Trials Happened For Her, Not To Her: Andrea Heuston #159

Highlights

• Questioning her worth as a girl (3:56)
• The life-changing experience being an exchange student in Denmark (12:16)
• Her infertility crucible (16:56)
• Her adoption journey (23:16)
• The moment she truly felt like a Mom (25:53)
• Almost losing her life after an ovarian cyst burst (28:15)
• The beach house fire she considers her most traumatic crucible (33:08)
• How crucibles are a gift (38:02)
• The improvement in her marriage brought on by her crucibles (43:14)
• The importance of choice and gratitude in recovering from a crucible (46:16)
• Andrea’s word of hope for listeners (51:08)

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible.

Andrea Heuston:

I can’t control what happens. I can’t control a spark from a fire that hits my roof. I can’t control the fact that I was born unable to conceive. I can’t control any of these things. I can’t control the fact that I was in a coma. Who knew? But what I can control is my reaction to things and how I moved forward. So for me, I could be a victim. “Oh my gosh, the universe did this to me,” or “Oh my gosh, this happened to me.” It’s really about what happens for us, not to us.

Gary Schneeberger:

You’ll hear us say that a lot around these parts. Your crucible experiences did not happen to you. They happened for you. Tied to that trial set within that setback, affixed to that failure, you’ll discover seeds you can plant along your journey to a life of significance. You just have to look for them and learn from them.

Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, co-host of the show. Our guest this week, Andrea Heuston, has accumulated plenty of those seeds as she’s moved beyond her crucibles from an emotionally wrenching infertility struggle, to a medical emergency that left her in a coma for weeks, to a fire that destroyed the home she called her happy place, she has faced a lifetime’s worth of tragedies. And yet she’s moved on to live a life of triumph choosing hope and grace as she helps others to do exactly what she’s done, to lead like a woman. “I had to get over myself in order to go anywhere else,” she tells us. And the wisdom she’s accumulated can guide you along your own unique path to the life you’ve always dreamed of.

Warwick Fairfax:

I loved reading your book, Andrea, Stronger on the Other Side. I just felt that so much wisdom, empowerment, it was incredible. Love what you do with your branding and communications firm, Artitudes Design. You’ve got a podcast, as Garymentioned, The Lead Like a Woman Show, and then a new book as we just heard, Lead Like a Woman With Audacity, so a lot of things. But I’d like to start a little bit about your background. I think growing up in Washington state and just obviously that was formative in both your challenges and how you’ve chosen to use those challenges to help others. So just tell us a bit about a young Andrea growing up and who were you and dreams and challenges. What was the young Andrea like?

Andrea Heuston:

Oh, the young Andrea was a nerd first of all. Although my brother, who I’m very close to, he didn’t call me a nerd. He called me a brain. So I grew up as the middle child of three. And my older brother’s only seven months older than I am because my parents couldn’t conceive. So they adopted my brother at three days old. And so Ryan and I grew up fairly close. He’s still a major player in my life. Really, I was born in the seventies, well early seventies. So it was, I don’t want to say an idyllic childhood, I just want to say life was good overall. I mean, both my parents were teachers at one point, so we had no money because you only get paid once a month as a teacher. So at the end of every month we were eating Campbell’s soup and saltine crackers, but none of us knew that. We just had a pretty great life together.

As I got a little older, I realized that as a girl, I was not as valued, and I have to be careful about that word, as the boys in the family because I was the girl. I grew up very right wing, conservative Christian, which was great. I had a huge community there because my friends were all youth group friends or friends from church overall until I went to Europe as an exchange student. But it was very much girls are supposed to do certain things and they have certain roles, and really those roles are about being a mother and being a wife and taking care of the homestead, things like that.

So I chafed against that a little bit just because I do. I am a very much, my favorite quote is leaders challenge the process. And that’s what I do and have done for many, many years. But yeah, I had a dad who worked for The Man, as we say, The Man, so the suit and tie, all the whole thing all the time. And my mom was a teacher, which was a great career for a woman. And then she took time off to raise kids, and then she was a principal of a Christian school for a while as well. So it was lovely in a lot of ways. And you only know what you know. You know where you are and you know what you know until you learn something new.

Warwick Fairfax:

And that is interesting. I don’t want to dwell on it too much, but that part of the book when you talk about your upbringing, that to me, it’s going to sound weird, that was one of the saddest parts of the book as I read it. I just felt so bad for you. And again, I don’t want to prolong this too much because I didn’t grow up like that. I grew up in a sort of Anglican background in Australia, and my parents were… My dad was philosophical in his faith. He wouldn’t have considered himself evangelical, still less fundamentalist. And along the way, and again, listeners know this, faith became important to me. We go to an evangelical church. But I read that and I don’t want to get too much on it, but I just thought as you were talking about your upbringing, it’s like, well, this doesn’t really accord with my philosophy of life, which is sort of interesting given that faith is important to me.

So yeah, I have two sons.

Andrea Heuston:

Mine neither.

Warwick Fairfax:

Well, I have two sons and a daughter in their twenties into early thirties. And with all of my kids, including my daughter, I want them to be who they want to be. Encourage them. And whenever they say, “Gosh, I don’t know that I feel worthy enough,” I’ll absolutely hammer into that if that’s the right or wrong word, saying, “You are worthy. You are brilliant.” I mean, I’m into all of the kids. So suffice it to say, I read that it’s like, I don’t know, I found it hard to understand, even though I’m a person of faith. Anyway, I don’t want to dwell too much on that because it’s your story, not mine. But I just felt so bad. So anyway, let’s move on from that. But I guess as we’re talking about that, that was really formative because I sense from your book that there was a sense of not just not being valued, but it’s like, am I worth something? Am I a valuable person?

