Living Life Fearlessly w/ TV & Radio Host Kim Adams
- Lanee and Sandy
- May 6, 2019
- 2 min read
Updated: Jun 21, 2024
On a scale of 1 to 10 (with 1 being completely carefree and unafraid and 10 being afraid of your own shadow) where do you land on the Fear Meter?
Babies and children come here with the fearless perspective that the world is here for us to explore and enjoy. For protection purposes, we are taught to fear stranger danger, hot surfaces, wild animals, tall stairwells, and even the disapproval of our parents. All of these fears are good—in moderation. But we must remember that there is a limit to fear’s ability to help us. After a while, fear can become a crippling enemy that robs us of our progress, our peace, and our joy.
We can spend our quality time focused on lions and tigers and bears, oh my. We can worry about bullies and muggers and wars, oh dear. We can fret about not enough “likes” or move to an underground bunker because the threat of a zombie apocalypse feels real.
Why not focus instead on the quality time that we have been given to enjoy our loved ones? Why not laugh about the funny thing our pet did last week or the adorable thing our child did last night? Why not post something beautiful and choose to never look at the number of “likes” or plant something beautiful in your yard to make it feel more real?
We cannot predict the future, so it’s wise to prepare ourselves for the fact that unexpected, unpleasant, and unwanted things might come our way. But, let’s choose to live this unexpected life fearlessly. Let’s live life and make decisions that are not steeped in fear. We can start that new business or new relationship or new health regimen without allowing fear to halt our forward progress. We can commit to living life fearlessly!
Our Guest, Radio and TV Personality Kim Adams is the Founder of Live Fearless. Live Fearless is not just rhetoric or some positive affirmation. Kim has lived through Hurricane Katrina, cancer and a looonng list of family and career challenges. Just when she thought she hit rock bottom, she said “there was actually a trap door.” BUT, she’s come out on the other side to not only survive but thrive. She juggles her job at 98.7 The Breeze with other business ventures and involvement in countless charities -- especially those related to cancer (check out Kim’s latest fundraising effort with Race for the Cure HERE). Most importantly, she’s the proud mama of five amazing kids who she’s raising on her own. Kim is genuine, relatable and she wants to help everyone live well despite the fear life can feed us.
We triple dog dare you to listen to what she has to share during this episode on Living Fearless. Don’t allow fear to stop you from listening in!
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Sandy Kovach [00:00:01]:
Life can throw a lot at you, but imagine if your life were different, better, not because of what's coming at you, but because of what's coming from you. Let's get there together. Join us and imagine yourself.
Lanée Blaise [00:00:14]:
Good day, everybody. I'm Lanee.
Sandy Kovach [00:00:16]:
And I'm Sandy. And, Lanee, what are we imagining today?
Lanée Blaise [00:00:21]:
Imagine yourself living a life Without fear or imagine yourself pushing through the fear and living life to the full anyway. We wanted to make sure this could be as easy as possible for a everyone. So we have with us today radio personality with 98.7, The Breeze, Kim Adams. And this remarkable lady, She is an Emmy Award winning TV and film personality. She can talk the talk and walk the walk because she has been through so many Scary situations, and she has made it through to the other side because she's made the decision to live fearless and to thrive. And we want to welcome you, Kim, to Imagine Yourself today.
Kim Adams [00:01:06]:
Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. Big fan of the show.
Sandy Kovach [00:01:10]:
We're huge fans of you, and, you know, Kim and I get to work together at 98.7 the breeze. And I was so excited To meet her, not just because I think she's an awesome personality at TV and radio, but what an inspiration. So, Kim, I don't even know where to start
Sandy Kovach [00:01:24]:
There's so much improvement. So Live Fearless. Let's start with that
Sandy Kovach [00:01:27]:
Now Live Fearless is the name of your company now, which is based on your life story.
Kim Adams [00:01:34]:
It is.
Sandy Kovach [00:01:34]:
How do we go from point a to point b with that?
Kim Adams [00:01:27]:
Okay. So living fearless is impossible. Let's start with that because you can't remove fear entirely from your life. You just can't. But what I have learned are the tools that I've needed to take what I am afraid of and not let it control my life. To harness that fear, Use it. And as you said, Lanee, thrive. That's what I really have learned to do through all of my experiences, and it's nothing that anyone else can't do.
Kim Adams [00:02:03]:
We can all live a more fearless life. We don't have to let fear control our decisions in our destiny.
Sandy Kovach [00:02:11]:
And that's just not rhetoric for you. Start with some of the fearless or some of the fearful things That could have devastated you that happened.
Kim Adams [00:02:19]:
Sure. Absolutely. And there have been several throughout my life even since I was a young child. I've had kind of extremes in my life. Extreme good things happen and then extreme bad things happen throughout my life, but we'll start kind of with my adult life. I mean, it's not therapy here, really. We could
Sandy Kovach [00:02:34]:
do it. .
Kim Adams [00:02:36]:
Yeah. Oh, I They were. In
Lanée Blaise [00:02:43]:
Yeah. You could start wherever feels natural.
