 Welcome to another show of Celebrate Life. My name is Gary DeCarlis and I'll be your host today again. And the whole point of this show is to really capture and celebrate the lives of Vermonters and once in a while someone from outside of Vermont. And the inspiration for this for me came from, oh from a years of reading obituaries and finishing them up and saying gosh I wish I really got to know this person. What a special human being they were. And so my feeling is let's celebrate life while we're still here and vibrant and alive and doing great things. So that's why this show has been around. This is about almost a year anniversary now. I'm a firm believer that everyone has a story to tell. If you would like to tell your story send me an email at celebratelife0747 at gmail.com Or if you have a question for our guest today please send again send me an email at celebratelife0747 at gmail.com. Well I'm very honored to have as our guest today Sally Borden who's an indomitable force for the protection and safety of children in this state. And Sally's been doing this for a year and just a wonderful human being on top of it. So I'd like to welcome you Sally and thank you for allowing us to celebrate your life today. Thank you Gary. I'm looking forward to it. Good. So we'll take us back Sally to where it all started. Where did you grow up as a little girl and tell us about your life back then? Well okay so my earliest years were in Montana. That was like a beautiful environment to live in. I have three sisters and we're all within five years. Our spread is five years. My goodness. Yes I think about that now. Oh my gosh. But yeah so we're all really close in age. I'm second oldest. So we lived there and then when I was six we had the opportunity to do my father's employment to go to Spain for two years. And so we lived there and that was a bit of a shock as a you know English speaking. My parents tried to prepare us for a few Spanish words to start with. But they wisely I think put us in Spain. And we learned really quickly like within two months we were as little kids we were bilingual. And so that was that was a great experience. And when you're a kid you know you don't know that this is way way back of course. You know that there's a dictatorship and all of those things we didn't know any of that. We just you know as kids just appreciated a new environment learning new stuff meeting new friends. And so so yeah. We're in Spain, Sally. In Madrid. Madrid okay yeah. My father was teaching at the University of Madrid. And he had a full bright you know placement there. And so yeah so it was it was quite an experience. I think it's a great experience looking back. And we traveled around Spain a bit and got to see a lot. And then when we came back just due to a bunch of different circumstances again around my my father's employment because he was very political I would say and had certain political very liberal political leanings and as it turned out it it he received an offer to teach at the University of California at Santa Barbara. And so we ended up moving from Montana. Not such a liberal place to Southern California. And and that was you know again a big a big change. Yeah yeah. Sally they say that one of the ingredients for people who are system change people people who is to have an out of tribe experience in other words if you lived in Montana and you went to Spain and then you're gonna you saw you saw values and ways of living outside of the normal way everyday life would be which opens people up to thinking differently and bigger. Is that true for you? You know I think only upon reflection you know do you really realize that but yeah I absolutely believe that having broader life experiences whatever they are within whatever context you are in. So you know for some people it might be moving two towns over or others you know it's something really different. But yeah I think exposure to a lot of different kinds of people is helpful and I think on reflecting reading we were a big reading family and you know just learning about lots of different people all over the world and that I think that also helps give one a broader perspective. Yeah what was your father's field? History American history. Okay I heard. Oh yeah and he was you know he was quite quite a dominant force in in my life in all of our lives and really pretty and a very amazing person but but he was sort of an el profesor I mean he was that kind of person who you certainly you know I don't know that you'd say he filled up a room but he didn't go unnoticed wherever. Not in a flamboyant way but just that he had a very strong personality. So there you were in Santa Barbara. Yeah and so then you know I guess as I was kind of thinking about defining moments in my life some were great and some you know some not so much so really one of the biggest defining moments is that when I was nine my mom passed away and she had cancer it was all pretty sudden and of course they didn't have the kind of treatments then that they do now. So you know she went to the doctor not kind of knowing what was wrong and then it was all pretty fast. You know and as a kid I remember feeling like a phrase that I had read in a book which was that I felt like the whole bottom of my world had fallen out. That feeling of you know everything's gone. Yeah and so yeah and then that was a really hard thing and four little kids and my dad and just you know dealing with that. Yeah and I think now looking back at what I know about trauma now I think you know I guess I understand it a little bit better sort of all of our reactions and things to all each different reactions but you know it clearly impacted the whole rest of my life and when you're little I think I mean like I she was just she was just there right she was my mom she was just there and then she's gone sort of like your like air you know like it's just gone that's what you are and it's gone so really that and now as I you