I was sitting at the kitchen table. I was still in my wheelchair and I was writing. Thank you notes to people that had sent gifts. I dropped the pen and I looked at the floor and I tried to reach down. And that pen was two inches from my fingers. I was so sick of calling everybody for every single thing I needed. I thought I am going to get that pen and I kind of leaned over enough. Ended up on my hands and knees on the floor, unable to get up. I, called my husband. He comes and finds me on the floor and he said, why did you do that? You needed to call me. He was worried. So he was screaming. I just burst into tears. I was like, because I'm so sick of asking you to pick up my pen. I would just kind of try to rebel and these sorts of way, but my body was like, no, you are not in charge of this.

Ashley: 20:03

Did you find with your marriage that there was struggles with you and your husband changing the roles and what that looked like in the aftermath?

Geralyn: 20:13

100%, 100%. Our marriage was extraordinarily strained, like every couple we had issues, but, we were, strong before the accident. My husband had quit his job to turn his attention to some entrepreneurial ideas that he had. So he was working from home trying to start a business. I was traveling around the world. So I was of course the main breadwinner and. Again, in an instant for me to go to complete the dependence and him to be thrust into the role of a caretaker of someone, even after I was back at home, I was, I hurt so bad and I was so badly injured and I needed medication every few hours, I would be laying in bed and the pills were right beside me on the bedside table. My torso was so I could not twist to reach them. I would have to, kind of hit my husband, wake him up every few hours. He'd get up, walk around the bed, put up the automatic thing that helped me to sit up, open the pill bottle, give me the pill, set me back down. I really could not do a single thing for myself. That's very hard. We said some things to each other that we both. Dearly regret. I couldn't be there for him in the way that he needed me and although I felt, like I said, thank you all the time. He felt very unappreciated.

Ashley: 21:47

Sometimes it is so hard because it's like being able to hear it and being able to feel it, sometimes it's just really hard for people to hear our intent

Geralyn: 21:56

He needed somebody to listen. He was angry. He was angry about the accident. He was angry and that's a perfectly normal human reaction. Absolutely. But I didn't feel that anger. I just felt sad and I hurt. And I was just trying to get through the day. So as he was shaking his fist, talking about the unfairness of it, all talking about his anger at the train company and why they didn't have appropriate safety measures in place. I just wanted him to go somewhere else. I couldn't hear it. I couldn't listen to it. I was filled, I couldn't, there was no more room. Exactly. My emotions could not make room to hear him out and let him vent to me. He really resented My response. I understand that now. I've since learned that rates of depression among caregivers are extraordinarily high and they've studied rates of depression, even among families who experienced an ICU event. So maybe they don't become full-time caregivers, but they're called to the ICU, in a traumatic situation. It is quite powerful and I have much more appreciation for that now. I'm very happy to say we'll be celebrating our 25th anniversary, this Fall., but when I wrote my book, I said to my husband, The only reason to write this book. And as you mentioned, I'm giving everything that I earned from it to the American trauma society and other trauma non-profits. But the only reason to write it was to try there's so much. I know now that I wished I'd known then and if the one thing I can do that is within my power, I can't undo the accident. I can't bring back the eight people that died, but I can share the things I wished I had known at the beginning of my journey. That has been empowering for me. It's made me feel like I have some control over this narrative and you talked about survivor's guilt, but now. But the book is finally being published after five years of writing. I was so naive about how you publish a book, it took a while. But there's also such a thing as survivors pride you know, I work full time. I'm working for a new women's health company and we rang the opening bell of the New York stock exchange. Last year. I love my work. I love the team I work with. I'm publishing my book. There will always be a sadness in my heart about the accident that will never go away. I don't take pride in the fact that I survived. I didn't do anything to deserve it that was simply grace. But I do take pride in the months after that. And the years after that it was really hard, but I am proud of where I am now I don't feel guilty about that. Yeah.

Ashley: 24:54

I think that that is such a beautiful message for people who have experienced trauma to understand that whether it takes. A year, whether it takes 10 years to get through the physical symptoms and to get through that journey, which I know would be just excruciating and frustrating and all of those potentially very negative things. It's important to know that it doesn't have to just be that, that there really can be beauty. There can be grace, there can be joy and love on the side of it, your life doesn't have to stop on the worst. day of your life.

