Expressing My Voice

[00:00:00] Paula: Hello, everyone, and welcome to “TesseLeads” with your host, Tesse Apeki, and me, Paula Okonneh as the co host. “TesseLeads” is a safe, sensitive, and supportive place and space to share, to hear, and tell your stories and your experiences. We always get super curious about the dilemmas that shape your future and our guest’s future and even our future. And always, we are interested in the journeys that we all are on. Today’s guest is Brenda Yoho, and our theme is “Lead with Two Rules”. Brenda’s Personal Lens. A few things about Brenda. Brenda adopts a multifaceted approach to educational advocacy. Her goal [00:01:00] remains steadfast to inspire positive change in the field of education by empowering educators, nurturing students well being, and contributing to the ongoing dialogue on effective leadership in schools. Brenda is married to her high school sweetheart. They’ve been together since they were 16 years old. And she has three precious grandchildren, sixteen, nine and six. She considers herself an overcomer, in other words, or in her own words, she says, “I understand trauma firsthand. My parents were uneducated. I have Crohn’s disease, which resulted in a surgery to remove some of my small intestines. I have been struck by lightning, semi truck crashing into a car with Sarah. I assume Sarah is her daughter. Her best, oh, Sarah is her best friend, Sarah her [00:02:00] best friend.

[00:02:00] Brenda: No, Sarah is my daughter.

[00:02:01] Paula: Okay, Sarah, her daughter, her best friend, her granddaughter, and her, which left her with a traumatic brain injury, as well as other injuries. And she’s also a breast cancer survivor. She also recently experienced another traumatic loss. And I know I’ve said a lot about Brenda, but what I haven’t done is welcome her to the show. So welcome to “TesseLeads”, Brenda. Thanks for joining us today.

[00:02:34] Brenda: Thank you, Paula. Thank you, Tesse, for having me today.

[00:02:38] Tesse: Brenda, I with Paula, we’re so pleased that you said yes. I remember when I came across your work through the “Weaving Influence Platform”. That’s how I came to hear about your work for the first time. But since then, I was saying to Paula that I’ve seen you cropping up on LinkedIn, in different places, you know, and I’m so pleased. And [00:03:00] I thought, why didn’t I notice this before? You know, I’m very curious about how you apply the lead with two rules, you know, to your own life? You know, how does it live in you and through you?

[00:03:16] Brenda: Yeah. You know, I apply it to my own life was just how I look at life in general. Because life is precious. I think often we take a lot of things for granted. And when we wake up in the morning, we can decide to make a choice of how we’re going to live our day. And I make a choice every day to live that life, to make a difference in the lives of someone else. So I want to make sure that my life is being shared with others so that I can make others feel good and to feel safe. So every day I do something that I know will help someone feel a little bit better and to bring value to [00:04:00] them. And most importantly, I do that with my grandchildren. My granddaughter is in high school and we went school shopping this year to buy school supplies and things. And I will tell you, just like a regular teenager and you know, she gets some help from others. They like to tease me a lot because I’m like considered the Hallmark person, because I’m always, you know, sending people good messages and stuff. And also they call me the sign lady because I have positive signs everywhere. So when everybody sees a sign, they’ll say, oh yeah, she wants to. They call me Moomoo. Now that is because my lovely husband made sure that the grandchildren would call me that “Moomoo”, thinking that that was going to be a funny joke, but you know what? I love it because there is no other Moomoo around. So I am the only Moomoo. And so I have all these [00:05:00] beautiful signs with positive messages. So when my granddaughter and I went pool shopping, I convinced her to buy this little magnet of a sign that she could put into her locker, and I told her she could put messages on her little board for other people to see. So she said, well, If I’m going to do that, then you’re going to have to send me a message. So every week I send her a three word phrase of a positive message with a little paragraph to encourage her and to share with others and also a prayer to go along with the message. So that’s how I live in every day and every week with my family.

[00:05:42] Tesse: Wow. How do you spell that?

[00:05:45] Brenda: Just like M O O. I mean capital M O O.

[00:05:49] Tesse: I was thinking that too. My God, it’s beautiful. It’s so funny. I can’t stop smiling. I just cannot. And you’re the only one?

[00:05:57] Brenda: I, that’s I am the only one I’ve [00:06:00] ever heard of. Moo Moo.

[00:06:03] Tesse: So a guiding principle, because for me, what is occurring is these are guiding principles, safety, goodness,, anchors for something. Environments, conditions for success, conditions for flourishing and thriving. What shifts have you seen as guiding principles for others who you connect with through the lens of these two rules? What have you seen change for them?

