Show NotesQuestions for Reflection
Each episode we offer you a few prompts to think about how that day's conversation applies to you. You might pause the podcast and answer them right then and there, but if you keep a journal (Steph and Beth both do), you might find one of these PDFs useful. Choose the orientation that fits best in your journal.
Transcript
Beth Demme (00:03):
Welcome to the Discovering Our Scars Podcast. Stephanie Kostopoulos (00:06): Where we have honest conversations about things that make us different. I'm Steph. Beth Demme (00:10): I'm Beth. Stephanie Kostopoulos (00:11): I've been in recovery for 13 plus years and recently released my memoir, Discovering My Scars, about my mental health struggles, experiences and faith. Beth Demme (00:18): I'm a lawyer-turned pastor who's all about self-awareness and emotional health because I know what it's like to have neither of those things. Stephanie Kostopoulos (00:24): We value honest conversations, we hope you do too. Beth Demme (00:27): Today is April 29th, 2020 around 11:00 AM. Stephanie Kostopoulos (00:31): We've started time-stamping our episodes because things are changing minute by minute with the coronavirus outbreak. Beth Demme (00:36): Today we have a special guest, my friend since the seventh grade, 1987, what a year it was. My friend Charlene Garrett is with us today. Stephanie Kostopoulos (00:46): Welcome Charlene. Charlene Garrett (00:48): Hello! Beth Demme (00:49): We've invited Charlene on today because her work requires or allows her to work with people in a variety of countries. Stephanie Kostopoulos (00:58): We think a conversation with you will help us have a broader perspective on the pandemic. Beth Demme (01:03): Yeah, because as we go more weeks into this, I feel like my world is closing in a little and my perspective is getting narrower and more focused just on myself and on my family, so I need to remember that this is about more than me. I'm not the only one who's going through this. The United States is not the only country going through this. It's much bigger than that. Stephanie Kostopoulos (01:21): Charlene, we want to get right into it. First of all, can you tell us a little bit about what you do? Charlene Garrett (01:25): Sure. I'd be happy to. Gosh, that's a great question. What do I do all day besides right now it's a lot of Zoom meetings it feels like. I am the vice president of operations for international organization called Global Outreach. We have about 300 missionaries around the world in about 49 countries at this point. I was listening to something the other day that had 98 countries. I'm really happy that they're not in 98 countries, especially now in terms of operation, from helping them on healthcare, on field care, getting on the field, coming off the field, all the various things that happen in that process. I have a staff that helps me with that around the world. I also am a leadership facilitator and coach. I'm the COO of a company called GOinnovation. We go around and do leadership development. We help people bring transformation to their lives, whether it's corporations, individuals, a lot of nonprofits, various people. Stephanie Kostopoulos (02:26): I love that. When I worked for Apple, one of the big things they did with their leaders was leadership training, specific leadership training. That was the first time I became aware of how important it is for leaders to develop themselves for their team. I mean, I thought, oh, I can't spend time on myself. I got to spend time on my team, but it's the other way around. If I'm not my best self, I'm never going to be able to bring up my team. One day I want to talk even more in depth on that with you because that's something near and dear to my heart. But today, like we said, we really want to talk about that connection you have to those other countries because that's something that, Beth and I, we're kind of, we're here. I mean, I think we're talking a lot about what's happened in Tallahassee and then there's Florida, then there's United States, and then I don't know what's going on outside of here. Can you explain in just a couple minutes what countries that you work with and why you're working with those countries? Charlene Garrett (03:26): Yeah, our main country for the leadership development that we're working on right now is Ethiopia. I'm very familiar with what's happening in Ethiopia. In fact, I was just on a call right before this with our team there and thinking and talking about how it's impacting work there. Then besides that, like I mentioned, we're in right now 36 countries. I said 46, 49, somewhere around there but we have a lot of people that came home back to the states because they're expats, but a lot of people sheltered in place, about 36. We've been doing regional connections. I have viewpoints of all of those places, a lot from expats but then I'm very familiar in Ethiopia. Beth Demme (04:07): Based on those connections and based on your experience, how