And sometimes people mean well, they have their paradigms and we may agree or disagree with them, but it was formative into some of the lifelong challenges. So talk a bit about what that did to you, right or wrong, let’s ignore how it happened for a moment, because I could talk about it for a long time because it really kind of hit me pretty hard I got to say in terms of… But let’s move on from my issues with that. But talk about what that did to you. Just that sense of girls get married and have kids, which is not wrong, but it’s like this mortal, you shouldn’t be lessened if you will or limited. So talk about what that did to you, that kind of philosophy.

Andrea Heuston:

Yeah. Well, I called it “other” in my book is that I felt like I was other because I was a girl. And my feeling came not just from my upbringing, but also from the church in a way of how girls were supposed to be a certain way. And I did allude to that already. But I wanted more myself. I wanted more. I wanted to be more than that. And so I had a brain or I have a brain, but at the time I used it. I was teacher’s pet sometimes. I was slightly ostracized. I was bullied a bit because of that. But the idea of girls must just fall in line, do what you’re expected to do, say what you’re expected to say, always honor the church and God. And I think it’s wonderful for people to have religion, to have faith. I mean, we have to have faith.

And I’m sorry, I look outside at the mountains right now and how stunning they’re, and there is a greater being, absolutely, because otherwise the beauty wouldn’t be here. But for me growing up other, as I say, was hard because I felt absolutely like I wasn’t worthy, like I couldn’t do all the things I wanted to do. And to be honest, in the seventies and early eighties, women were still pigeonholed. I mean, women couldn’t even get a credit card in their name until the 1970s. They couldn’t buy a car without a husband’s signature. They couldn’t rent a place to live. There was nothing a woman was allowed to do until we had somebody in the Supreme Court who really, really, really voiced her opinion and helped us out. But it was one of those states of the world as well and of my family and of the religion that kind of piled on to make me feel small.

And there’s nothing about me that’s small. And so for me, I had that imposter syndrome. And frankly, I still do. I mean, there’s that voice in my head that says should you really be doing this? Should you really say that? That kind of thing. And don’t swear and never take the Lord’s name in vain, and all those things are in my head. And so feeling other when I was young gave me that feeling of smallness as well. And I didn’t really find my voice and really get to who I believe I am, the beginnings of it, until I was an exchange student in Europe.

Gary Schneeberger:

And Warwick’s going to ask you some questions here about your crucibles as we define them on the show. But before we go there, I just want to stay here for one more minute or two, because that’s a crucible. Your first crucible in life was being made to feel other. And that crucible, as we’ll hear, shaped the way you responded to some of those other crucibles that came, didn’t it?

Andrea Heuston:

Oh, absolutely, because I had to find the power within myself and my voice where I didn’t feel like I had a voice as a child. I just didn’t feel like it was there. Even as I say in my book, I was suicidal at one point when I was 14 years old because I felt like I had nowhere in the world to fit. There was nowhere that I fit. And that was feeling other. I don’t like to use the term being made to feel other, only because I think it was a bunch of things that came together that helped me feel that way or created that feeling within me versus being made to do something. And as a child, you do what you’re supposed to do. You follow your family norms and the societal norms, I mean, most of us do, but you try because you want to please people.

So being made to feel feels like somebody said, “You must do this.” And there’s always a little bit of that in families, especially when you have a patriarchal family. It just is how it is, and a religion that was very patriarchal or is very patriarchal in this case. But for me, that was a crucible because I had to get over myself in order to go anywhere else. Because if I was still in that space, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing. I wouldn’t be elevating other women. I wouldn’t be keynote speaking, I wouldn’t be an influencer on female leadership topics. And I believe wholly that women have a voice and they need to be able to use them. But I wasn’t raised that way.

Warwick Fairfax:

So you state in your book that a key moment was when you went to Denmark as an exchange student. It seemed like that was a key step to finding your voice and trying to discover who really is Andrea Heuston? Who am I?

Andrea Heuston:

Oh yes.

Warwick Fairfax:

Is there anything inside there? Was there just a hollow nothingness? I mean, who am I? So talk about that sort of experience in Denmark and how that was pretty transformative.

Andrea Heuston:

Oh my goodness. So I applied to be a Rotary Exchange student, and I was a sophomore in high school and I applied. I learned about it my freshman year because a friend of mine from elementary school, her sister was an exchange student in, I believe Spain at the time. So I applied to be a Rotary Exchange student. And when I got it, I wanted to go to France because I spoke French. I’d lived in Canada as a small child, and I had learned French in school there. And then when I moved back home, I try to keep languages even as a kid, I remember some of the words. And then I took French in high school. So I was so excited. I wanted to go to France. Well, I didn’t get France. So my second choice was Scandinavia. And because my mother’s half Swedish, I thought, “Oh, it’d be fun to go to Sweden.”

Well, then I got Denmark and I was so devastated. I was so upset that I got Denmark. What Denmark is the place now where if I fly into Kastrup, which is the main airport in Copenhagen, my eyes fill with tears because I’m coming home. Because what happened for me is I found a place. And it wasn’t just a physical place, but it was a place within myself and a voice. So I said that I was a nerd when I was a kid or brain as my brother Ryan has always called me. But I did feel ostracized. In Denmark as an exchange student, everybody wanted to talk to me. They wanted to know me. They wanted to know my opinions. They wanted to joke about America like, “Are cheerleaders real?” I’m like, “Yeah, sadly they are.” So things like that that they learned in movies that they wanted to talk to me about.