Kim Adams [00:02:46]:
Let's go back to when I was working in television and decided to leave my career that I'd worked very hard on And become a stay at home mom. I left to go to Mississippi with my then husband who was a naval officer. Within 4 months of us moving down there, We moved right into the path of hurricane Katrina Mhmm. And lost everything. Insurance did not cover it. And so With no insurance coverage and facing bankruptcy, my parents had also moved down the street because this is where we're gonna live forever. A So they sold their house in Michigan, moved down, built a house, 4 houses down from ours. Their house was also destroyed.
Kim Adams [00:03:24]:
So I was fortunate enough to come back To Detroit and work again, Channel 4 really saved me and brought me back and gave me a job again. But what I learned from that experience, First of all, I was never really tied to material things. It just wasn't who I was to begin with. But the things that I missed were, like, pictures that I didn't take with me a Or christening gowns, things like that Yeah. That were very difficult. All my videos were gone. So that part was difficult. But other than that, the material things, it just didn't matter.
Kim Adams [00:03:54]:
It was then that I really truly started feeling blessed because it was almost uncomfortable. When I came home, there's so much support here and so much love from the people in Metro Detroit. I mean, they just embraced me so well, welcomed me home. People would bring clothes to the station, toys for my kids. They really Just overwhelmingly supported us. And I felt so guilty at the time because my children were safe. Had we not left and evacuated. We would have more than likely died.
Kim Adams [00:04:25]:
Most of our neighbors did not make it, and the water would have swept them away. And been. Women by myself because my husband at the time was deployed, so he was out at sea. The ship had to leave port. So it was just me and the kids and my parents. And fortunately, we did get out, And so many people didn't. Women we got back into our neighborhood, the things you would see in the trees was horrific.
Sandy Kovach [00:04:46]:
In the trees?
Kim Adams [00:04:47]:
In the trees. Yeah. Because blood tried to climb up out of it was the water, not the wind Yeah. That really was devastating. And so people you know, you try to get as high as you can, and so they went up into the trees. But you look at that. I had a job to come back to. Not just a job.
Kim Adams [00:05:02]:
I had a job on television.
Lanée Blaise [00:05:03]:
And a separate home. Like, other
Kim Adams [00:05:05]:
And I could buy another house. Yeah.
Kim Adams [00:05:06]:
mean, it hurt to, you know, rebuild the other house and have to sell it because you still have to pay your mortgage even if the house isn't there. They don't care. They still want their money. So you have to pay off your mortgage and rebuild a house. But so what? I had my 2 children with me. There were mothers whose children were swept away out of their arms. So how could I possibly complain that I lost my favorite pair of shoes or my sofa that I loved or who cares? It didn't matter. I felt so incredibly fortunate.
Kim Adams [00:05:31]:
And so even though people were well meaning by helping us, I felt incredibly guilty for it because I'm like, no. No. No. No. I'm okay. And I also left. I got to say bye.
Lanée Blaise [00:05:42]:
Yes. Yeah. You got to come back
Kim Adams [00:05:43]:
to Michigan and here.
Lanée Blaise [00:05:45]:
Safe, you know, to safe ground.
Kim Adams [00:05:46]:
Exactly. There are still people in New Orleans and in Mississippi and Louisiana that are still recovering from hurricane Katrina, and they're forgotten. In. Who thinks about that anymore? There's another hurricane. There's another tragedy. There's whatever, and they're forgotten. So I've always felt very fortunate.
Sandy Kovach [00:06:02]:
You're fortunate, but As a mom, especially being scared.
Kim Adams [00:06:06]:
Yeah.
Sandy Kovach [00:06:06]:
The whole evacuation process.
Kim Adams [00:06:08]:
The evacuation progress, process was scary except for the fact that I was a meteorologist. Uh-huh. So when they had the path going a certain way, I had access to different computer models that most people didn't and didn't know how to read. So I was able to evacuate to a place in Florida where I knew it wasn't going to hit. It was actually where it was supposed to hit is where we evacuated too. What Because there are no hotels.
Lanée Blaise [00:06:33]:
You That's true.
Kim Adams [00:06:34]:
You can't you can't get a hotel room. And so I went to where the hotel rooms had vacancies because that's where it was supposed to hit, so nobody was gonna stay there. So I was very fortunate that we were able to leave. But, you know, when you're packing up your kids who were not even 12 at the time, little babies, myself, my cat, and then trying to you know, it's funny because being from Michigan, we hear people saying, you know, we had to board up our windows. Okay. I had no idea what that Right. That
Lanée Blaise [00:07:00]:
whole process.
Kim Adams [00:07:00]:
That whole process. From Florida or from Delta. Yeah. I started to do it, and I was like, I don't even know how to do this. How do you put nails into stucco? Like, what am I doing? And then I had to go to the fire station. You have to fill sandbags, You have to fill them yourself, load them into your car. I mean, there's just them over. Yeah.