know as I understand trauma a little bit better I understand that and know that how people around you respond is really important to how you process things and so I have to say that you know out of every every difficult thing there are you know rays of sunshine and looking back there was a very special teacher in my life she was my third grade teacher and she was my first teacher when we moved to California and she I was in fourth grade then and she invited me back to third grade to be a teacher's helper because walking back into the classroom and all your peers and that was really hard so she had me come back and be her special helper and you know I think about that like how wise what a wise person to have done that and she was so kind and kind to me and my sisters and kind of a funny thing she she later she sewed these little dresses so we all had these matching dresses and they were so cute I see yes yeah so I think you know like what a thoughtful thing yes thoughtful thing to do and absolutely so and my you know again my dad you know beyond being devastated suddenly had these four four kids yeah care for you know or not and and again this is the mid 60s so being a single dad of you know raising us by himself but he was very determined to do that and do it himself and in retrospect he's really my hero he is the person who had the biggest influence on my life and he chose again somebody advised him keep their routine so he kept us in school kept us you know and you know one of my great memories now it wasn't so much them but you know every morning he would be up and he would get us you know have our breakfast ready and tell us to go get dressed and then you know come for breakfast and he would have these four little brown bags all set out on the counter for school and you know it was usually butter and jelly every day but that's okay and so yeah it's really incredible when I think about you know being a dad in the mid 60s and taking that on and he was fortunate he had a job that could be pretty flexible and yep you know that kind of thing but yep he you know he worked really hard he had to you know he wrote books and you have to publish right when you're yeah professor and so he would get up you know at four a.m. and and write and then be ready for the day and then you know and then that's amazing yeah yeah wow so yeah when I think about like what really impacted my life that did and then seeing you know how he handled that on the on the downside he was super strict he was so protective of us and that was okay when we were little as teenagers not not so much but but yeah I mean I understand that better now right yeah kids of your own you kind of understand that for protectiveness and especially when you've lost somebody dear so nice to hear a good story about a man yeah yeah he I know he's the eye to eye but he was a pretty you know pretty amazing person so yeah so you were in Santa Barbara and then how did you get to Vermont oh yeah well I got to Massachusetts first so from Santa Barbara I went to college at UC Davis which was okay I love UC Davis and I was really interested in political science and it's located close to Sacramento and I did an internship with my state assemblyman and and got involved in campaigns things like that and was really interested in politics and so so went to UC Davis and then after college I got a job as a residence hall director and at UMass Amherst so when I graduated I moved I actually lived for a summer with my aunt and uncle in New York and was interviewing at a lot of different places and ended up at UMass which was a total change it's a you know big campus and residence hall towers and very different but again a great experience oh what a learning experience and there maybe you know because of the age I was I I had much a much greater appreciation of you know just sort of the diversity of students and people from all over I had never heard a South Boston accent before so you know things it was all different but that was a great job and so I lived in Massachusetts for quite a while after that job I moved to North Hampton and had gotten a job with victim witness assistance in the DA's office which really combined my interest in justice and and and you know the whole legal justice system and and sort of the helping helping people the helping professions um so victim assistance really brought that together and I I got into that and actually a an unfortunate but interesting way as a residence hall director um my I had it like an apartment on the first floor of one of these big not not a tower but a big residence hall and a student in my dorm was assaulted and ran down to to me and to my apartment and so I ended up being a witness on that case and became very familiar with victim witness assistance and I said that's the job I want that is exactly what I want to do so that was really the start of my career in sort of that helping professions and and and seeking justice yes so yeah so I did that for a number of years I became the director of victim witness assistance for the Northwestern District so that's North Hampton Greenfield that whole oh yeah western mass area and then after I did that for quite a while I became the director of training for the state of Massachusetts victim office of victim assistance so I you know I really appreciated that and the opportunity to um impact in that in that way um and then uh I met my husband there kind of funny story we met at the YMCA had a gym and we both happened to be working out a great 1980s story and so the funny part is that he had a George McGovern in 72 t-shirt on and I said something really clever like gee I like your shirt and that started a conversation it meant from there so um but it so happens that um Joe is a uh born and raised from Hunter and um so rather it's a through a rather circuitous route we did end up back in Vermont we went to California back to California for me first we lived in the Bay Area and um