[00:06:31] Brenda: Well, you know, I’ve been implementing the two rules for decades now. So I can give you some examples of some of the things that I have seen and that I know. One of my former students, he struggled to come to school. He was in elementary when he would cry and didn’t want to come and his mom and dad would have to miss part of their work to try to carry him into school, and this went on and on, [00:07:00] and I’ll speed that up with, we made some interventions. We did some things, so we started making him feel good and feel safe. And then he transitioned with me to the middle school and then he went on to high school. I just went to his wedding, and I will just tell you that he is the youngest member that has been voted in to sit on the city council in his town, and he did that as soon as it could. So he just did that when he graduated from high school, because he knows, because we did community projects all the time in school and I’ve always said homeschooling community needs to work together and we were always doing things with community. And so he has done that and he’s also created and has done a big fundraiser for breast cancer awareness.

[00:07:52] Tesse: Wow.

[00:07:52] Brenda: Because he has an aunt that had breast cancer, so he is a go getter in regards to doing something [00:08:00] for others. So he’s a big service leader. Another one of my students is in Washington, D. C. And he has taken off with, he worked on a couple of different campaigns for the people who are working on being the president of the United States. And then now he is the president of the, I don’t know if I’m going to say this right, “The Black Conservative Republicans”, I think is what his, he’s the president of that. So you see him with pictures of all these, I mean, the former president and all these different people that are, you know, not anybody can get a picture with.

[00:08:38] Paula: Wow.

[00:08:39] Brenda: And he’s doing really well. And he’ll message me, I’m always quoting you on the things that you’ve said to me and the things that you say. So he’s spreading that message. So they always make me happy that I can see that they’re doing that. And then I can go to the grocery store and I can see former students and they’ve got little ones and they’re quoting [00:09:00] back to me the stuff that I’ve said to them. And it’s great. I went to visit one of my friends who’s an administrator and went into her school, and here comes some of my students. Now, they’re from two different school districts that I worked in, One is her secretary, and one’s one of her teachers. And they are just so excited to see me and the one said, I’ve got to call my mom. My mom will be so excited to talk to you. So she’s calling her mom.

[00:09:30] Tesse: Oh my goodness.

[00:09:31] Brenda: And her mom says, okay, Mrs. Yoho, are you part of the problem or part of the solution?

[00:09:40] Tesse: Oh, you must be so proud.

[00:09:44] Brenda: Oh, I’m so proud of all of them. Yes. It’s so exciting to see all of them and be part of their lives after they’re finished with school. And remember, I was, you know, elementary and middle school, so I didn’t get to go with [00:10:00] them any further. That’s a long time, you know, they pass that they can still remember me. And that’s so much fun. That is so much fun.

[00:10:09] Tesse: Gorgeous. Absolutely gorgeous. Wow. Paula.

[00:10:13] Paula: That’s such good news. Such good news. And to see you smiling, you know, and it makes me think about, you know, as I read your bio and to hear that you were involved in an accident with not just you, but your daughter, your granddaughter, your best friend, and which left you a traumatic brain injury and other injuries and your breast cancer survivor. So my question is, how do you navigate all these turbulences and still be such a dynamic leader?

[00:10:44] Brenda: Well, you know, I believe, I have a strong faith, and I believe that things happen in life because they’re supposed to. And there’s supposed to be a message and a learning from those things that happen. And so what [00:11:00] you do in life when things happen to you, you either react or you respond. And you react with the emotion or you can respond with thinking and doing something to bring value to others and to help others to feel safe and feel good, because they could be going through the same thing. So when I have the traumatic brain injury, that I will have to say that was the most devastating time for me because that took a long time for my brain to heal. But even though I was injured and I was airlifted from the scene, I don’t remember a lot, but my husband was able to tell me that people were saying that I was killed, that I had died. So my fear was, is that my students thought I had died, and I knew that I needed to get back to them. And I wanted to get back to them. Because when you become a trusted adult in the lives of some individuals, [00:12:00] children, especially who have already been through trauma, when they build a trusting relationship with you, you can’t let that be broken because that’s more traumatic for them. I needed them to see me because I wanted them to know I was coming back to them. So I convinced somebody to drive me to school so I could see the kids. Now, I looked a hot mess, I will tell you, because I had, I think, about 50 stitches in my head, going down close to, you know, top of my head down to the corner of my eye, and I was missing the majority of my teeth. But here’s where the lessons come in, I was able to stand in front of them, and I was able to say to them. Now we’ve talked before about how do you look at something and how do you see? Now you see me now not looking the same way, but does it change who I am? No, I am still here for you. I am [00:13:00] going to be away for a little bit because I do have to do a little bit of healing, but I will be back and I’ll still have some healing to do. But I want to tell you this, you know, we have all those rules that we think about feeling good and feeling safe. And we talk about all of you riding those buses to go home, and you are passing semi trucks sometimes and big things on the road. I want you to know that my accident happened less than five minutes from my house and a big farming truck hit our car. And because we were safely in our car with our seatbelt we lived. That’s why it’s so important for you to be in your seats and following the safety rules of traveling on the bus, because your life will be safe. So that’s how I live every day when [00:14:00] something I face, I want to share a message. So my breast cancer came. I was always doing the check. We got it detected very early. Breast cancer came when I was writing the book, and I went through my treatments, my radiation treatments with the book. I didn’t let my grandchildren know that I had breast cancer. I got the diagnosis three days before Christmas. So we had Christmas and it was the best Christmas they’ve ever had. They never knew I had breast cancer. I went and did my treatments and they never knew anything was different. Moo Moo was just fine, in their eyes.