Kim Adams [00:07:17]:
Them over. And at some point, I was like, okay. That's it. We gotta get out of here because this is it. I can't do anymore, but we were fortunate that I packed up quite a few things, my wedding dress, a lot of the kids' stuff. Anything I could fit in the car, I put. So many of our neighbors who had lived there for years years years, they had been through so many of these evacuations that they didn't take the stuff because they were so used to evacuating and having didn't come home.
Lanée Blaise [00:07:40]:
They maybe didn't take it seriously because there were so many false alarms
Kim Adams [00:07:44]:
where
Lanée Blaise [00:07:44]:
you don't because, yeah, I lived in Florida, Miami for years.
Kim Adams [00:07:47]:
Like, yes.
Lanée Blaise [00:07:48]:
Sometimes, like, ah, it'll what be okay.
Kim Adams [00:07:50]:
Right. My house has been here for and especially Katrina. They're like, I've been here for 50 years, and nothing's ever happened. Well, this was the one. And so we were fortunate that I had quite a few of our mementos that I still have. So that happened. Okay. There's number there's
Sandy Kovach [00:08:03]:
part 1.
Kim Adams [00:08:03]:
There's one. Facing the fear Yes.
Lanée Blaise [00:08:06]:
Using some of it to actually evacuate, which in that case was a good thing.
Kim Adams [00:08:09]:
Right.
Lanée Blaise [00:08:10]:
But also not letting it cripple you as you took care of your children and
Kim Adams [00:08:14]:
happening. Right. Moved on, but I still had fear in my life. I still made my decisions based on fear. I've always done that. It didn't remove the fear of what everyone thinks. It still didn't remove the fear of being liked, the fear of not having enough money. All the fears that we have in our life didn't go away with hurricane Katrina.
Kim Adams [00:08:33]:
I felt blessed and fortunate for my life, but I still worried about working in television. Okay. Well, I'm doing it now, but what if they fire me next month? What if they whatever. You know, I was still making my decisions based on fear.
Sandy Kovach [00:08:46]:
But I think that's a default what's
Kim Adams [00:08:48]:
Of course.
Sandy Kovach [00:08:48]:
Everybody.
Kim Adams [00:08:49]:
Everybody. Yeah. Especially the the one that was hardest for me was overcoming the fear of and still to this day, I I fight it, being liked. We all wanna be liked.
Sandy Kovach [00:08:59]:
People would look at you, Kim, and they would say, Kim, you have everything. You're beautiful. You have beautiful children. You have a great job, and yet there you are Sure. Thinking about what's at.
Kim Adams [00:09:07]:
It is not nearly the battle that it used to be, and I think the older you get, the less you really care what people think. I think that kind of comes Yes. Right? That comes naturally. But you still wanna be liked, and you can get 20 people to tell you, oh, you look nice today. And it just takes 1 to say, Wrong choice. Wrong choice, whatever. And you've you focus you notice it on social media. When you can get a 100 people telling you how great it is and you get 1 person that criticizes, what's the first one you answer?
Lanée Blaise [00:09:34]:
And that stands out.
Kim Adams [00:09:35]:
That one. I stopped doing that, by the way. I don't answer them anymore.
Sandy Kovach [00:09:38]:
Don't give them attention. Mm-mm.
Kim Adams [00:09:39]:
No. I don't do that. And and celebrities that they call it the clap back Women they get criticized and they that's the 1st person. Don't give them any delete, or I kill them with kindness. And usually they're like, oh, I didn't mean to say it that way. You know? So okay. So I go through hurricane Katrina, get back to Detroit, and get divorced. So now I am a single mom, sole physical legal custody of 5 children.
Sandy Kovach [00:10:06]:
Oh my goodness.
Kim Adams [00:10:07]:
So Starting with clothes.
Lanée Blaise [00:10:09]:
And starting everything back. Yes.
Kim Adams [00:10:11]:
Yeah. How
Sandy Kovach [00:10:11]:
was old was your youngest when you were divorced?
Kim Adams [00:10:13]:
Let's see. She would have been it's been almost 5 years. So she would have been 11, and the youngest was 6 months old. My goodness, Kim. The youngest is 6 months old, girl and 4 boys. Really the hardest thing that I've ever gone through. And at the same time I was going through that, I was trying to get back into television because I had left again to stay home to raise my kids. And, you know, that feeling of being You feel worthless.
Kim Adams [00:10:38]:
Anyone that's been through a divorce goes through this. Yes. You feel unloved unlovable. Rejected. Rejected. And then I felt it in my personal life, but then also in my career. Because I was trying to get back into television, and nobody wanted me.
Sandy Kovach [00:10:56]:
It was just not a good time?
Kim Adams [00:10:57]:
It just I don't know. I mean, it was just it was just it just wasn't the time for me. And in retrospect, it's because that wasn't God's plan for me. It just wasn't.
Sandy Kovach [00:11:07]:
Yeah. Yeah.
Kim Adams [00:11:08]:
And the path that I took is exactly the path that I was supposed to take, but you don't see it at the time.