I he worked at a community health center there and I worked at I got a job as the executive director at a domestic violence agency that had a shelter and legal program and transitional housing all of those things and so that was a really important step sort of absolutely you know being director of small struggling agency that never had enough money but um but it did really valuable work and while we were there we um uh had decided you know on on our family plans and ran into some some challenges with um with our original you know trajectory and um looked into adoption and we came across this um approach to adoption that we didn't really know anything about which was open adoption and when we heard about it we went to this information center and somebody was talking about it and it was um a birth mother who had chosen open adoption to um to place her baby and um they continued to have some contact and she I think the most important thing was that she felt like she had a choice you know about what what was going to happen to this baby and that just struck both Joe and I Joza um has his master's degree in social work that's his background and you know it was so important to both of us to not feel like we were part of a system that was maybe exploiting people in any way or right um so we when we heard that we're like that's what we that's what we should do and so it felt like a bit of a leap nowadays that's much more common but back then of course it wasn't um so we went through the whole process for that and um we were picked by a birth mother um and we started planning for this you know a wonderful new arrival in our lives and then she went into labor a week early or two weeks early or something and so all of a sudden you know I had a big you know contract meeting that day and Joe had something and we're like yep never mind and we figured everything out and we quickly drove um it was a couple hours away from where we lived in the Bay Area where she lived and um uh we were supposed we hadn't actually met we were supposed to talk that that day after we got into labor so wow so um it was all very quick we grabbed a car seat from my sister who lived nearby and we figured oh everything else we couldn't manage and so we did um and this absolutely beautiful perfect little little human came into our lives and it was very touching I mean they they had he had been born by the time we got there and um in the hospital they had removed him from her right away knowing that her plan was adoption and and so we talked with her about you know after meeting hello and how you doing um you know talked with her about how would she want to do this and so um we had the nurse come back in and hand him to her and then she handed him to us and um so yeah it was a you know one of those amazing adoption stories and you know we didn't necessarily plan it this way but we ended up having contact with her um and then her family um at the time she didn't have family but then she ended up getting married a year later and having two other kids and we we had contact with them for just about every month for the next couple of years wow and um and then you know we stayed in touch for a long time that was one of our commitments when we moved back to Vermont was to keep in touch and make sure that our son Daniel knew his birth family and um and she's Filipino and so we wanted to make sure we wrote down Filipino you know Tagalog words on the refrigerator and you know we didn't provide all of that but we knew that if we stayed in touch with her he would always have that part of his identity um yeah so we when we would come back to California after moving to Vermont um we would always go see them and make sure that they had special time together and and um all of that and in fact when her oldest daughter after after Dan was born she asked if we'd babysit and take care of it so it's just never would have envisioned that that's amazing it was pretty neat we were more kind of like a special aunt and uncle sort of relations yeah um and she she oh do you mind she just i'm thinking of this one quote that you know she always said this and it really struck me she said um to me one day she said i have sadness but no regrets wow that you know that really that's beautiful so and it's what has it meant for Daniel to have that connection continue no i think it's um it's important and valuable i i steadfastly maintain that's the right way to do this when you can yeah not say for all situations that are appropriate but whenever possible i think it's so important but i will say you know there were some hard times with that and i think some identity stuff and who am i really and i think um adopted kids most often go through and um well that maybe was mitigated by knowing you know knowing her and and um her circumstances and everything um it's still hard yeah yeah absolutely but i you hear a lot of children who have been adopted that don't have that connection and they're constantly wondering about the birth parent or parents and it sounds like this kind of was a bridge for Daniel with that as tough as it is anyhow i mean it can't take that away but that's Bravo to you Sally for doing that you and Joe well you know it just felt it kind of felt like we don't know yeah like any parent we don't know what we're doing but we think this seems like the right the right thing to do and um you know there was definitely a period of time where he didn't have connection and her whole life circumstances changed as well and you know kind of lost contact but um but the really sweet thing is that uh resumed contact with his birth half sisters oh nice and so did so melissa i kind of skipped over melissa in there she got born but come back to that okay so when we would go visit melissa was actually you know closer in age and you know we had a bit of a you know friendship with his two birth half sisters and so um so they've maintained some connection and just a few months back