Geralyn: 25:30

Life. That's exactly right. there's a quote. I love, that talks about learning to be a friend of time. It really is important when I was able to shift my perspective. With the passage of time and pull out of the depression, start weaning off all of the opioids and start thinking about what's next, even though it wasn't what I had envisioned, even though I wasn't going back to work anytime soon, there were other things that could fit in my life. I had never, for example, Believed in the power of meditation or yoga or mindfulness or breathing. In fact, I'll tell you a funny story. When I was pregnant with my first son, I refuse to go to Lamaze classes because I told my husband that was a waste of time. I did not need to be taught to breathe. I've been doing it for 30 years and I thought I knew how to do it just fine. But when I was in the depths of. Not only physical pain for my injuries, but also withdrawal from the opioids, you know, sort of insult to injury. I was so miserable. I was desperate for anything. Somebody gave me a referral to a fantastic woman with a tremendous amount of training. Who took me through those exercises. It was incredibly empowering in terms of understanding the connection between the brain and the body that goes both ways. You know, how our physical pain affects, the really can have a neurological physiological impact on the brain. But also the other way around, as I trained my brain, as I did the deep breathing, as I did different kinds of very slow yoga, it gave me back the sense of agency and control over my body. That I had not had for so long. There's growth there, some of these situations we're forced to grow in different ways. Now, I meditate every night before bed. I can't go to bed without my meditation. It helps me digest the day and puts me in a better place. So I took some wonderful trips with my sons when I wasn't well enough to go back to work. I had never been home every day when they got home from school, it took about eight months before I actually realized, wow. That was one more silver lining. I've worked my whole career. I'd always worked when they were young. They're proud of me. I don't regret those decisions, but for two and a half years, I was there, later on with a snack or something. When you walk through the door in the morning and focusing and making yourself find the good things, even if they seem small, I think it's a really important for healing and they're different for everyone, you know? Forcing yourself to find something good out of the experience for me paying it forward. And these other things I've talked about, but it was really healing.

Ashley: 28:40

Sometimes those small things, in hindsight, really are the big things, the joy of having to see our kids every single day, or to hear about their day every day, because I think so many of us. When we get into the Monday to Friday hustle, your brain is divided on what just happened at work. What are we doing for dinner? do I have date night with a hubby of this weekend? What are the kids doing? Where are they going? You kind of get stuck in this chaos of our schedule that we create for ourselves. When all of those components go away and being able to actually be in the moment, I think is such a gift. I think a lot of the times that we don't remember to check in with our body. We do assume, Hey, I breathe. I go about my day. I'm fine. But we don't really check in how is my body feeling? How am I connecting to myself? I think that piece. isn't stress to us enough on how important that is and doing those deep breaths and calming our nervous system down and just allowing ourselves that moment of peace every single day.

Geralyn: 29:41

Yep. You said it so well, that in forced slowness was what it took for me to realize that but it's a really valuable lesson. There's a, I believe it's a Tibetan saying that. Wisdom is like rainwater. It gathers in the low places. And I love that because I think some of our. Deepest learnings do come from some of the toughest situations in life, not the times when everything's going. Right. Exactly.

Ashley: 30:11

Well, because we just don't think that to appreciate it in the same way, because we're enjoying the phase of that happiness. I think in our medical system, or even in our society there, isn't a lot of focus on. Preemptive self care. Like a lot of the times when we think about something like that, it's because something's happened or because we've experienced such a burnout that we're like, what do I do now that I do hope when the conversations of mental health continue to happen and how that stigma does go away a little bit, that we also think, okay, what are we going to do before we get in a situation that we have to fix

Geralyn: 30:50

it? No, it's true. There are very few silver linings to the COVID crisis, but one of them that I would cite is that you see a lot of employers being much more flexible and much more attentive to the importance of their employees, wellbeing, you know, and they're not doing it out of the goodness of their own heart. They're doing it because it's the right thing for their business. They need to, rather than just tracking attendance and making people show up and seeing how productive they are, they need to help them stay healthy, including mentally healthy, if you're going to have a really productive and resilient workforce.

Ashley: 31:27

I definitely agree with that. I also think the traditional Monday to Friday nine to five model just isn't worth it for a lot of people, because like you said, we realized who's important. What's important, what we want to do. People just don't want to work in and go home anymore. That the home life really has taken such a bigger priority that I do think when people are happy and supported in their workforce, that they do better jobs and that they work harder and that they are better employees and will make their companies more money

Geralyn: 31:58

absolutely. Absolutely. And there's no one size fits all, for some people go into the office is maybe an escape or childcare duties or, you know, and that's fine, but absolutely flexibility, you know? To give employees to empower them to say, this is what I need. This is what works for me. I'm happy to be in the office two days a week, but I can't do that commute five days a week or I'll come in early, I'll come in late. I'll do a four day schedule, whatever it is. The fact that companies are more open to that now because they need to retain their employees and they want to keep them healthy. Is like I said, very few silver linings to such an awful pandemic taken so many lives and disproportionately impacted women. The folks that have been driven out of the workforce. It's really tragic. I saw a study saying it was going to take women in the U S 30 years to make up the progress that they had gained that they lost and just the two years of the pandemic. So we need to be more attentive to our mental health. And I'd say, especially with. Women or caretakers, right.

Ashley: 33:08

It all falls on us. I don't know about you, but I have very rarely or never seen people ask men, how are you going to balance it all? How are you going to figure this out? It's always on women or people identifying as women. It always us to be the, you know, maid taxi psychologist, a teacher, and balance everything all at once.