Lanée Blaise [00:11:12]:
You don't know it then.
Kim Adams [00:11:13]:
Don't know it. And every decision I was making was out of fear. I was grasping for any job, hustling, and it's what you have to do Women you're a single mom. You you just have to. You take whatever you can get. I opened my own production company, which is very competitive here in Metro right. Sounds really glamorous, but it's tough. I was able to get a job as a spokesperson for a couple different companies, and things were going okay.
Sandy Kovach [00:11:37]:
Mhmm.
Kim Adams [00:11:37]:
Raising the 5 kids. And then I'm bending over to make breakfast for the kids, and I had a nightgown on, so I held my nightgown against me, And I felt a lump.
Sandy Kovach [00:11:47]:
Oh my goodness.
Kim Adams [00:11:49]:
And I was a health reporter for a short time at Channel 4, and I'd done this long enough to know it just wasn't good, and I had done everything I was supposed to do. I had yearly mammograms. I did self breast exams. I mean, I thought I did everything that I could.
Sandy Kovach [00:12:04]:
That moment, what was the did it hit you like this is it?
Kim Adams [00:12:07]:
So you know when you know something's wrong, you get that heat in your body?
Sandy Kovach [00:12:10]:
Mhmm. I don't
Kim Adams [00:12:10]:
know if you've ever had that where it's just like your body feels like it's on fire all of a sudden because you just know something's wrong. I mean, it's that fight or flight.
Sandy Kovach [00:12:16]:
Yeah.
Lanée Blaise [00:12:17]:
Yes.
Kim Adams [00:12:17]:
And Which
Lanée Blaise [00:12:18]:
is probably a surge of adrenaline.
Kim Adams [00:12:19]:
It was a surge of adrenaline. You from Yeah. I just I just knew. I knew instantly. And I'm not the kind of person that panics about health things and and things is like that. I'm pretty calm about it, but I just knew. Long story short, I went to several different doctors. I went to my first, I called my regular doctor I am my internist.
Kim Adams [00:12:37]:
And she's like, you know what? It's just probably a cyst. She's like, 80% of them turn out to be cyst. Feels like a cyst to me. Don't worry about it. And then I went to my OB who said the same thing. Come back for your yearly mammogram, which was due in about 9, 10 months. Still didn't seem right.
Sandy Kovach [00:12:52]:
Okay?
Kim Adams [00:12:53]:
You knew within your I just knew in my soul. I just knew. And I said, you know what? Can we just, like, to do in ultrasound or something. You know? I'd had a mammogram, and it didn't really show anything. There was one little suspicious area, but I have dense breast tissue, so it's like finding a snowball in a snowstorm. So they did an ultrasound. I swear the ultrasound tech was in and out in 5 minutes. She went to talk to the radiologist, and she's like, okay.
Kim Adams [00:13:16]:
Swollen lymph node, everything's fine, come back for your mammogram in a year.
Lanée Blaise [00:13:21]:
This you're teaching us a lot more than I expected today because Right.
Sandy Kovach [00:13:25]:
This is
Lanée Blaise [00:13:26]:
You have to know to continue searching when you know something is wrong.
Kim Adams [00:13:30]:
You have to trust your intuition. You have to. And this is where fear if you're living in fear, you're not gonna trust your intuition. You're gonna choose fear. You cannot do that. You have to trust yourself. So I went to finally a breast surgeon at Beaumont. She took one look at the mammogram and felt it and said that needs to come out.
Kim Adams [00:13:51]:
And I said, oh, okay. When? And she's like, I'd like to do it tomorrow. Woah. And I was like, wait a minute. I have 5 kids. Hang on one second. I can't even go to the dentist without 6 months of planning. So and she's like, no.
Kim Adams [00:14:04]:
It needs to come out. So I had the lumpectomy. Few days later, I was in the library with my he was then a 4, almost 5 Alden. We were having I had a special time with each of my kids. You know when you have 5 kids, you gotta carve out time. Right? So it was our special time. We were at the library in Candyland and my phone rang, and I knew I had to answer it. So I put him at a computer with little headphones on, and it was a 37 second phone call.
Kim Adams [00:14:27]:
I went back and actually looked at the time on my phone. She said, Kim, it's doctor b. I have bad news. It is breast cancer. It's malignant. And she proceeded to go from there, and I was kind of numb at that point.
Lanée Blaise [00:14:40]:
Very matter of fact, it sounds like.
Kim Adams [00:14:41]:
It was very matter of fact, which at the time I thought, wait a minute. When they tell you you have cancer, like the angel's supposed to sing and your family surrounds you.
Lanée Blaise [00:14:50]:
Bring you into the office.
Kim Adams [00:14:51]:
Right. Don't you have that moment? And at first, I thought, why would she do that? Now I I understand, because it's almost like ripping off a Band Aid. If you tell me to come to your office and bring all this support, I know what you're gonna tell me. True. For her, It's almost like when a parent when your child falls, skins their knee or whatever. If you don't say anything, usually, the kid gets up. But if the parent goes, all all of a sudden the kid's like, wait a minute.