daniel went to the wedding of his one of his brothers wow really you know he's maintained that connection and he did see his birth mother at that time too he hasn't maintained a close connection but i think um you know hopefully that's step by step that's resuming to to some extent but but to see the sibling or you know yeah whatever that relationship is so wonderful now when you went back to san francisco was uh your dad still out there and your sisters yeah yeah my parents were um so i did this gift over stuff moving forward so very importantly so my dad remarried um you know a few years after my mom passed away and so um i have a wonderful stepmother ken who um you know who is very much an important part of our lives and wisely didn't didn't um try to be mother per se but um but had such an important parent role partly in helping um buffer some of my father's uh strictness and uh and lack of understanding of four girls especially four teenage girls right um so she was um she was a really important force and um then after my dad passed away which was after we moved back here um you know we just continued a very very close relationship she was a wonderful person and she just passed away uh pretty recently about a year and a half ago okay so um so yeah but we would go see my parents a lot and then we were living in california had this wonderful toddler running around and um uh as is often the case big surprise i was pregnant so our our daughter was ready to come along and in the meantime just sort of at that time um joe um you were here in vermont for um holiday to see his family here and he saw an ad for the community health center for the executive director position and he applied and they offered it to him right away and so we went back to california and he um he started working on a contract position while we were kind of trying to decide what do we do and so i stayed in california with daniel most of the time some of the time daniel came here with joe we did this back and forth thing and um uh then decided that you know that wasn't workable and i found out i was pregnant which was a big surprise and so we were actually pursuing second adoption and so we went forward with that and um decided um you know that that was going to be just not too much so um so we made the decision to move to vermont i stayed in california for for quite a while um you know just finishing up my job finishing just we really wanted to make sure that this is what we wanted to do and so um meanwhile once we decided joe started you know looking for houses and i um i said fine just send me pictures so i'm not that stuff than i am so i found a great great house and so i flew on the last day i could fly and still have it covered by insurance if i went into labor on the airplane so one word that um i think of sometimes is pragmatic i'm very pragmatic that way okay we got to deal with this reality so yeah so we um came here and had a house with no furniture and um and a baby on the way yeah you just deal with it and it was wonderful and we were happy to be here and um and i think you know joe especially loved the community health center and um just it was really nice to be in vermont and i love vermont um i wasn't sure but i think you know i'm i'm in some ways more of a vermont than he is not really but um but i love it here and you know just really appreciate what a gift we have to live here and the environment and the lake and the people and um you know definitely some shortcomings that you know we all need to work towards making it more welcoming and um a comfortable environment for for everyone um but no doubt it's a really special place it is a special place and you help make it special sally did you get the the kids safe collaborative job soon after when did that come yeah so um so i was able to well one big advantage of living in vermont at that time versus the bay area was i had the privilege of being able to stay home for a little while with the kids and so i i did that for a little bit um and then about 18 months later her you know somewhere around there um joe had actually heard about this job through his work connection and um the original job was to manage a big federal grant called the safe kids safe streets grant and he said i think i found the perfect job for you i was like i'm not i'm not sure i wanted to i'm perfectly happy with this but um but i checked into it and um uh it was um such a uh just such an important opportunity to bring the broader community together and support how how we value kids you know children and youth and families um within the framework of our child welfare and justice systems and um it was different it was different than you know because it's um very cutting edge really when you think about it the way it was just this whole collaborative approach and so this organization was community network for children youth and families it was a partnership of a lot of the community organizations in the community and um that provide different social services you know powered center and lunch center and spectrum and all of those and so i was kind of coming into this established collaborative process with the opportunity to really build our work around children's um you know health safety and well-being yeah wow oh i was offered the job decided that was that was kind of my destiny and um and it was a five-year grant five and a half year grant and so i thought this is perfect it's very time limited it's not going to absorb my whole life like frankly the domestic violence agency job did and um i'll do this for five years and then figure out what i want to do next and gary it's 24 years later and i'm still cooking yeah i i love it i think it's so unique and it's such a unique opportunity to um you know both impact um how children and families are treated within the broader child welfare system not just dcf family services but the broader system um you know sort of on an yeah on an individual basis and