[00:14:37] Paula: Awesome. You had, as you said so before you said “Moo Moo was just fine”, what went through my mind was that you are an excellent Moo Moo. I mean, you put yourself second, you put them first. You made sure that they were good.

[00:14:53] Brenda: Yeah, kids always should be first. People should always put kids first.

[00:14:57] Tesse: Yeah.

[00:14:58] Brenda: Always. Kids first. [00:15:00]

[00:15:00] Tesse: Brenda, as I listen to your stories and some we’ve shared in, and we’re sharing now, and some we’ve shared when we’re not recording. I see you as someone who has been through so many storms. You’ve navigated so much turbulence. What helps you to make choices in those moments? What helps you in your approach to these situations, which aren’t easy?

[00:15:25] Brenda: No, they’re not easy. Tesse, when you go through so many storms and you have such a strong faith, you realize that other people have traveled those same storms, maybe a little bit different, but they’ve traveled those storms too. And so you have to pause and you have to think, what am I thankful for in this storm? Cause I have my husband, we’ve been married for almost 40 years. We’ve been together since we were 16. And we’ve traveled together and we’ve went through these storms together. So I am so [00:16:00] thankful that we’ve had that strong relationship. I’m so thankful for my daughter, Sarah. She’s a special education teacher, and she’s just as strong because of the storms we have went through. And she loves kids more than I do. It’s hard to even say that, but she does. I can’t imagine anybody loving kids more than me, but she does. She puts her heart and soul into the kids that she has. And she serves, and the families that she serves. Because she knows that parents trust her with their most precious gift. And she does not take that lightly. And our three grandchildren are amazing. My son in law, I told him, I prayed for him and he is the best gift God could have given our family. He is amazing. He is the best father, the best husband. And he served the country as in the army and now he is at a prison and he’s [00:17:00] serving people in the prison and giving them opportunities to exercise and enjoy companionship and to see that life, they made some poor choices, but they can turn it around and he is the best person for that job.

[00:17:18] Tesse: Oh, what I’m hearing is the place of gratitude and an attitude of gratitude.

[00:17:23] Brenda: Lots of gratitude. Each day we’re given a gift, and it’s how we unwrap it. I unwrap my gift every day, and I cherish every minute of it.

[00:17:36] Tesse: I love that as a practice, Paula, what do you think? I mean, unwrap the gift every day. You know, look at the choices, be intentional. And if it’s every day as a micro habit, wow, what becomes possible? Wow,

[00:17:51] Paula: I’m soaking it all in. As I mentioned, when we were off camera that my mom always said, it’s a choice. How you live life is a [00:18:00] choice, you can be happy, or you can be sad. You could be in the palace, she used to say and be so sad, or you could be not in the palace and be the happiest person. So just make it a choice. So yeah, I love that saying that, you know, every day is a gift. What did you say you, unwrap?

[00:18:16] Brenda: Unwrap it.

[00:18:17] Paula: Unwrap it. Yeah. I mean, for me, as I have lived my life of one of looking for little things to be happy about, little things to rejoice over. Oh, I’m going to be, I love grapes. Oh, I’m going to get grapes today. Woohoo. Oh, I’m going to see this person later on in the day. I’m looking forward to that. You know, there’s so many other things to be unhappy about. But life is a gift, and so.

[00:18:41] Brenda: Yeah, you’re right, Paula. You’re right. You’re so right.

[00:18:46] Tesse: I’m going to do a little postcard. I love cards, and life is a gift to unwrap each day, because as an intentional practice, what an affirmation. What an affirmation. Wow. Brenda. [00:19:00]

[00:19:00] Paula: I’m sitting here. I’m sure Tesse, you are too, soaking in all what Brenda has shared with us today. She said, in spite of the losses and the tough times, she’s just told us life is a gift. Every day is a gift unwrap it. Brenda, are there any other parting thoughts that you can share with us?