are people in other countries handling the pandemic? What is it like for those who you work with who are in Ethiopia? What is the COVID-19 experience like for them? Charlene Garrett (04:20): It hit Africa, so it went Europe, North America, and then now it's increasing in Africa. The other situation in Africa is that the testing is low, right? That's another problem. About a week ago, Ethiopia put themselves into an emergency state, the whole country. That has meant that the NGOs, there's a lot of nonprofit organizations or non-governmental organizations that are doing work there, they're just getting tired and seeing more and more people that are suffering and trying to help them and it's become more difficult to help them, so that's frustrating for them. The hotel businesses and things like that are completely dead. Everything has shut down in that terms because of international travel was done, but if you go to the market, the statement is they're like there's a pandemic. It's Ramadan there for them right now and so in that respect there's a lot going on in terms of people in the market and they don't even know there's a pandemic. It just kind of depends on where you are. There's definitely not social distancing happening there according to Steadman today. It took him an hour and a half to get across the city. Stephanie Kostopoulos (05:31): Are people wearing mask or anything like that? Charlene Garrett (05:33): Not in the market at all. He didn't notice actually much mask wearing outside of the upper, corporate area. Really thinking about it, they haven't had a lot of cases at this point. The way that a lot of countries are handling it is they are aggressively isolating people that have been diagnosed. It's not, go self-quarantine, it's we're going to quarantine you, which is another thing that I heard from some of our folks in Jordan. They're like, well, Jordan's handling it really well. Well, they're handling it really well in the sense that it really is locked down. I was talking to somebody who was on vacation in a European country when this all happened, his family was quarantined into a hotel immediately upon arrival over a month ago for two weeks and then quarantined to their house and they don't leave their house at all and those kinds of things and so cases are very low. Stephanie Kostopoulos (06:27): How are they getting food? Charlene Garrett (06:29): Jordan came up with this elaborate plan of delivery. You call on certain days for the bakery. You call on certain days and they're basically are employing taxi drivers to deliver food to people so that they won't go get it. Stephanie Kostopoulos (06:42): Wow. That's anything? Supplies like toilet paper or shampoo and you can get anything in that way? Charlene Garrett (06:49): Yeah. Stephanie Kostopoulos (06:50): Wow. Charlene Garrett (06:50): You have to have a really special, it's almost like a hall pass is what it sounds like to me, to be able to leave your house. You have to have a highly validated reason. Then I think they're opening up, like their stepping is opening up a little bit to be able to leave to get essentials, but that hasn't happened yet. Stephanie Kostopoulos (07:07): Are they testing there though? Are they doing the testing that they need to be doing? Charlene Garrett (07:12): I'm not 100% sure to be honest. Stephanie Kostopoulos (07:14): I mean, are we doing the testing we need to be doing? Charlene Garrett (07:17): Yeah. From overall, the picture that I am hearing is no, I don't think that they have the availability to the test as much as we do. I don't think that they're actually getting out to doing it. I live in Tennessee. They have increased testing here significantly and actually asking people who aren't even showing any symptoms who think at all that they maybe didn't wear a mask at Kroger kind of thing, but that is definitely not happening anywhere else that I've heard of. Stephanie Kostopoulos (07:45): Have you been tested? Charlene Garrett (07:46): I have not. I am scheduled to go on Friday. Stephanie Kostopoulos (07:49): Wow. Well, let us know. How long does it take to get the results? Charlene Garrett (07:52): It depends on apparently the lab and the type of test. I'm going to go to an independent lab because it's a drive-thru and I'm taking my 85 year old mother. I don't want to take her in somewhere with me. I think it's anywhere from 72 hours to a week. I'm assuming I'll get it within three days. Maybe some of them are actually immediate, but I don't know what those tests. Stephanie Kostopoulos (08:14): Is it an antibody test or the actual? Charlene Garrett (08:16): The actual test. The one that looks painful. Stephanie Kostopoulos (08:19): Oh. Charlene Garrett (08:19): I'm not excited. Beth Demme (08:21): Yeah, it doesn't look like it's a comfortable test at all. They have to put that swab really far up there. I know someone who went and was tested because they were having symptoms. They were told that it would be as many as nine days to