then look at the larger systems issues right and the policy issues and uh and be able to impact that as well um so it brings all the different parts of you together i mean you know from your father taking care of four little girls to um you know to an open adoption and how that went so you saw kind of an ideal situation and then and then dealing with the child welfare system as it is with the positives and negatives you could you had perspective on all this going in yeah i think about um yeah how all of those things sort of um are cumulative in shaping our you know worldview um and i think um you know fundamentally i i feel like i'm somebody who really looks at just part of who i am is you know do the right thing you know what what's right and what's right and good and fair yeah this job in its own way um really um um is the opportunity to to do that and to impact that in my community yeah absolutely over yes well i have a question for you okay most of the jobs that you ended up getting you end up being the executive director now you're you know you're not a line staff person here you're you're in leadership roles where does that come from i don't know i i um i think it's um and those back to something you said earlier which is maybe that ability to see the bigger picture and to want to be able to impact that in a broader way and so um i i have really appreciated the line staff positions i've had i think about um you know even as a residence hall director and the range of situations that you deal with it's a lot and then um as a victim witness advocate sometimes i say that was the best job i ever had um because i loved that working with somebody who has um who has been victimized is such a devastating thing and then to have that compounded by our our criminal justice system that doesn't always value the you know the the position that a victim has something happened to them and sometimes our court system sort of seems to um you know overlook that and so i had an opportunity early in the days in massachusetts victim bill of rights and um working you know in that one-on-one way was profound and so i try and always bring that and even when i became the director of victim witness i always kept cases myself because i thought it was really important to have that experience in going going into court and just sitting there with a victim and dealing with whatever you know whatever the prosecutor did defense attorney to judge bearing witness to that with a victim um or a witness of crime is profound and it's so hugely important and i think that has shaped my view and then i also have a passion for looking at well how can we make things even better well that takes a broader perspective like you said that's the systems and um having the opportunity to impact that is um an honor i guess i would say so it's great yeah like you bring that all together in this job beautifully um uh what keeps you going well you know the other things i well as a parent you know that um that can also be the most humbling of all experiences yes um so i think you know what keeps me going in my work is very much um you know i have such a privilege of working with amazing people not just here in the kids have collaborative office but again my job is working with a lot of different people in the community and um that's how i met you and others who do amazing work and um so that keeps me going quite honestly knowing that sometimes it's two steps forward one step back or sometimes changes incremental but i feel like we and i have an opportunity to make our community a better place and then at the same time i think um like i said having the experience of being a parent um uh is both tremendously rewarding and can be tremendously challenging and so um i i talked to both my kids before doing this made sure it was okay to share this but in particular my son who you know um struggled with substance use disorder for many years and i think you know thinking back i you know kind of like what caused it or you know there's so many different factors that come together i mean he's an amazing amazing bone up now but he was an amazing child this bright and energetic and um loving we were we were a fresher family actually for many years we had a fresher son who came every year every summer until he was i think 18 17 or 18 and um you know they were just they were brothers they did everything together they played baseball and you know little league and all that stuff and um or summer rec league i guess it was but um you know they just did all that stuff he was just that kind of a kid um and somewhere in you know around middle school age life got more challenging for him um you know looking back many many reasons he he didn't learn in the same way as other kids was a bit challenged by school he was small and stature he was one of the only kids of color in the school district so as much as you try and do as a parent to support your child you know he faced challenges that we couldn't you know couldn't or in some way didn't um you know we weren't able to really give him enough to be able to to deal with those challenges in a healthier way and so he you know he had a really really really tough time behaviorally and then um struggling with substance use and um he managed to graduate from high school in a very um very challenging uh you know sort of a way but you know when I think about heroes some of his teachers and certainly um uh the administration and his school were amazing with him tried everything um I think uh Mr Burke at South Burlington high school you know really is to this day one of one of dance heroes um and mine too but as you know so his his um substance use disorder progressed very severely he um you know he developed an opioid use disorder he ended up you know like is so often the story going from treatment to treatment and um program to program and um frankly in the in the middle of all that our lives were chaotic and hard and and his sister um