And it made me feel like I had a place and I found my best friend in the world there. She’s still my best friend to this very day, so many, so many years later. But I also found a place for me that challenged the beliefs I’d grown up with. I mean, women had a voice already in Scandinavia. Absolutely. Women were important. And in my little world that I’d grown up with or in, women were not important. And so learning that, but also learning that it’s okay to think differently. It’s okay to have different laws and different rules and different norms that are absolutely different than what I’d grown up with, and it wasn’t wrong. So I had always believed it would be wrong to be different, but it wasn’t wrong. It was just different. And I realized and learned that I could be different too, and I could have a voice and I could have my opinions.

And Denmark in the eighties and now is a very liberal place. I mean liberal in their political thoughts, liberal in just the way they do things and believe in things. And I’d never seen that in my life. Liberal was bad, bad when I was a child. But what it gave me was this ability to see both sides of the coin. I was able to say, “That’s not bad. And the other way’s not bad either. It’s just different.” And it’s okay to find your place in between or it’s okay to find one or the other. It’s a spectrum. It is. And so Denmark changed my life. And I learned the language very quickly. I had to communicate. I just had to communicate. So I spent a lot of time learning how to communicate. And my God, it was the best year for me because I figured out who I am. And it helped me figure out who I was going to be even though I was still forming.

Warwick Fairfax:

Let’s move on to some of your crucibles. But you know, went to college, you had to finance that yourself from what I understand. You got into founding this business Artitudes, which became a million dollar business, very successful, got married to your husband, Eric. I mean, a lot of good things are happening. I mean, you’re not sitting there just like a wallflower. You are seizing life and you’re saying, “Let’s go for it,” which I think is wonderful. But challenges didn’t just desert you once you grew up. Okay, that’s in my rear view mirror.

Andrea Heuston:

No.

Warwick Fairfax:

Upbringing had some challenges, but now everything’s Disneyland. Sadly that wasn’t the case. So you and your husband tried to have kids and that was certainly one significant issue. Let’s talk about that. Sadly that’s not a new issue for many women. Sadly there’s obviously other women who’ve gone through this. But talk about that and why that was every woman’s journey in this particular case is different. So talk about your journey through this and what that meant to you.

Andrea Heuston:

My husband and I met, we were young, so he’s about a year and a half younger than me. And we met when I was 21, almost 22, and he was 20. So we got married when I was 23, which was part of the path and part of the way I grew up is women get married, women have families. And I’d always wanted kids. And I have a girlfriend who’s a teacher, and she said, “I didn’t know really you wanted kids. We’ve been friends since we were 12.” She goes, “I just didn’t.” I’m like, “No, no. I’ve always wanted kids, my friend.” And so we tried. We started trying fairly early on to have children and it just didn’t happen. And so we ended up starting infertility treatments and that was where we started slow. So they start you slow and then they ramp you up. And it was over the course of four or five years that we did all this.

I mean, it really was so many treatments and so many things. And I was devastated. I will say to the women listening that if you’re doing infertility or you’re trying to get pregnant, every month that you don’t is a small death. And that’s something you have to deal with. And I say you have to deal with you, get through it your own way. But it is demoralizing and it is brutal, especially when you’ve been taught and what’s ingrained in your head is this is what women are meant to do. So I felt like I couldn’t do what I was meant to do despite the fact that I was learning to find my voice and really following my own path. But that was still there. So women were meant to be mothers, wives and mothers, and I could not do that.

So we spent years trying to have kids. We did everything possible. I mean, we did all of the procedures that were there in the late nineties and 2000 to get to a point where we could be parents. And that included all the way up through in vitro fertilization. Now in vitro also takes a toll on both women and men, frankly, because it was a death for my husband each time as well. And it was one of those things where so I have veins that roll. I have other things that I didn’t know were issues, but they ended up taking blood out of my foot, out of my forehead just to get test results from me. So I was not only a pin cushion, I was a science experiment. My husband had to give me shots twice a day. Twice a day he had to give me a shot, one in the backside and one in the abdomen.

So it was one of those where first of all, the romance is gone. Let’s just say that. There’s no romance there when you’re in infertility treatments. You’re like, “Hmm, what time is it? What’s my body temperature? Let’s go.” So it’s not fun, really. It’s not fun. And it takes a toll on your relationships too. It just on your relationship with your spouse or your partner, it takes a toll. And it was brutal because I looked at myself as defective. And I will tell you that I called myself defective for a good 10 years. And this is after I had children as well. So I was doing that to myself and I was doing that to my psyche and I was bringing myself down as well because I felt like this is my fault. I will also say we were undiagnosed for most of that time until they figured out I had polycystic ovarian syndrome.

And that said, that’s a long definition. But that said, later on in one of my other crucibles, they figured out why I could never have children. But it was one of those things where we had to go through every step possible, and we spent so much money that we didn’t have. In the US in particular, it’s not covered by insurance unless you work for a Microsoft or if you live in the state of, I think West Virginia, they cover it. But they don’t cover any of those treatments anywhere. And I could go on and on about our healthcare system, but it is absolutely broken. However, I had friends who would say to me things like, “Well, maybe you’re not meant to be a mother. Maybe this is God’s way of telling you that you shouldn’t be a mother.” And which that friend I are no longer friends.