[00:19:21] Brenda: You know, when you go through a storm and you find yourself on the other side, I think we forget to reflect and go back and look what got us through the storm. Because if we don’t appreciate the component of what helped us to get through the storm, we’ll find ourselves repeating things that could have got us into situations that caused the storm. So I’m thinking about like if we made a poor choice. If we did something that in those situations. In my situation, I want to say this, I held on [00:20:00] to this fact that I thought caused this accident that I went through, until I started to reflect back. So we have a driveway and you can turn left or you can turn right. And I can remember, I think, that my daughter asked me if we should turn left or we should turn right? And I said, I think we should go right, even though it’s longer, because left is a rougher road, and it’ll cause the little monitor that my granddaughter was watching to bounce, and I wanted her to not experience that. And I blame myself thinking if I would have said, “it’s okay, go ahead and turn left”, we would have not been in the accident. We would have missed it. And then I would have prevented my daughter from having to go through all that pain. Because you see, when I hear her talk about the story of that accident and I hear my husband talk about the story of that [00:21:00] accident, it’s heartbreaking, because my daughter was trapped in that car, and her daughter wasn’t saying or doing anything and I wasn’t saying or doing anything and all she could see was blood and all she could think was that we were both dead and there was nothing that she could do. And that was horrible for her. I can’t imagine the pain that she went through all that time, not knowing if we were alive. And then my husband got to the accident. There was a helicopter. There were two ambulances, and somebody said to him, your daughter and granddaughter are going to the hospital in Danville, but your wife is being flown in the helicopter to Champaign. And he said, “that’s my whole life. I don’t know what to do. Where do I go”? He didn’t know what the conditions were of anybody. And then he received a phone call, “I’m sorry for your loss”, and my husband said, I said to the person on the [00:22:00] other end of the phone “who died”?And they said, Brenda. He says, “no, I’m with her”. So I just don’t know about the other two. So I can’t imagine what he went through. So when you reflect back, and I think it didn’t matter if we turned left or if we turned right, we needed to go through that because we are stronger together as a family than we ever have been. We go on a vacation together every year. We talk. We’re together. We’re stronger because we went through that. Our love is untouchable.

[00:22:32] Paula: I’m crying. I’m crying because I hear in you gratitude in the midst of that storm. And what you’re basically saying is because we were almost lost, we now appreciate each other even more.

[00:22:51] Brenda: Yes. My granddaughter had not a scratch on her. Not a scratch. Not a scratch, I was [00:23:00] laying across her.

[00:23:01] Tesse:There are lots of people that would be encouraged by what you have just shared, particularly when there’s traumatic loss. When there are car accidents and all kinds of incidences and things. There’s a lot of blame, you know, if I had, if we hadn’t. You know, I survived, she didn’t, all these things. And yet what you’re saying is heartening. You know, that in spite of what happens, we can be stronger together. And also to think about people who see what we don’t see for different reasons, and they are traumatized as well. So thank you, Brenda, for sharing this compassionate, empathetic, caring, and loving message. Because lots of people today and tomorrow, their lives and their vision will be different because they’ve heard it. Thank you.

[00:23:52] Brenda: Thank you, Tesse, for letting me share it. Because it’s so important. Because every person is valuable and [00:24:00] has some kind of value in life and a meaning and a purpose. And when our lives are done, it’s because God has chosen for it to be our time to be done. But when our time is done, there’s always a lesson to be found in our passing, because he sends a message for us to carry on. So we just always have to remember that we have a message and a purpose to carry on. We always have to be the light for someone else to find the strength to be strong, to be able to encourage the next person to know that even if you’re in a storm today, tomorrow will be a better day shining bright.

[00:24:37] Tesse: Thank you.

[00:24:37] Paula: Amen to that.

[00:24:39] Tesse: Yeah.

[00:24:40] Paula: And that’s why we do “TesseLeads”. Because stories matter. And stories and lives matter. And so we always ask our guests on “TesseLeads” to share them with us because we in turn share them with the world as a podcast. In this “TesseLeads”, people are [00:25:00] supported, encouraged, and nurtured, because we do this podcasting and let them know that they’re never alone. So we ask our listeners again to head over to “Apple Podcasts”, “YouTube”, “Spotify”, anywhere you listen to a podcast and click subscribe. And if you found “TesseLeads” helpful, please let us know in your reviews. Again, we encourage you to reach out to us if you have any questions or topics you’d like us to cover. And if you’d like to be a guest on this show, “TesseLeads”, please head over to the website, which is “www.tesseleads. com” and apply there. This has been awesome. Thank you

[00:25:42] Tesse: Definitely life changing. Thank you, Brenda. Definitely life changing.

[00:25:48] Brenda: Thank you.