get the test back, but they actually got it back in three days and it was negative. I was glad that the person didn't have to wait nine days. Especially with a negative result. Right? She already was doing everything she needed to do to be isolated and so it wouldn't maybe have changed things so much, but to know that it was negative gave her peace of mind. Stephanie Kostopoulos (08:54): Did she get tested for flu? Beth Demme (08:56): No, she went to one of the COVID drive-thru centers and so they only will test there for COVID-19. Stephanie Kostopoulos (09:03): Well, I was just curious if she is sick like that, it might be flu. Beth Demme (09:05): Actually, I've been wondering about that, about the statistics on flu infections this year and if they're way down and if it's a function of testing. Because we're so busy testing for COVID-19 that we're not able to test for flu. Beth Demme (09:19): Charlene, I wanted to ask you, are the people who you're working with in the other countries, do they seem concerned about COVID-19? Charlene Garrett (09:27): It's all over the spectrum. It depends on personality, history, all that. I have a few people that are concerned, but the greatest majority are more concerned about the people that they serve and the food security and the problems, and then also potential violence. Honduras is an example. Recently there's more riots that are happening there because people don't have access to food. It's limiting their ability to feed their families. Beth Demme (09:56): The virus itself is not as much of a source of concern as the economic impacts in the way that it's drawing on insecurities that were already there like food insecurities. Those have really been amplified by the changes. Charlene Garrett (10:11): Yeah, it's opinions that it's looking at the governments and saying we can't respond the same way that the West can respond. People are looking at it and saying we need to respond differently. Don't copycat or do something in response that another country or another region is doing. In fact, there is a mastermind group of African leaders that my boss, my CEO of GOinnovation was invited to to think Africa, like how should we be responding and how would that look different than the West because of those things. Because they have a high instance, as an example, of HIV, which means that there is more possibility of people dying if they get COVID-19. At the same time, the economic issues and shutting down, how do we do that? Stephanie Kostopoulos (10:56): Do you know anyone that has gotten the virus? Charlene Garrett (11:00): I know two of my missionaries who have gotten it, but the interesting thing is they were both on furlough. One of them came back from Ethiopia, actually he's a doctor. He was here for the birth of his grandchild and he is retired. He's in his 70s. He went through all of the process, you know, got it, lived to tell about it. He's recovered and talked through that process. He's the only one, and then one other missionary. I think it was probably in transit. Again, that whole, even now I just saw a news report yesterday about what's happening on airplanes. I can't imagine flying right now and trying to stay at all not impacted by anybody else's illness. Stephanie Kostopoulos (11:46): Well, I mean, and that brings up the point that you travel a lot in your work. How is this affecting your day to day? How do you see affecting in the future? When do you think you'll be able to travel again? Charlene Garrett (11:59): Yeah, I do two types of travel. I commute. Our office for Global Outreach is actually in Tupelo, Mississippi, and I live in Nashville, Tennessee, which is a 45-minute flight or a three and a half hour drive. I've been taking the flight for a few years now every other week. I haven't done that since I came back early March. I came back on my last trip early March and I've stayed at home. For that kind of work, we're all working remotely. We've taken our office in Tupelo and everybody's working at home. Everything is pretty much Zoomed except our finance staff. For GOinnovation where we travel, typically what we do is we take research-based leadership development and we take it into a classroom and help people go through transformation by actually tangibly touching card decks and experiencing things and working with it. It's very physical. It's very intentional. Charlene Garrett (12:51): It's groups of usually ten to a hundred, depending on the size. Obviously, that's not happening. We are needing to pivot and what we are trying to do is not just get out information, which we're seeing a lot online right now. People giving off a lot of free information. We believe in transformation. It's a lot of online classroom. We have something called image deck that now we've brought online so you can impact images and dialogue and all that kind of stuff. We're trying to innovate, GOinnovation. We're leaning into the innovation part of our name and figuring out how to make that feasible. We