But still. It’s that space where you feel like you’re not doing what you’re supposed to be doing, where you’re not being who you’re supposed to be. And it was horrible. It spun my husband and I into marriage counseling, the only time we’ve ever done something like that where we were just not on the same page because we were blaming each other because we didn’t know what the reason was that we could not conceive. It was hard. I had multiple surgeries, I had multiple procedures, and so many things that didn’t go right. And in hindsight, they all went right. We don’t know that at the time. You don’t know that when you’re in it.

Warwick Fairfax:

Well, I know there’s a couple other crucibles I want to dwell on too, but just to talk about this one. As I read that, there was a lot of hard things to read in your book. It’s just so sad. And I can’t think of the word that adequately describes it, but thinking that you are defective, that from your worldview as you grew up anyway that inherited worldview, gosh, women are meant to be wives and mothers. And as a woman, if you’re not a mother, you’re not being who God designed you to be, which from a faith paradigm is about as much of a sword through the heart as you can possibly get, absolutely soul crushing.

And again, it doesn’t matter so much whether that’s a right or wrong paradigm, that was the truth that you grew up with.

Andrea Heuston:

It is.

Warwick Fairfax:

And therefore that was a real dagger to the heart saying, “I’m defective.” Anybody to think that they are defective, broken, that leads you on the path to why am I here? And I’m worthless. Those are the cousins which is just terrible.

Andrea Heuston:

Absolutely.

Warwick Fairfax:

And obviously this wasn’t easy, but that led to adoption, I think you mentioned from a woman that had some substance abuse challenges, and you adopted two wonderful boys, which was a blessing. Wasn’t an easy process from what you stated in the book.

Andrea Heuston:

Not at all. But you know what? We were there for the birth of each boy.

Warwick Fairfax:

Wow.

Andrea Heuston:

We were there for the birth of each child. So anyway, I just have to talk about this because it’s so beautiful. They are half-brothers, same birth mother. She actually has five.

Warwick Fairfax:

Wow.

Andrea Heuston:

Five children. So yeah, I don’t know what that says because when you go through adoption, you have to really give blood and all your money and they have to look at everything and interview you to see if you’re fit. But there are women who can conceive when they look at somebody else and really probably shouldn’t be parents in lots of ways. That said, it was a process and it was brutal because we actually had started with we were matched with somebody else first through a private adoption. And she decided after she gave birth, her mother would take the baby.

So we’d already had plans. That’s not in the book. But when we met the birth mother of our children through an agency on the other side of our state about five hours away, she was already four or five months pregnant. And so we were with her that whole time. And then when my son was two and a half, almost three, I always sent her flowers, yellow roses, on Aiden’s birthday. And when he was almost three, I couldn’t find her again to send her flowers. So I called her grandmother and I just picked up the phone and said, “Hey Mary, I’m trying to find our birth mother so I can send her flowers because it’s Aiden’s birthday. Do you have her address?” And Mary said, “Just a minute.” And then our birth mother came on the phone, shockingly. I was like, “Wait, I like to prepare myself for these conversations.”

But she said, “Would you like another child?” And I said, “What?” And she said, “Well, this one’s due on August 27th,” which would’ve been our 10th wedding anniversary. So without hanging up and calling my husband, I said, “Yes.” Because I’m like that’s a sign. The universe is telling me something. And then he was born on August 21st. So the first thing I did is I looked at his toes and they’re the same toes that Aiden has. And just for some reason I wanted to see, and it was beautiful. I was the first to hold each boy. My husband was the one to cut the cord each time. So anyway, I had to side bar there because it’s such a beautiful story. And these are my boys. They’re my heart.

Gary Schneeberger:

And there was a moment that you told me about Andre. I mean, we talked a few months back that really, because after you adopted your first son, you said you still struggled a little bit with feeling like a mom. But then you were in the car. You said he was 10 months old. He was in the backseat. You were in the car. Tell listeners what happened because that was a pivotal moment where you owned that you had gone from feeling less than to feeling like a mom in that moment. Describe that moment for folks.

Andrea Heuston:

Oh, absolutely. And it’s such a funny little moment. Most moms probably wouldn’t remember this but it struck me so hard. So we were running a quick errand and I didn’t bring the diaper bag. Note to all you new moms out there, bring the diaper bag everywhere you go. But we were in the car and Aiden had sneezed. And when he sneezed, he had snot running down his face. And so when I stopped the car, I thought, what am I going to do? This baby and I are running into the store. What am I going to do? There was nothing in the car to clean up with. So note, there’s always something in the car nowadays. And they’re 21, almost 22 and 18. So I got out of the car and I went around and I had to dig through my bag and I found a receipt.

So I took the receipt and I wiped down this child’s face. And of course I got stuff all over me. But in that moment I was like, wow, I’m this kid’s mom. I’m a mom. I just cleaned his face up with a receipt. You do what you have to do as a mom. But I still remember that moment. I still remember that chubby little baby face in the car seat. It was that moment that I went, “Wow, I’m a mom. I’m a mother. I’m not just taking care of this gorgeous baby who I loved from the minute he entered the world.” But that is when it got me. I’m a mom.

Warwick Fairfax:

So I want to pivot to another crucible because unfortunately you’ve had quite a lot of challenges.

Andrea Heuston:

I had a few. Yeah.

Warwick Fairfax:

So you write in your book you had a weight challenge. You were heavier than you would like to be and so you went and had lap band surgery, which led to a bunch of other things that you probably had no way of knowing would happen. So just talk about what happened from that whole journey, if you will.