Lanée Blaise [00:15:14]:
Am I really hurt? Supposed to be upset. I'm supposed to freak out right now.
Kim Adams [00:15:17]:
So for her being very businesslike about it Was very helpful because it was just like, here's what it is. Here's what we're gonna do. Here's the next step. There was very little emotion involved, which at the end of the day kind of helped me. Although when I got home that day, stack of bills in my mailbox, the little one had pooped his pants, the other ones were hungry, house is a disaster, And I walk in. I'm a single mom, and I just found out I have breast cancer, and it's malignant, and it's aggressive. I'm looking at my house like, Oh, so the world isn't gonna stop because I have breast cancer. Like, I don't get that moment.
Lanée Blaise [00:15:54]:
I don't chance to just decompress You
Kim Adams [00:15:56]:
don't get
Lanée Blaise [00:15:57]:
to in and what No.
Kim Adams [00:15:58]:
You don't get you just you just have to let's do this. Let's go.
Sandy Kovach [00:16:02]:
So that was a moment of clarity for you?
Kim Adams [00:16:04]:
It was because I just realized, like, look. It's still not about me. When you have kids, it's just not about you. True. It's about them, especially when you're a single parent. And so I just had to figure out a way to get through it.
Lanée Blaise [00:16:15]:
And to be strong enough to kinda like you were saying when kids fall down to make sure that you show them that That you all were gonna make it through also.
Kim Adams [00:16:24]:
Right. Right.
Lanée Blaise [00:16:24]:
Because I'm sure that was a big component. Regardless of how you felt, you wanted to make your children feel A sense of comfort.
Kim Adams [00:16:31]:
Absolutely. In fact, my older 2 children, when I I told the kids separately at first, I took them on a trip to Disney World. I woke them up on a Tuesday. I got diagnosed on a Thursday. That night, I booked a trip to Universal and to Disney before I told them because I wanted one last vacation where no one treated me any differently. I didn't want anyone to know. I just wanted 1 more where I I didn't know how they were gonna react, but I knew they would be scared, and I didn't want them to be scared. So then when we got home, I told the little ones differently than I did the older 2, but the older 2, it kinda helped with humor to get through Women it was the same thing.
Kim Adams [00:17:03]:
You know? If you if it's not as scary for them, you know, like, we would be stuck in traffic or something, or someone would cut me off on the freeway, and I go like, no. No. After you. It's not like I got cancer or anything. You know? The kids would be like, it's not funny. I'm like, you know, we would just kinda make a joke about it, and it just made it kinda less scary for them, but I really wasn't as afraid as you would think. I did not think about dying. I was not afraid of dying, never afraid of dying.
Kim Adams [00:17:28]:
I became much more afraid of how I was living.
Lanée Blaise [00:17:32]:
What do you mean by that, actually?
Kim Adams [00:17:34]:
So I didn't think about dying. I thought, am I living my life the way that I should be? Am I the best mother? Am I the best friend? Am I the best daughter? Am I happy? Am I doing the things in my life that I want to? Am I surrounding myself with the people that should be in my life? I became much more afraid that I was wasting my time.
Sandy Kovach [00:17:55]:
Wow. That's an interesting reaction.
Kim Adams [00:17:57]:
I became much more concerned about how I was living because I didn't know how now it became real that, you know, we're all unfortunately, we know what's gonna happen.
Sandy Kovach [00:18:05]:
At some point, we're
Kim Adams [00:18:06]:
all getting out of here. Right. I didn't focus on am I going to die. I focused on how am I gonna live whatever time I have left, however long that may be. And so I became really focused on making the most of every single day, and stop focusing on. And that I think that's really when I became much more fearless and became more aware Of how I was living my life in fear and how it was holding me back. Every bad decision I've ever made in my life was made out of fear. If I took a job that I didn't like, I took it because I was afraid that another job wouldn't ever come along.
Kim Adams [00:18:44]:
Or if I stayed in a job that I hated, I stayed there because I was afraid. What if I don't get anything else? I stayed in an abusive relationship for much longer than I should have because I was afraid to leave.
Sandy Kovach [00:18:56]:
Oh my god. So Have you seen this meme, Kim? Fear can mean 2 things, forget everything and run or face everything and rise.
Kim Adams [00:19:05]:
Mhmm. Yes.
Kim Adams [00:19:09]:
Yeah. Such a great meme. Yeah. That's completely true. And it's not again, there is nothing special about me. There's nothing. Every single one of us has the capability of being resilient and fearless. Again, not completely fearless.
Kim Adams [00:19:25]:
You're gonna have fear in your life, of course, but none of us have to live and make decisions based in fear. And the more things that you go through in your life, The more you are being prepared for the next thing to happen. For example, hurricane Katrina going through a difficult marriage all prepared me for breast cancer. I was much tougher by the time I got that diagnosis. Yeah. After being a single mom, I think if I would have gotten it 10, 15 years go. It would probably been a completely different situation because I was tough. And all of us you think about 911 and how did they get through that? How do you go on from that? Because all of us are born with that resilience, and we can train ourselves to become even more resilient.