Melissa who is such a joyful child um you know of course it severely impacted her and their relationship and um I have so much sympathy now for parents and families who are who become fractured by um the impact of substance use disorder and so fortunately for us as much as I know that it's not true for so many um we're at this point and it you know I would it's a happy ending but I know it's you know it's never ever quite ending but um for the past two years he has been doing really well it's very stable in recovery he he had moved to florida to go to a program there things actually ended up over time getting worse um and again in and out of various centers and I'm skipping over all the all of the hard hard hard stuff there was some you know bad stuff um and um you know just trying to work all that through and making sure that um you know we try and support him um all along and always let him know that he's loved beyond measure and um and always being there and um walking that line between are you doing too much are you doing too little right honestly often feeling judged making um decisions that you know we felt were being made out of compassion or sometimes desperation but sometimes seeing as um enabling or yeah and and so you feel that I mean as a parent you feel that especially in a job like kid safe collaborative um feeling like wait how can this be happening to my family right and and there's no roadmap I mean there's no uh no yeah I mean I think obviously you know and um and and there were again so many places and so many people along the way you ask what keeps me going that's what I did you know I think about turning point center where you previously worked and um uh such a gift so in this community and um I had never expected starting out that you know our children would be accessing that type of support and yet there we were and and so many places like that and so many people who have felt along the way that um we could never thank them all individually um so he eventually just back to back to Dan because he did he did say it was okay to share this story is um you know he he ended up he was in a in treatment center he had been blowing out of every treatment center and um we were pretty much at our wits end but still hanging in there with him as best we could and he had had the opportunity um from somebody in a recovery center to place him in a um in a program out of in in California and it seemed like a good program we were always looking at this program that program what's covered by insurance what is it what did they do and this program seemed good and so they um they arranged for his flight and and the first time they were there waiting for him and he didn't get on the plane and then the second time it was there any failed and then the third time the second time didn't even make it to the airport but the third time after a fairly long period of desperation where we had cut off all financial aid um and we weren't sending him money ever we were you know paying for a hotel night here or something just to keep him safe and sort of the the guardrail approach to parenting you know you just do what you can for basic safety and in that fall um and he had one more opportunity to go his life was pretty much yeah pretty bad at that point and he got on that plane and he went to a recovery treatment center in California and I can't say that was a magic thing but his life started to turn around and um slowly but but progress in the right direction um he he said this is it this is my time um a really key thing in his life that then happened um was that my stepmom was very ill and they had been really close when he was growing up very close and he hadn't seen her in years because of his addiction and the and the chaos that it brought and so we um flew out there and um had the opportunity to go there and this is actually in the beginning of COVID and so there's a whole story about getting to California but we got there and we had planned to see him he was in LA and we had planned to see him and then go see my mom and he said no I have to go to I have to see her and we were assessing is he is he healthy enough to go and we were so impressed he was he really was and so we brought him and um she passed away shortly thereafter and he was he was there we were all there he was there and I think it had a profound influence on him and really solidified the direction he was going he shortly after that decided he wanted to pursue a nursing degree and he um has now since then enrolled in in um uh college in a pre-nursing program he moved actually to Santa Barbara where I lived and where she still was and is living there now and really changed his his life and he said two things recently one is he's gotten very into weightlifting and going to the gym and he says I wish I could tell everybody in a treatment center to to to do that to exercise and to I mean again he's small and stature but he was living lifting these big weights so that really changed him the other thing that I thought was really insightful was um that he said he doesn't want to minimize COVID but he had the having to be alone was a really important thing in his life to make him get comfortable with himself he said I've never been comfortable with like just being and he was a kid he always needed people around yeah yeah and I said little kid that was that was fine you're very social but he said he never felt really comfortable in in himself that's interesting isn't that fascinating it is yeah because a lot of times I know from my own work that isolation can be the enemy of recovery but in his case it was the gift of self-awareness really getting to understand himself and like himself yeah that's wonderful whole different perspective whole different yep yeah it's the beauty of people no two are the same yes so true and and now you know a joy is to see him healthy and happy and and my good point is that he and his sister Melissa have really um it's