Andrea Heuston:

Yes. Well, as we talked about, I had fertility issues, but I had a lap band put in, as you just said, Warwick, and things were going great. I was losing weight. Now also, the lap band was a fairly new procedure at the time. Yes, it had been all approved and everything else, but there were things they didn’t know. It’s that whole thing. You don’t know what you know or don’t know until you figure it out. And I had in January of the next year, lap band went in September, and January I had ovarian cyst burst. Worst pain I’ve ever felt in my life. In February I had another one burst. And so we needed to go in and take that ovary out, which was full of cysts. And they also took my appendix out at the same time. But the surgeon, when I had my follow up, he said, “First of all, I took pictures of your insides because I’m writing a textbook and you have the worst endometriosis I’ve ever seen in my life,” which was pretty brutal.

And I’m not going to define endometriosis here, but it is the absolute reason why I couldn’t conceive. But he said, “You need a hysterectomy.” And so I went and had a second opinion and a third and everyone agreed. So I again went under the knife, you will say. But what happened is both surgeries were done laparoscopically. And when they do them laparoscopically, they blow your insides up with gases so that they can do the work. The second one was done by the DaVinci robot, which was very, very new at the time. And so the surgeon was running the robot who would go in and do the surgery. Great. They got everything. So I had two surgeries, boom, boom in a row, a couple months apart. And then about a month later, I started getting really sick.

And we were on our way to our beach house. And I ended up throwing up probably every three minutes. The kids were little. They were three and six at the time. And my husband decided to sleep in the guest room that night because I was so ill. And he came up around 3:00 AM and found me on the floor of the bedroom, the cold bedroom and excuse me, I was naked and crying on the floor. And so he called 911 and I ended up in an ambulance to the local hospital down where my beach house is, which is not really a great hospital. So diagnosed with food poisoning. Had to go back and get more medications in the form of suppositories because I couldn’t hold anything in, even though the hospital knew about my history and we talked about it.

We ended up going to three different hospitals on our way, I think it was five stops basically, to the hospital that had diagnosed me with ovarian cysts. And they knew right away what it was. They put me in an ambulance up to another hospital and I had a surgery the next morning. The last thing I remember was at midnight I spoke to the surgeon. They went in and took out the lap band, but I aspirated on the operating table and my lungs filled with fluid and they honestly didn’t know if I was brain dead because they didn’t know how long I’d been without oxygen. So that was a worry. But they had me intubated. And the surgery that was supposed to be short went very long. So my husband knew something was wrong. And I ended up in a coma. So what happened is I got pneumonia. When your lungs fill with fluid, that’s what happens. I got pneumonia. And the next day I got something called ARDS, Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, which they’re controlling way better than they did 15 years ago.

So when I had that happen, it was a 30% chance of survival. And I was put into a medical coma to heal. And I don’t remember June of 2008, I just don’t remember June. And my babies were little. My husband was told to say goodbye to me three times, that I wouldn’t make it through the night. The first time they asked him if we had a priest. He goes, “No, we don’t have a priest.” And so he said goodbye to me, but they also brought the children in to say goodbye, which I had a conversation with my son a couple months ago. We were talking about memories. And I was giving him my first memory. He was in a psychology class and I said, “What was yours?” He goes, “You don’t want to know.” And I said, “Why not? What’s your first memory?” Taking into account this child was three.

And he said, “My first memory was saying goodbye to you at the hospital,” which just broke my heart into another million pieces. And it was hard. It was hard to come back from. After the coma and I woke up, the first thing I did is ask my husband for my cell phone, and he sat down on the side of the bed and started crying. I’m like, “What’s wrong?” Apparently they didn’t know, like I said, if I was brain dead. So he was very happy that I was asking for my cell phone. But it was a long road to recovery, including lots of physical therapy, Pilates actually, a wheelchair, a walker, all sorts of things.

Warwick Fairfax:

I want to talk about the lessons here in a moment because that was pretty transformative in your life and marriage. You talk a lot about gifts from crucibles, which we actually do funnily enough too. But I want to round out these crucibles because people are probably thinking they can’t surely be anything more. But wait, there’s more. It’s like a sales offer. But wait, we have more for you. So talk about the beach house fire because it may not seem in one sense as big as the others, but yet emotionally it was really, really hard. So tell people what happened and why it was so hard. Because you have got to dig beneath the surface to truly understand why that beach house burning down was so devastating.

Andrea Heuston:

Well, for me it was the most devastating thing that I have dealt with. For my husband, it was my coma, but for me and my husband wasn’t there when the house burned down. So we had started a little fire, a little Duraflame log in the fireplace, and the kids were getting ready for bed. And after they’d gone to bed, they’d brushed their teeth and gone to bed, I heard a noise. It sounded like a jet airplane landing on the roof. And I thought, what is going on? And sparks flew out of the fireplace and I ran and got a Brita, a Brita thing with a pitcher in our fridge. And I got that out and I dumped it all over the fire and I thought, “Oh, we’re fine.” And then somebody is driving up in my driveway honking. So I ran outside and they said, “Hey, you have a chimney fire.”

Because there was spark shooting out of the chimney. It was incredible. And so there was a lot of fast forward here, but the house, it did ignite, the roof ignited. It was a cedar shake, shingle roof. It was August. It had been a dry July and it was pretty brutal. So I had to get my kids out of bed. We ran. I called 911 and as I’m on the phone with 911, I’m getting my kids out of bed to get dressed. And one funny side note is I said, “You got to get dressed and get out of the house. Get dressed. Get dressed.” My oldest who, God, I love this child, he was 13 and he had Spider-Man underwear on. He had flip flops and he had a fleece. So we’re – that’s right. We’re down below and I’m like, “You got to go get some pants on. You have to go back in the house.”