Geralyn: 33:35

I completely agree. It's one of the reasons that another lesson I took from the accident is. The importance of investing in my friendships with other women and men. But before the accident, I was a little bit, you know, family and work I had good friends and we would go out with them. But it was pretty much most days about family and work. Well, there

Ashley: 33:58

isn't enough hours in the day for there to be much

Geralyn: 34:00

more. And if I didn't send a friend a happy birthday note well, you know, and the way my community rallied around our family and supported us, what I thought was going to be for six weeks, eight weeks and turned out to be. Well, it's still ongoing seven years, even acquaintances that I didn't know that well, who maybe they didn't know what I needed, but they just showed up and did stuff. I hope that's another lesson my boys took from this is, just because you don't know what to say. Doesn't mean you don't do anything. Lean in, say something ask how the person's feeling. A lot of people like me who say, no, no, I don't need anything. And then my friend would saying, you know what? Jonathan's been taking you to all of those physical therapy appointments. Let me pick you up two days a week. And it really released somebody effort on my husband and in it, you know, and I enjoyed talking with her every morning. People came in swoop and took my dogs. I don't know where they took them, but I love my dogs, but I was in no shape to have a dog jump on me. And they said, we've got this, we've got this, don't worry about it. Now those are relationships that I think, well, I think I'm a better friend because I. Have realized the importance of nurturing those friendships and how important it is that women support each other. And not just at work and not just, at a casual get together, but really, really be in tune with each other and know what's going on in each other's lives.

Ashley: 35:34

Women. We can really, help each other rise up. We understand each other better like you can have a great marriage. You can have a great relationship with a man, but they aren't a hundred percent going to get it the same way that neighbor or that person you went to high school with, I think it's so important in challenging times to choose love it's choosing that community spirit. I feel like in a lot of cases when something tragic happens or just when you notice, even at COVID like that, your neighbor can't maybe drag their garbage down or things like that, just to say, can I help

Geralyn: 36:09

That's exactly right. Even during. You know, strictest locked down periods to be able to text and, and, do virtual happy hours. We would do virtual yoga sessions together. I think you're exactly right about the importance of choosing love. Choosing to focus on what we have in common. Rather than, well, she works. She's a stay at home mom, or we don't agree politically on absolutely anything, you're still people you still love. I have great friends that have, everything from high flying careers to have had never really worked outside the home. I have friends with tons of experiences, caregivers, others that, you know, really could not understand the situation we were in their friends on the far right. And the far left, but we really close-knit group. The fact is we don't focus on those differences because that's not really what matters.

Ashley: 37:02

It really isn't. It's like, if you have different political beliefs than somebody else, then it's like, talk about what shows you watched on television. Don't talk about the news. You know what I mean? You just, you pick your battles,

Geralyn: 37:14

take a walk and talk about how. You know, gain too much weight last month. I don't know.

Ashley: 37:20

Yeah. Just focus on what, what brings us together versus dividing. I think this idea of, if I have an opinion on something or I've had this experience, then it has to be your experience. And that's not the case that there has to be room for all of us to be who we actually are and appreciate the differences in challenges without trying to change that person. There's obviously different caveats to that. If you're racist or super sexist or, you know, some horrible person, totally different scenario, but it's like really, if isn't a big divide then I think it just doesn't matter.

Geralyn: 37:55

Yeah. And that's another silver lining that I would pull out of my trauma experiences a much better appreciation for the value of that community. I love my family to the end of the earth and. I don't want to say they weren't enough, but it helped on my healing journey to also have a tribe of friends.

Ashley: 38:20

Absolutely.

Geralyn: 38:20

it was really important and I appreciate that much better.

Ashley: 38:25

Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. I'm very thankful that you are here to be able to publish your book and to share your story with others. I think whether they have experienced something on a large scale or something much smaller, I really do think that your book is really going to help people

Geralyn: 38:42

I really hope so. I really, really hope so. I believe that it is certainly relevant to folks that have suffered trauma or who treat trauma patients or give care, but we all struggle. In different ways, we all have major challenges. That's another thing that I've learned is that everybody has had major setbacks in their life. God bless you if you haven't, but I've never met anybody like that.

Ashley: 39:09

I haven't met anyone who hasn't either, you

Geralyn: 39:12

know? I think these lessons in resilience I hope will help other folks. That gives meaning for me to the experience. So it's available right now on bone by bone book.com later on. It'll be available on all of the usual sites where books are sold.

Ashley: 39:32

Do you have a website for it yourself?

Geralyn: 39:37

Geralynritter.com is my author's website. And folks can learn more about the accident or hear other podcasts or media interviews that I have done. Bone by bone book.com is a site where the book is for sale right now.

Ashley: 39:53

That's exciting.

Geralyn: 39:54

It really is exciting. It really is very exciting.

Ashley: 39:58

Thank you so much.

Geralyn: 40:00

Ashley It was so wonderful. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you.

40:06

Thank you so much for joining us today for this episode of the filled up cup podcast, don't forget to hit subscribe and leave a review. If you like what you hear, you can also connect with us@filledupcup.com. Thanks again for tuning in and we'll catch you in the next episode.