Kim Adams [00:20:11]:
What but there's no secret formula. There's nothing I think that's what really helped was that there's nothing genetic about me that makes me more resilient than you. Nothing.
Lanée Blaise [00:20:20]:
Yeah.
Kim Adams [00:20:20]:
It's all training your mind to become resilient and to get through it. It's your perspective.
Lanée Blaise [00:20:28]:
Focus, it seems like too. You reignited and refocused and changed your focus to living your life instead of concentrating and sitting in the possibility of death.
Kim Adams [00:20:39]:
Yes. Right. Mhmm. Absolutely. And that's how I live today.
Sandy Kovach [00:20:42]:
And you got through. Obviously, you're doing very well now.
Kim Adams [00:20:45]:
I am. I'm in remission now. No evidence of the disease, but here's the thing. I'm not perfect by any stretch of the imagination. I would love to say that cancer Completely took away everything that annoyed me. It doesn't. I'm still human. You know, when the kids are whining, it still greats on my nerves just like anyone else.
Kim Adams [00:21:07]:
I would love to say that I have a 100% plant based diet. I don't. I do better than I used to. And I think that's what we all need to do is just give ourselves the grace to be imperfect, and that helps with the fear as well. Because I don't have to worry about being perfect. I don't have to worry about everybody liking me. I always say you can be the juiciest, ripest peach in the world, and there'll be someone that doesn't like peaches. Right.
Kim Adams [00:21:34]:
Exactly. You just can't have that fear of, Do I look good? Do people like me? There's just so many fears in our life that we just don't really need to have. Think about all the things you worried about and were fearful of 5 or 10 years ago. Probably 90% of them never happened. No. And if they did, guess what? You get through it.
Sandy Kovach [00:21:53]:
But they say that people Who are closest to, like, some kind of a breakthrough, that's when they really feel like giving up.
Kim Adams [00:22:00]:
Mhmm.
Sandy Kovach [00:22:00]:
Did that ever happen to you? I mean, Were there meltdown moments? Were there times where you're walking through some of these things and going, can't do it?
Kim Adams [00:22:07]:
Yes. Absolutely. Several. In fact, I went through a time, at the end of my marriage and some really bad things. And I remember going outside, and I picked up a rock from the driveway. I wanted to remember that, okay, this is my rock bottom. And so every time I looked at that rock, I thought that was my rock bottom. Look how far I've come.
Kim Adams [00:22:28]:
But my rock bottom, what I didn't know had a trap door. Oh my goodness.
Sandy Kovach [00:22:32]:
There was still
Kim Adams [00:22:33]:
further to go. Still further to go. I needed to fall even further, you will always be set back in life. There's always gonna be that rock bottom and those moments where you think, like, I I can't do this anymore. I still say that today. I'll be exhausted and think, I can't do it anymore. I'm tired. I just can't.
Kim Adams [00:22:51]:
But guess what? Yes. You can. Yes. You can. And you will. Mhmm. You'll get up. You'll go on and you'll get through it.
Kim Adams [00:22:57]:
And I think having perspective is what really helps me because someone always has it worse than you do. Always. I used to work at Children's Hospital. And when my kids would just you know, the kids can get annoying. They just can't. They can grate on your nerves. I I would go to work at Children's Hospital and think, my kids
Lanée Blaise [00:23:16]:
Alright.
Kim Adams [00:23:16]:
I'd come home and and hug them even tighter. And I think about that even with the cancer. You know, I have 5 healthy children. How many parents that had cancer? I thought about this when I was going through my cancer. How many parents of children who have cancer would give anything in the world if they could take the kid's cancer and put it in their body. So you just have to have that kind of perspective, but allow yourself to have those breakdowns and those melt downs, and forgive yourself for that. Because I hear so many times, you gotta fight this with cancer. Fight it and fight it.
Kim Adams [00:23:46]:
Okay. But some people, They're not going to win this battle. And so to put that pressure on them is too much.
Lanée Blaise [00:23:54]:
That they have to do what they had to do. Grow quickly
Kim Adams [00:23:56]:
without tears. They really do have you have some control over it. But at the end of the day, it's cancer. If you're stage 4 or you're if you have metastatic a breast cancer. It's not fair to say to them, you need to fight this and you're gonna win. No. They're not. And it's not fair to them to feel like they're a failure because they're not gonna win this battle.
Kim Adams [00:24:18]:
Sometimes they just need to hear, what do you need? What can I do for you? How can I help you? And everyone's well intentioned. They don't mean to they don't know what to say sometimes when friends or family are diagnosed, But I just think that we put so much pressure on ourselves to always be positive and strong. And and for me, you know, fearless. No. I mean, make it the majority of your of your existence, but guess what? Have the grace to say, sometimes I just don't feel like I can do this anymore, and I'm gonna break down. I'm gonna cry. But then you have to put your big girl pants on. You can't do that forever.