So we ran back in the house and he gets more clothes on and we come back down. But he tells the story that I sent him into a burning house. I’m like, “I was there with you and it hadn’t hit everywhere yet.” I just needed him to wear clothes because I knew we weren’t getting back in. So we watched it burn for a couple hours because it was a five alarm fire and nobody knew we were there from the city, even though we had called 911. I used to spend every August at the beach with the boys. And this was only August 4th. So we had just been there a few days. But finally the police chief drives by and he said, “Are you the homeowners?” We’re standing in the neighbor’s driveway watching our house burn down. And I said, “Yeah, I can’t get out,” because I had somehow moved my car to the neighbor’s driveway.

It was a car I loved. It was a convertible. And I had moved it and I don’t remember doing it, but I couldn’t get out. So they took us to a local hotel to stay. But the beach house has always been my happy place. We bought it when my youngest was two. He’s now almost 19. So it’s been 17 years this year since we bought the house. And it was the only place on earth I really felt like I could be me. In August especially, I would go down and I would just be a mom. My company could run itself. I had people in place who could do the things they needed to do. And that was a result of the coma, which I can talk about later. But it was one of those spaces for me where it was my heart home. So I would be there and I would find peace there.

So I call it my happy place, but it was peaceful as well. And I felt like I could be me. And so when the house burned down, I lost me. And what happened there is that felt like there was nowhere on earth I could just be where I could relax, where I could just be a mom, where I could just be me without judgment. And I know a house doesn’t judge you, but it was a feeling I got that I needed this happy place to really be happy. And when it burnt down, I was devastated and I spiraled. I spiraled down because I didn’t have that place to go. My realization now is anywhere can be my happy place. That’s my choice.

Warwick Fairfax:

Right. But there’s obviously a lot of learning that came from that. But in that-

Andrea Heuston:

Oh my gosh, yes.

Warwick Fairfax:

But in that moment you’re thinking, this is the only place on the planet where I can fully be me. And not only is my house burnt down, I have burnt down. My soul is burnt down.

Andrea Heuston:

Yeah, and that’s how I felt.

Warwick Fairfax:

Everything who I am is burnt down. And it’s like, does the universe, God, whoever’s up there, do they not like me? I mean, what is the deal here? I mean, come on. Can’t you just give me a little corner of the world where I can be me? I mean, my gosh. Are you going to chase me with lightning bolts. I mean, what’s the story? It sounds like just emotionally it was just crippling and devastating.

Andrea Heuston:

It was. And for me it was about humility. I felt in hindsight that any time I got a little high on myself that the universe would smack me around. I don’t believe that’s true now. I just really felt that way that apparently I’d done something that I needed to be more humble about. And I don’t remember what it was. I just think for me, every time I really was in a good place where I was feeling good about myself and the business, I maybe got a little cocky, the universe said, “No, no, you’re not allowed to do that.”

Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah, I think both of us would agree. That really doesn’t quite work that way philosophically.

Andrea Heuston:

No it doesn’t but that’s how I was feeling.

Warwick Fairfax:

At the time. One of the things I find that with crucibles, they can be a gift. I mean even in my own world, again, this is about you, not me, but having done this $2.25 billion takeover of the family business and it falling into receivership under my watch, I was like 30 at the time.

Andrea Heuston:

Wow.

Warwick Fairfax:

It was crippling, disappointing my parents, 4,000 employees, I mean was yeah, myself, my attitude in life is if something in the world goes wrong, it’s my fault. That’s my default psychology. I tend not to blame others. I blame myself. So the point of that story is that was sort of crippling yet as I look back in the last maybe year I’ve been able to say what happened was a gift because it delivered me from the bondage of a family business. And again, we grew up very different, but I could truly be me because me growing up was the heir to this dynasty. What do you want to do in life, Warwick? Irrelevant. I have got my duty. Who I am as an individual is, I guess, that’s the ultimate othering, I suppose. Who I am as an individual is completely-

Andrea Heuston:

Yeah, exactly.

Warwick Fairfax:

It’s completely irrelevant. All else to say is crucibles, if we choose, can provide a huge gift. And you’ve put a number of them in your books. I’m going to just touch on a few of them. I mean there’s many of them. But one of the things that you say early on, well, I like the thing in your forward, which was really fun, “Don’t apologize for who you are.” So that’s a great quote.

Andrea Heuston:

Never apologize.

Warwick Fairfax:

I mean, sometimes there are things you have to apologize for if you’ve done something wrong but you don’t apologize for who you are. That’s different. Okay, so first one, other than that’s like a little prelude is you write, “The gift from the fire is this. The realization that I’m not in control of anything. I’m only in control of the way that I react.” And then you talk later on about almost being a cocoon or caterpillar emerging out of the butterfly. So just talk about this profound wisdom you share there. You can’t control what happened to you. You can’t control your upbringing, your house burning down, the infertility, the coma, all of these things you can’t control. And in pretty much all of those cases, not like, oh, it was your fault, you did something stupid. None of them was really your fault. So talk about how you can’t control what happened, but you control the way that you react because that is very profound.

Andrea Heuston:

So that is my theme in life, I would say now, because so many things have happened. I can’t control what happens. I can’t control a spark from a fire that hits my roof. I can’t control the fact that I was born unable to conceive. I can’t control any of these things. I can’t control the fact that I was in a coma. Who knew? But what I can control is my reaction to things and how I move forward. So for me, I could be a victim. “Oh my gosh, the universe did this to me,” or, “Oh my gosh, this happened to me.” And as Gary said in the beginning, it’s really about what happens for us, not to us. And for me, the for me is what lessons can I learn? And it is really hard to see in the moment. I will tell you that. And I honor that and I understand that.