not wonderful I was saying you know it's not all but it roses and whatever but it's um they're taking steps and Melissa especially is is um you know working on um forgiving or or you know and Daniel has worked hard to try and make amends throughout but in particular that relationship um is you know is so fundamental and for us as parents to see um you know to see them start to again at least have some communication and and um able to be with each other Melissa um you know also an amazing kid did you know really well tell me about Melissa what uh what did what tell me about her did she go to college yeah so she um you know in in high school she was very active in a in a lot of ways she danced and she did um also some you know justice focused things and um bigger picture things and and then she ended up going to the University of San Francisco and that wasn't on her short list to start with but um uh ended up being a really great opportunity for her to move to San Francisco and um uh she's just blossomed I think it was important for her to get away again where you know through her teenage years as she she was amazing and um to be honest and especially looking back things were pretty chaotic with you know with a brother who's struggling with the substance use disorder and everything that goes along with that you know disappearing jewelry and you can't leave your credit card out at all of those things and um not to mention that explosive behaviors and things that we struggled every which way to work with him on but but clearly it has an impact it's that you know that trauma that impacts the whole family uh exactly and now she's she graduated from USF and she has a great job um in the neuroscience lab um at University of California San Francisco and um living I mean to be in your young 20s in living in downtown San Francisco is pretty awesome and um has a wonderful partner and they've just moved in together and they're happy and um it's such a joy and so that's yes what is it what keeps you going you know a lot about my work and I'm so dedicated to it but um there's nothing like the joy of seeing your kids do well absolutely that's wonderful that is wonderful so well so um back to you for a second here um any you know you've had a very distinguished career have you any awards that you've gotten recognized for your good work any any I also like to hear what words of wisdom you would have for the audience about life well I've I've been um privileged to have been you know recognized in many ways from my work and um you know and I truly believe it's an honor to have the opportunity to have that kind of a recognition um probably most significant to me is the um uh Queen City Police um award uh it's the Antonio Parmolo award and um it was presented to me by Senator Leahy and um someone who I really admire for his work champion the championing the rights of victims and of women the Violence Against Women Act he was you know he's just such an important voice for justice so that was very meaningful um wonderful you know a number I you know I will share sort of at the end of this that um just about a little over two years ago I was diagnosed with cancer and I've been very open about that um you know created a caring bridge page and put it on my you know on my Facebook and whatever that people can check it out I I think it's really important to be forthcoming and open and I've been very fortunate to have been able to tolerate the treatments really well um and but I'm still in treatment it's just kind of another thing that I've incorporated into my life and um and that was part of why we had been able to go to California I had the opportunity to receive a the gift of a of a private flight out there because I you know couldn't risk the exposure of a commercial flight and received treatment at UCLA and um and that was really helpful and so again I but Gary to think that's been most um profound has just been the support that the people who come forward in ways that you you just don't know yeah um yeah drink my coffee every morning out of a cup that says you've got this and that was a wonderful gift from a friend and colleague and another friend who says me letters once or twice a week the beautiful cards just she's such a close friend and so valued and I think back to like that third grade teacher of mine and um that you know the way that the people around you respond in a crisis or in a traumatic situation makes all of the difference in how we cope you know we kind of know that from trauma research but I have had the opportunity to experience that first hand and so while I wouldn't wish cancer on anyone you know it's um it's amazing the the gifts of love and caring and compassion that I've received and and my husband Joe um as well and he gives to our family and his support of me has been you know invaluable and I I probably don't say that enough to him but you know my family's been so supportive and so important and you don't always stop to recognize we start each day now with gratitude we verbally you know we verbalize our gratitude um and makes you stop and yes consider those things for you you're making me think of the needle's line the love you give is equal to the love you get given a lot of love to people getting it back well thank you it's um it's amazing and it's you know one of those profound life lessons that you you know that you learn from going through that so yeah and you and I are both old enough to remember all those old legal songs yes we are yeah so is there anything we've missed anything you want to make sure that you have an opportunity to talk about before we close I think I touched on so many things great you asked great questions and I just am so grateful for the opportunity to do this it's really uh you know it's a joy a pleasure and again really just heartwarming great you're welcome and thank you it's nice to spend an hour with you Sally I know it's a while all right thanks take care you too