did get the CARES Act PPP, so that is giving us two months to regroup. I'm thankful for that. We can get finances flowing in. We had some subscriptions and things that still pay, but it definitely is impacting our work. Stephanie Kostopoulos (13:42): How about your international travel? Is that something that you did on the regular or has it not really been an issue yet? Charlene Garrett (13:49): It immediately canceled a trip to South Africa. I had a trip to South Africa scheduled end of March, early April to facilitate at a retreat there and that canceled everything. We lost money, got money back and had to do all of that. That's impacted that for sure. We're trying to plan. It's impacting planning. Right? We love to do face to face care for our missionaries. That's one side. I have four directors. One of those is our Missionary Care Director. We can't plan his travel because we have no idea. We're doing a lot more online with that. Then for GOinnovation, yes, it means that we're not going back and forth. I think I called in one day from Ethiopia onto your podcast because I was in Ethiopia in December. Charlene Garrett (14:33): I would have been probably going back right about now because we are working on a big project right now in Ethiopia with the European Centre for Electoral Support with their elections. That's all suspended and now we're taking that online. It is changing the face of our work and we don't anticipate that it's ever going to look the way that it did. I don't think that we'll never travel again. I don't think we'll never be in a classroom again, but my intuition tells me that this is a shift and we're going to be doing more synchronously and asynchronously. Stephanie Kostopoulos (15:08): How are you mentally handling that? I mean, something we talked about on a previous episode was, I think last week we call it okay. We've just accepted things now. Where are you in that process with all of that? Charlene Garrett (15:22): Yeah. I mean, I live in the in between anyway and in the tension between things personally. I like to plan, but I also understand that sometimes you can't, you need to change. I'm handling it okay, I guess this is a good time. I echo your okay. We talk a lot about polarities and polarity management and the fact that you can't solve for one or the other. They're both important but it's the tension in between. We actually have a podcast, GOinnovation does. We just interviewed somebody with the new book on that and that is something that we're just continuing to lean into. What is the polarity I'm dealing with today so I can be both sad and excited? I think that's it. I'm excited for the future actually and I'm also mourning the loss of the regular. Stephanie Kostopoulos (16:11): Yeah, I like that. Beth Demme (16:13): Are there things that have changed about your schedule that you think are good changes? As I reflect on what my schedule was like before this, before everything shut down, it was filled with a lot of busyness and a lot of that has subsided. Part of that is because I don't have to get one kid to soccer and then go to another lacrosse game. I don't have those external activities anymore because it's all been canceled. But some of it too was just busyness that I thought I needed to have in order to be productive. Right? In order to feel right about myself. Have you noticed anything like that? Charlene Garrett (16:47): Another polarity. It's a good thing that I'm not traveling so much. Like I mentioned, my elderly mother, my 85 year old mother lives with me. We're going through another season I think of time where I've been wondering how long I could be commuting as often as I do. That's good but I am busier than I've ever been. It actually has increased. I feel like I'm bootstrapping a little bit with GOinnovation while managing a full time job with Global Outreach because there's more transition in the future and now as the window of time. It's like that beginning growth phase, and I'm cooking a lot more. Beth Demme (17:26): Me too. That's just weird. Charlene Garrett (17:28): A lot of work. It's good-ish, but I mean, grocery shopping, cooking, all of that. I was gone every other week, so every other week I had downtime. Even I was gone for work, then at night, my responsibilities were just... I don't really have that time anymore. Stephanie Kostopoulos (17:42): Are you doing all the shopping? Is your mom going to stores at all? Charlene Garrett (17:45): Yeah, my mom can't drive and she uses a walker so she doesn't get out and do any shopping. I do have a girl that lives with me, like an adopted adult daughter. She does some of it. She's also working through her work and figuring out things and so she helps out. She cooks a couple of times a week, which is helpful. Yeah, I'm doing the majority. Thank God for Kroger pickup. Let me just say that. Stephanie Kostopoulos (18:07): Oh nice. Charlene, do you work with companies in other countries? Charlene Garrett (18:13): Yeah, we