Because you know what? It feels good once in a while to be a victim for five minutes for me, five minutes. That’s all you get really. Although you know spin a little bit sometimes. But really if you can focus on the mindset of there’s a lesson here. And I will say from the coma itself, I learned. I mean, my business ran without me for six months that year. My business coach came in and helped. My husband came in and helped out. And some of my peers who were also business owners came in and helped out. And you know what? We were fine. We didn’t make a lot of money that year. We didn’t lose money either though.

Warwick Fairfax:

Talk about how there was a gift in your marriage. So talk a bit about that because I found that so fascinating. So talk about that.

Andrea Heuston:

There’s been a lot of gifts in my marriage. What I learned actually from my coma within my relationship, I’d always taken over. I was the one who just wanted to be in control of things. And it was fine. Our roles worked that way for a long time. But for me, when I was in a coma, I didn’t do anything obviously, and I don’t remember any of it. But the world still had to run. The company had to run, but my family had to run, and my boys had to get to school. And there was so much that was out of my control that I didn’t know about, and then I did know about when I was awake again and healing. But my husband stepped up. And for me, it wasn’t that I didn’t know he could because he’s an incredible human being, but I never let him. I never let him show or let him do because I was always showing and doing.

And so what happened from there is it almost, I don’t want to say our roles evened out or it became equal or equality, but it became different and it’s more of a gift now with a lot of introspection as well, because my husband is so giving and so intelligent and so amazing. And yes, he’s an introvert and I’m an extrovert. I’ll jump off that building too, and I will grow wings before I hit the ground. My sweet wonderful husband will look over the edge and then he’ll back away slowly because the risk is too much. We balance each other out. And I will say, as of last December, we’ve been together for 30 years, married over 28 right now, but we’ve been together for 30 years. And what was created after my coma in his ability and my ability, his ability to know he could do it, first of all, because I always did everything, but my ability to let him created this depth to our relationship that hadn’t been there before.

Warwick Fairfax:

So as we sort of begin to wrap up, talk about how that’s almost maybe the theme of your book in a sense. Obviously it’s called Stronger on the Other Side, but it’s in the broader sense of that word. It’s also about choice. It’s choosing your mindset and your attitude. And I’m assuming you had to have some measure of, I don’t know if the word is forgiveness. We talk a lot about forgiveness, doesn’t mean condoning – very different. But you must have had some ways of coming to peace with because if you were just a seething sea of anger, it just poisons you and typically other people don’t care, which is galling. But talk about in that whole word of choice, I guess I buried another question in there, forgive me, but talk about what that means to you. And also there’s got to be some sense of forgiveness but not acceptance or something in there to enable you to move forward and be whole. Does that question make any degree of sense?

Andrea Heuston:

Oh yes. And I’m a work in progress, but I do believe that every day we get to choose first our attitude when we get up in the morning, but also our reaction to anything. It’s that deep breath. It’s that moment where you go, “Oh, I don’t need to get angry. I don’t need to jump on somebody else.” The other thing I would say within that, Warwick, is it’s the look in the mirror. A lot of people don’t look in the mirror. They don’t go, yeah, what is my part in this? What happened here that I could have done differently? And you actually have to understand yourself in order to be able to do that. So I choose the word of the year every single year. Last year was momentum. This year is kindness. And the reason I chose kindness, it’s for myself and others, but it’s all around grace and really it’s for myself.

I am mean to myself. I look in the mirror and I say mean things, and that’s both literally and figuratively. I just am mean to myself. Would I say those things to other people? Never. So it’s my choice every single day to realize and to say things to myself and other people that are kind. But really we have the power to choose where we’re going. The universe has given us thoughts in any situation, and I’m saying at the lowest of my lows, very, very lowest, I had the power to choose my attitude and to choose where I was going next. One of the quotes that I will share this with you, it’s not in the book, that I have really hung my hat on for the last year or so that I say to people all the time, because I’m also a speaker coach and this helps people understand.

But you know what? It’s none of my business what other people think of me because it’s not. It doesn’t matter. What I think of me is important. It’s not what they think of me. It doesn’t matter because your self-worth doesn’t come from outside sources or other people. It comes from inside. It takes a lot to get there. I’m not saying that’s easy and you can’t flip a switch. You can try, but it’s a lot of self-work. So honestly, I start every day with gratitudes. I write three things down every morning that I’m grateful for. It can be as small as the first spring bird that I hear chirping out my window. It can be the taste of a fresh strawberry. Or it can be as big as my health or my family’s health. It doesn’t matter. It’s a gratitude.

And when I fall into that space of not being grateful or not having a good attitude or not realizing my own worth, I stop and think about what I’m grateful for because without gratitude, you really cannot be a gracious person and you cannot be gracious to yourself. And I think that’s important for all of our growth. I think that’s important in choosing our own path and our own attitude and our own reaction to anything that comes our way. Like we said, it doesn’t happen to me, it happens for me. What are the gifts? Really hard to see when you’re in it. But if you stop and try to think about it, you get there.

Gary Schneeberger:

That’s an excellent point. Warwick used the words a little while ago. We’re getting close to winding down. I like to say the sound you heard listeners, the captain turned down the fasten your seatbelt sign indicating we’re approaching our dissent, but we’re not quite on the ground yet. Before I turn it back over to Warwick to ask you like another question or so, I’d be remiss in my duties as co-host if I did not ask you to tell our listeners how they can get to know more about Artitudes, more about you, more about your work, where can they find you and your work online?