Kim Adams [00:24:51]:
Then you then you gotta get back up. You gotta keep moving.
Sandy Kovach [00:24:54]:
So you allow yourself a breakdown.
Kim Adams [00:24:56]:
You have to because, otherwise, we all experience a range of emotions. What if all of us were positive and happy and joyful all the time. Guess what? You're lying to yourself. If you don't allow yourself to feel those emotions, you are lying to yourself. You have to get angry. You have to a Feel all the emotions, but you have to learn to make sure that you don't let 1 emotion like anger or fear or sadness As best you can, don't let that control you. Right. But allow yourself to feel it because otherwise, it's just you're just faking it.
Kim Adams [00:25:28]:
If you're telling everyone that you're happy all the time, No. You're not.
Sandy Kovach [00:25:31]:
And that's not helping them.
Kim Adams [00:25:32]:
That's not helping anybody. Then they feel like right. And that's why I'm always very you know, people like, oh, you're so strong. And, yes, I am. But guess what? I cried for 2 hours last night when I put the kids down for bed because I'm tired, because I would love to have somebody to help me. Or I feel guilt over you know, my kids don't have the typical family. There are just so many things that just are imperfect, and I think it's really important to make sure that we don't compare ourselves goes to others because everybody has their bag. Yeah.
Kim Adams [00:26:02]:
Everybody has it. Even me.
Sandy Kovach [00:26:04]:
Even me. But you know what? You even me keep going, but you have all these events and things that you do. And one of the things is coming up soon. Right? The
Kim Adams [00:26:14]:
Yes. So I'm doing the race for the cure, and that's, May 11th. And I'm a team captain, been. So I've got people supporting me on my team, and we will I don't run it. I walk it. I walk as far as I can. And then if I can't make it the rest of the way, been Then I don't make it the rest
Sandy Kovach [00:26:29]:
of the way.
Kim Adams [00:26:30]:
But pressure. Right? Exactly. Yeah. I mean, okay. I can't. I'm not a marathon runner. Love to be, just not gonna
Sandy Kovach [00:26:35]:
do it. Oh, come on.
Kim Adams [00:26:36]:
You got time. Right. Right? I do. Right? In my spare time, I know. But, you know, they they
Lanée Blaise [00:26:41]:
baby strapped to your back and
Kim Adams [00:26:42]:
Right? Exactly. You know? We gotta do what we gotta bad. Yes. So I'm raising money for that. That really helps me doing these causes, whether it be breast cancer, whether it be domestic violence, whether it be children's charities. What really helps me and what really got me through the breast cancer was helping other people. That fills me. Because you focus less on your own problems when you're helping people with other problems.
Kim Adams [00:27:04]:
So I always try to reach out to as many women as I can, and they reach out to me as Health. Women who have just been diagnosed, it is the scariest time for them, it was for me, and you Google breast cancer. If you wanna think you're dying, Google the word cancer. Even if you don't have cancer, you're convinced that you have. It's horrible.
Lanée Blaise [00:27:20]:
Self diagnosed with WebMD.
Kim Adams [00:27:22]:
Yeah. No. I'm banned from WebMD.
Lanée Blaise [00:27:24]:
You know? Yeah. Yes. When you may not have the facts correct.
Kim Adams [00:27:28]:
Exactly. So
Lanée Blaise [00:27:29]:
many different components and
Kim Adams [00:27:30]:
Right. So helping other women and women that are going through it really has helped me to kind of focus less on my own problems.
Sandy Kovach [00:27:39]:
And I do love when you post pictures on your Facebook page of people ringing the bell or
Kim Adams [00:27:43]:
Yeah.
Sandy Kovach [00:27:43]:
People in the hospital. So is that a good place to, like, not only get in touch with you, but also to maybe donate is on your
Kim Adams [00:27:49]:
Yes. Yeah. My Facebook page, Kim Adams, and then I also have Kim Adams 98.7 The Breeze as well, those 2 places. And you can even email me. It's kim@kimadams.com. I'd love to hear from you. And my only problem is, you know, there are 24 hours in a day. Yes.
Kim Adams [00:28:06]:
And I get so vested in, you know, my Facebook and answering things that sometimes it's 2 in the morning. I'm like, I've gotta stop. I've gotta stop. You know?
Lanée Blaise [00:28:14]:
But take time to recharge yourself. Right.
Kim Adams [00:28:16]:
But people people are kind enough to where they tell me, you know, some pretty personal things, and I feel feel like. I I mean, I really do want to personally respond to everybody. It's important to me. So I do my best. But, again, you gotta give yourself the grace to forgive yourself if you can't get to everyone, but I certainly do try. I read everything and try to point people in the right direction. I can't. I'm not a doctor.
Kim Adams [00:28:38]:
I'm not a therapist, but I can tell you this is what I went through. This is what I learned. These are the mistakes that I made, and hopefully it helps.