do. Mostly we work with NGOs in other countries right now. We do have a couple of clients that we just started with that things have gotten postponed. An oil company actually that's based out of France, but the oil production as you can imagine is not in France. The refineries are in Mozambique and so we'd just started working with them, one of our facilitators. Mostly we work with NGOs that are all over the world like World Vision or Bethany Christian Services or things like that. They're just are really trying. They're still doing their work. It's just harder. Stephanie Kostopoulos (18:49): Have you been in contact with them? Have you really heard what those struggles specifically are that the pandemic has caused? Charlene Garrett (18:56): Yeah. I mean, in the NGO world, they are not set up for online relationship internally. They really still rely a lot on face to face. They will fly people all over for meetings and things like that surprisingly. There's a lot of grants in that but it's because that's what they're used to. There is a steep learning curve for that as well because that is not happening as much. That's difficult. Then just their projects, where they are trying to complete things has bogged down depending on the country and it's everywhere. One of the things that we mentioned is we're used to managing crisis. It's usually only in like five countries at a time. There's a tornado, there's some sort of unrest. We deal with crisis in Haiti as an example, all the time, but now it's every single place. That is the biggest feeling of overwhelm for our clients, for us, as well as we try to serve them and help them. Beth Demme (19:57): It's one of the things that I think has been overall a positive about this worldwide experience is that we have a common enemy, right? The common enemy is not another person or another country. The enemy is the spread of this virus. In that way, it feels unifying to me. I don't know. Do you think I'm off base on that, Charlene? Or have you seen that too? Charlene Garrett (20:20): Again, it's that polarity. I think that we have a common enemy. I think that naturally human beings are looking for blame and shifting blame and we want to put it on somebody else instead of something that is essentially you can't really blame a virus. Nobody's going to be able to like, hey, that virus, and get some sort of response. We can't blame the virus. We're looking for where did it come from. The human experience--we're looking for someone to shift the blame to. If it's not me, it's you, it's internal, external. You're starting to see that more and more both in the United States, in our news, and across the world. I had a post the other day from somebody in, I think it was also in Jordan and they were saying, hey, we have a view of what's happening in United States, my friends on Facebook, can you tell me what really is happening because we're seeing something? I lived in Africa for five years and I know the news and the perception is very interesting. It looks like we're falling apart over here probably from the other side of the world. Stephanie Kostopoulos (21:22): Is that not true? I feel like New York may be. Charlene Garrett (21:25): Well, so that's a good point. Our CFO is in New York. I talk to her frequently. She's sitting in New York. It's difficult. It's hard, but she wouldn't say they're falling apart. Stephanie Kostopoulos (21:35): Okay, that's good to hear. Charlene Garrett (21:37): Percentage-wise. I think that we look at the macro and micro aspects of things and we like to extrapolate and say, okay, this is what's happening or look at it in a different way. My experience is, I'm not falling apart. Tennessee is not falling apart. It's difficult. There are a lot of people that are struggling, but a lot of people struggle every day. One of my girls that I work with grew up homeless here in the United States, way before a pandemic. Perspective and then whether it's amplified or magnified. Stephanie Kostopoulos (22:10): It's so tough because I have to really limit how much news I watch because when you watch the news, it does look like that. It does look like, you know, we just surpassed one million cases I think in the United States. And all of the stats and all of these things it's like it does feel like we are falling apart at times. But then when I step back and look at Tallahassee as a whole, I think actually in the zip code we live in, I think we've only had 10 cases in our zip code, not the Greater Tallahassee area, but it's not as huge as the news is making it sound. Even though this is a big deal, we need to be staying home, we need to be following all this stuff. I'm not saying change that, but there is some perspective there that I think I sometimes lose when I'm watching the news in general, our news. Charlene Garrett (22:56): One of the things about the news, I used to be a tour guide in Washington, D.C. and there is something that started many, many years ago, yellow journalism. That's that