Andrea Heuston:

I’m all over the place just so you know. The best way to get me is on LinkedIn, and it’s Andrea Heuston. My last name is weird, just so you know. I’ve been spelling it for everybody for almost 30 years and I’m sure it’ll be in the show notes, but it is H-E-U-S-T-O-N. So it’s Andrea Heuston. I’m all over LinkedIn. You can find me there. I also have a website called andreaheuston.com that leads to all my brands. So it’s the easiest way to get me.

Gary Schneeberger:

Awesome. And with a guy whose last name is Schneeberger, trust me, I know how to spell a last name. And I’ve been doing it for 58 years now. I wasn’t doing it when I was like one-

Andrea Heuston:

That’s funny.

Gary Schneeberger:

But I’ve been doing it for a long time, more than half a century. Warwick, last question or two are yours.

Warwick Fairfax:

Well, Andrea, I love kind of what you do and we haven’t talked about it too much, but I love what you do in Artitudes Design, creating you say thoughtfully branded visual experiences these days with visual media being everywhere from social media to presentations. That is huge and obviously very successful, multimillion dollar brand, which is awesome. I love just the thought about your podcast, Lead Like a Woman Show and your two books.

I want to end with a question that there may be some people here who are maybe feeling worthless, maybe whether it might be a young woman or somebody of just different backgrounds may not be feeling much worth. I guess two questions, a word of hope and I guess another question that popped into my mind as you were talking, and so I’ll maybe make a brief statement. One of the things I think of, and I’m a very reflective person by nature, is that internal soul work is important because if we hate ourselves or other ourselves, unfortunately anger, bitterness, whatever, it leaks out and it tends to leak out on those that we love the most, which spouse, kids, which they don’t deserve because it wasn’t their fault.

Some things are people’s faults, but our stuff is never, but not never. It depends.

Andrea Heuston:

That’s right.

Warwick Fairfax:

That’s assuming they’re not the protagonist in this conflict, let’s say that’s not the case. So for those who say, “Look, I don’t want to deal with my stuff.” Well, if you don’t, you will affect your coworkers, the people that work for you, those that you love, your friends. So that soul work-

Andrea Heuston:

You’ll alienate.

Warwick Fairfax:

Right. As one person set in a broader contract, it’s holy work. So talk a bit about that and then maybe just a word of hope for those people that might be where you were years ago and it’s like I’m worth nothing and I just need to hide in a hole for the next 40 years. So talk about both of those.

Andrea Heuston:

Yes, I do believe absolutely if you don’t deal with your own stuff, everybody else, they’ll feel it because they know when you’re not being the best you. And really that means if you’re angry or if you’re resentful or if you’re feeling like a victim, frankly. Because when you are feeling low like that, it brings everybody else down. And I know that from personal experience. Especially with little kids, they take on whatever energy you give off, but so does everybody else. It’s just not as apparent. My husband was a massage therapist for about a minute years ago, licensed massage practitioner. And he always came home saying, “Oh my gosh, this person, I could feel their anger,” or “I could feel how low they were.” And as a massage therapist, because you’ve got your hands on people and you take it into your body, that’s how it works.

But it’s the same thing when people are around us, you take it into their body. And so it manifests itself in so many ways that it just brings other people down around you. So it’s hard to go forward when you’re stuck. When you’re stuck in the past or stuck in a moment, you can’t move. So it’s about moving forward and owning your own path and really knowing who you are and what you stand for. And that’s hard. It’s so great when I meet somebody who stands for something and I don’t care if they stand for something that I don’t stand for. It doesn’t matter to me. They believe something and they stand for it. It’s so powerful to be able to do that and to be able to show it to the world.

And I would say there’s a Martin Luther King quote, and I’m going to butcher it today cause I can’t remember the whole thing, but you can’t see the whole staircase. You just got to take that first step because you don’t know where it’s going to go. And you know what? You can figure out where it’s going to go. You can change where that staircase leads because you have the power to do that by owning your own path, and you just got to remember to give yourself grace. That would be the thing that I want people to remember is take a pause and give yourself grace. It is so, so okay to be human because you don’t have to apologize for who you are. You just have to own it.

Gary Schneeberger:

I have been in the communications business long enough to know when the last word has been spoken on a subject, and our guest, Andrea Heuston, just spoke it. Until the next time we are together listeners, couple of things I want to say to you. One, remember from Andrea’s story, several things, but one thing I really want you to take away is that she went through these periods in her life where she felt that she was other. She felt that she was less than. And play it back. That’s not the testimony of this woman who we’re talking to today. She does not feel other. She does not feel less than. If you’ve ever felt that way, you don’t – that’s not your destination – you don’t have to feel that way either.

Also, we understand that your crucible experiences are difficult. We’ve all been through crucible experiences. You heard Warwick and Andrea talk about theirs here. But they are not the end of your story. In fact, they can be the beginning of a brand new story for you which can be the best story of your life. Because if you learn the lessons from them, if you embrace them, as both Warwick and Andrea talked about, as gifts that can teach you lessons, they can lead you to a destination that will be the finest in your life, and that destination is the life of significance.

If you enjoyed this episode, learned something from it, we invite you to engage more deeply with those of us at Beyond The Crucible. Visit our website beyondthecrucible.com to explore a plethora of offerings to help you transform what’s been broken into breakthrough. A great place to start, our free online assessment, which will help you pinpoint where you are on your journey beyond your crucible and to chart a course forward. See you next week.