Sandy Kovach [00:28:45]:
Investing in other people is amazing. And what we'll do too is on our website Mhmm. We'll put a link to all the stuff. So, like, if you Dear umbrella of what Kim said, go to imagine yourself podcast, and we'll put that up too. So, Lanee, or my fake doctor Laneee, she's Earned this title just over the wonderful therapies she's giving.
Lanée Blaise [00:29:05]:
Just just in general, we really like to always make sure that Our listeners get to take different principles away.
Kim Adams [00:29:14]:
Okay.
Lanée Blaise [00:29:15]:
And you have given us so much Juicy, delicious peachness to to work with. You know? Thank you. Because there we can start with anything from Allowing ourselves to have fear, which you have given us the permission to remind ourselves, To allow ourselves to have different experiences, go through the human emotions, be a real person who does cry, who does break down, who does have fear, But we don't let ourselves get strangled by that. Exactly. We don't let it dominate who we are and what we can do and how Things can still move forward. There's still hope. Another aspect that you reminded us is that pushing outward to other people And helping others and trying to sometimes concentrate on them because it makes us more grateful and gives us gratitude for what we do have and the blessings that we do have in our life along with doesn't it feel good sometimes to have To know that you have inspired someone else, that you have shown them a little glimpse of what they could be, And just see them walk that out in their lives. And like you said, with ringing the bell
Kim Adams [00:30:29]:
for Yeah.
Lanée Blaise [00:30:29]:
You know, cancer being over, that is a beautiful I don't even know who Thought of that concept.
Kim Adams [00:30:34]:
Isn't that great?
Lanée Blaise [00:30:35]:
But that is an amazing way to celebrate being cancer free or going, you know, going into remission. A And then, I guess, at the end of it, it's a new way of thinking of the word live fearlessly.
Kim Adams [00:30:48]:
Mhmm.
Lanée Blaise [00:30:49]:
Living fearlessly. We sometimes spend so much time trying to push fear away, but you're teaching us That fear I don't know about fear necessarily, but that intuitive feeling that something is not right
Kim Adams [00:31:03]:
Mhmm.
Lanée Blaise [00:31:03]:
Is maybe just that healthy dose of fear that gets us to what's Go back for another a second or third opinion when it comes to our health or our finances or our mental Health. And then also getting rid of the big bad wolf fear Mhmm. That does not help us, Does not serve us. Right. Does not push us into the directions that we're supposed to go. Did I miss any takeaways from you?
Kim Adams [00:31:29]:
No. I think that I mean, I'm I'm kind of all over the place. So there's just so much, but about questioning your doctor and trusting your intuition. If the doctor tells you something, but you really feel that it's not right, so many women won't question why because they're afraid. Yeah. They're afraid to question the doctor. They're afraid that well, what it you know, he probably or she probably knows best and no. You can't be afraid of that.
Kim Adams [00:31:53]:
You know? What if they think that I'm a hypochondriac, or what if they think that I'm this? It's all based in fear. You've got to push past that. Stop being afraid of questioning. We're allowed to question. Stop.
Lanée Blaise [00:32:06]:
Yeah. We're allowed to question. We're allowed to make mistakes
Kim Adams [00:32:08]:
to Absolutely.
Lanée Blaise [00:32:10]:
To live life. I often think of kids and toddlers Many times, they live very fearlessly. But, yes.
Kim Adams [00:32:17]:
To a detriment, they
Lanée Blaise [00:32:18]:
fall down the steps and everything. But Mhmm. But take a little bit of that And just go forward with it. They will stand up on stage and do a play and begin singing and dancing in front of any crowd with no fear. If we could take a little bit of that back, They will ask whatever question to whomever, however embarrassing. We don't maybe wanna go that far, but to take a little bit of that that we were really born with.
Kim Adams [00:32:41]:
That innocence. Yeah. Because children, they can't believe that someone wouldn't like them at that point. Like, they they're the best thing, at least my kids. I mean, they think they are the best. And my daughter's born on Christmas Eve, and it took a long time to explain to her that we are not all celebrating for your birthday. There is another whole world. Important birthday that we are celebrating, but, you know, she just they think as a child that their world is the most important world there is, and to take that away is where the fear creeps in.
Kim Adams [00:33:08]:
They don't have that. They're not afraid. Right. They think they're the greatest and
Sandy Kovach [00:33:11]:
Great perspective.
Kim Adams [00:33:12]:
It's it's great to have that childlike innocence again.
Sandy Kovach [00:33:15]:
So we are imagining ourselves.
Lanée Blaise [00:33:17]:
What's Once again, this one we're really just gonna do just like we start at the beginning. We are going to imagine ourselves Living our lives without those types of fears that strangle us, and instead, Looking outward to how we can help and how we can grow and how we can thrive in this world as we are.
Sandy Kovach [00:33:41]:
Thanks for listening. Now we'd like to hear from you. Got an idea for the show? Wanna share your story or just say hello? Make sure you connect with us. You can do that at imagine yourself podcast.com, and we'll talk to you again next time when we have something new to imagine.