idea of like blowing things up or the attraction of the news. We call it fake news now, but it's not necessarily fake. There's truth, it's just not the whole truth or it's amplified. When I was in college, there was a fire on my campus and it was across the campus. I woke up to lots of phone calls worried about my life. I looked at the news, and on CNN there was a headline, Lee College is on fire. There was flames behind our sign. The actual fire was on the other side of the campus from that sign. The perception was campus was on fire. It was a bad thing that happened. People did lose their lives and it was a difficult thing, but it wasn't the entire campus. I think that that is what happens in news and we deal with and that's what we're seeing now. Beth Demme (23:48): It is hard, I think sometimes to maintain perspective when you want to take something really seriously. I want to take this virus, I want to take this pandemic really seriously, but I don't want to lose perspective so that I become paralyzed with fear. Charlene Garrett (24:04): Yeah. Fear is an initial. The problem is that fear is a great initial motivator. It's not sustainable because then you go one direction or another. It either becomes super amplified or then you get into apathy, one or the other. I think that that's one of the biggest concerns that I have. As we're leaning into it, like I'm hearing, we need to be where we are now with decision. Let's not judge the past decisions, they were made already. This is where we are. Now with our information, what's today's decision? What's tomorrow's decision? That's what I'm interested in hearing, and it's a tension. Every day I have a different opinion about what I need to do. It's hard. Beth Demme (24:46): Between the time that we're recording this right now and when this releases, the Safer At Home order for Florida will have expired. We're like 36 hours away from expiring and I have no idea what it looks like after that. I don't know if it means that restaurants will be open. I don't know if it means that state offices will be open. I don't know if it means the DMV will be open. I just don't know what it means. I'm not able to plan very well for even two days from now because I don't know what the decisions are that are being made right now. Then when I look even farther ahead beyond that and I think about my own personal context, in terms of helping to run a church, if they say you can only gather in groups of 10, 25, 50, what do we do with the 200 people that would normally come on a Sunday morning? How do we get them to self-select when they're going to come? If everybody decides to start coming every single Sunday, I just don't know how that works on a practical level. I don't know how you divide existing groups like that into smaller meeting groups. Charlene Garrett (25:51): I have been thankful here that in Tennessee they have given us a plan. We do know what's happening. It's not date-oriented, however so it's a little bit tricky. It's based upon cases, but there's a trajectory and they're announcing it and that kind of thing. I don't know, we'll still see what happens. I still am not sure about the gathering piece. I have wondered about that with church. I go to church of 1,500. Stephanie Kostopoulos (26:13): Wow. Charlene Garrett (26:15): We have three services. That's it. I was like, there's never a time when I'm more than six inches from somebody else, let alone six feet. What does that look like? I was just thankful that it was live last week instead of some of it was recorded. Stephanie Kostopoulos (26:31): You said that you have guidance from Tennessee on what the plan looks like. Are there any dates? You're under stay at home, right? Right now? Charlene Garrett (26:42): Yeah, we're under stay at home. They've started the first tracking for the first 14 days of cases going downward. This is actually, it's interesting, there's Tennessee and then there's Nashville. Tennessee is more aggressively wanting to open up than the city of Nashville and the county that I'm in. Our mayor has made a plan. The mayor plan for Nashville is 14 days as cases go down, you go to phase one. This is what phase one means for you as an individual, for companies, for restaurants. Then there's phase two. The thing that Nashville is worried about is phase one does not include bars opening. It does not include live music events. Stephanie Kostopoulos (27:22): That's big. Charlene Garrett (27:22): Imagine, I live in Nashville. Right. That's starting in phase two but limited numbers. What my mom is most concerned about is salons opening up, so I'm paying attention to that. We'll see. It's still everybody wear a mask, social distancing, all of the same precautions but now we're going to be closer basically is what they're trying to do. Charlene Garrett (27:45): Yeah, it's been interesting. I have several friends, I have a lot of friends here that are creatives that are singers. I was listening to somebody on Facebook live the other day, sent her a tip through Venmo because that is a big part of the economy. It's a big part of who we are and we want to maintain that and what are the ways that we continue to do that while we're opening back up. That's the creativity piece that excites me to be honest, and the pivot. It takes sometimes, major events for us to change. Beth Demme (28:15): Yeah, I like that word pivot. I would rather pivot than change so I'm going to embrace that. We'd be on the lookout for where this is pivoting. Charlene Garrett (28:23): The good thing about pivoting is something gets to stay the same. One foot usually stays in place when you pivot and so something remains and you don't completely have to change. You just shift. I could see why that would be appealing. Stephanie Kostopoulos (28:42): Thank you for joining us today. Charlene. You are our first remote guests. That's so exciting. You are our most called in guest, too. I love that I can actually see you and put a face to the voice. That's awesome. You're super fun. The other day when we practiced I was getting to learn your personality and I'm like, you're a fun girl. I'd hang out with you. Charlene Garrett (29:07): I feel so special. Beth Demme (29:08): Next time you're in Nashville, Steph. Stephanie Kostopoulos (29:10): I do like Nashville. It was pretty, it was a cool place. I probably will be back for sure. Charlene, we of course want to thank you for being with us today and wanted to know if you have anything, any social media you want to share with us or where can people find you, more information about what you do, let us know. Charlene Garrett (29:28): Yeah, you can find me. Obviously I'm on Facebook, Instagram, but you can find GOinnovation. We have GOinnovation page on Facebook as well as go-innovation.com is our website. Right now the biggest thing that we're doing is helping people get remote and so remote.go-innovation.com will help you get connected to a webinar that we did and helping people do this better and live interaction and Zoom and all of that. Find me there and we'd be happy to connect. Stephanie Kostopoulos (29:55): Awesome. I have one more question. What book, TV show, or podcasts are you excited about right now? Charlene Garrett (30:02): I would say the book that I'm most excited about right now is called The Voice of the Heart by Chip Dodd. It is a great book, kind of distilling down emotions to eight emotions, which initially I was like, that's ridiculous. Now he's winning me over. Along with a podcast by my really good friends and mentors, pastors, Alyn and AJ Jones. They're actually doing a nine week series on those emotions right now. It's like distills it. I'm kind of an essentialized person so it's like, oh, that's better than reading the whole book. I'm doing both at the same time and really enjoying it. Beth Demme (30:41): That's so good, Charlene. I hope everybody checks out those resources and connects with you on Facebook and Instagram. I just want to say personally just thank you. I just have always learned a lot from you and I'm thankful that we've been able to maintain our friendship all these years. I just love you so much. Charlene Garrett (30:58): Thank you. I love you too. It's been a wonderful time. Thank you ladies for having me. This is my first time to be on a podcast, so I'm so excited to have shared it with you all. Stephanie Kostopoulos (31:08): We are excited to have shared it with you and I'm excited to say that you and I have now been friends since 2020 so we'll see. I know we can say as long as you and Beth, but I'm excited to say 2020 was our year. Beth Demme (31:23): That's right. I had to jump on you, 1987. Stephanie Kostopoulos (31:25): I was born the year before that. Stephanie Kostopoulos (31:30): At the end of each episode we like to end with questions for reflection. These are questions based on today's show. Beth is going to read them and leave a little pause between each one. There's also a PDF on our website. Beth Demme (31:41): Number one, reflect on what Charlene said. Did something especially stand out to you? Number two, it's natural to become more inward focused during uncertain times. Have you taken time to think about how the pandemic affects our country and the world as a whole? If not, are you willing to? Number three, do you think there's something you can do to help your fellow humans or does it seem overwhelming or impossible? Number four, when you hear about people in other countries dealing with the same situation as you, how does it make you feel? Stephanie Kostopoulos (32:17): This has been the Discovering Our Scars Podcast. Thank you for joining us. Quotable
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Meet StephMental Health Advocate. Author. Podcast Host. DIYer. Greyhound Mom. 
Meet BethI'm a mom who laughs a lot, mainly at myself. #UMC Pastor, recent Seminary grad, public speaker, blogger, and sometimes lawyer. Learning to #LiveLoved. 
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