Imagine Yourself Podcast

Moving Beyond a Painful Past (with Podcaster Toni Kennedy)

January 13, 2024 Imagine Yourself Podcast Season 5 Episode 21
Moving Beyond a Painful Past (with Podcaster Toni Kennedy)
Imagine Yourself Podcast
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Imagine Yourself Podcast
Moving Beyond a Painful Past (with Podcaster Toni Kennedy)
Jan 13, 2024 Season 5 Episode 21
Imagine Yourself Podcast

We all carry the weight of our some of our more negative past experiences, and at times, they can seem impossible to shake off.  To be sure, there are people who have had  a harder road than others.  Our guest Toni Kennedy is one of them.  It is her healing, however; that is the real story. 

With gritty honesty and unwavering hope, Toni shares both difficult childhood and adult experiences and the impactful moments that have shaped her journey. Her story is a compelling testament to the power of healing, the resilience of the human spirit, and the transformative impact of walking with God. 

Click play for a touching conversation that celebrates resilience, kindness, and the limitless potential for healing and growth.

 

Toni’s Podcast What’s Poppin’ Penny?
 

Toni on Instagram 

For more info on IMAGINE YOURSELF with Lanée Blaise and Sandy Kovach or to contact us, visit imagineyourselfpodcast.com

Join the conversation on our FACEBOOK, TWITTER or INSTAGRAM pages. Email at imagineyourselfpodcast@gmail.com

Thanks for being part of the Imagine Yourself Family! Follow or subscribe so you don't miss an episode!

Show Notes Transcript

We all carry the weight of our some of our more negative past experiences, and at times, they can seem impossible to shake off.  To be sure, there are people who have had  a harder road than others.  Our guest Toni Kennedy is one of them.  It is her healing, however; that is the real story. 

With gritty honesty and unwavering hope, Toni shares both difficult childhood and adult experiences and the impactful moments that have shaped her journey. Her story is a compelling testament to the power of healing, the resilience of the human spirit, and the transformative impact of walking with God. 

Click play for a touching conversation that celebrates resilience, kindness, and the limitless potential for healing and growth.

 

Toni’s Podcast What’s Poppin’ Penny?
 

Toni on Instagram 

For more info on IMAGINE YOURSELF with Lanée Blaise and Sandy Kovach or to contact us, visit imagineyourselfpodcast.com

Join the conversation on our FACEBOOK, TWITTER or INSTAGRAM pages. Email at imagineyourselfpodcast@gmail.com

Thanks for being part of the Imagine Yourself Family! Follow or subscribe so you don't miss an episode!

Sandy Kovach  [00:00:01]:
Whether it's a small or a big part of our history, there are some things probably all of us would rather not think about. But dealing with past hurts is important for healing. Our guest, Toni Kennedy, is taking it a step further. She has been through a lot starting with a very painful childhood. But through her life, she's done a lot, had a lot a success, she's now a grandma, and she's gonna give us the additional perspective of how she turned lifelong hurts into lifelong lessons. Welcome to Imagine Yourself podcast, where we help you imagine the next chapter of life with grace, gratitude, courage, and Faith.

Lanée Blaise [00:00:42]:
Hello. I'm Lanee here with Sandy. And our guest today says that she listens to Imagine Yourself podcast Every morning with her cup of coffee, and when she listens, it feels like a grown lady sleepover. And that is just the best compliment ever. Her name is Toni Kennedy, and she is a fellow podcaster herself of the beautiful new podcast that's for children and families called What's Poppin' Penny. She has a wonderful following of children called her brownstone buddies. And Toni Kennedy says that she's just a lady who follows her passions to support the people she loves, her preschool families, her own family, And especially her little precious grandbabies. So we just wanted to highlight her because Toni has had various seasons in her life As a preschool teacher, a business owner, a mentor, tutor, an edutainer, which is an education entertainer, And she was even a makeup artist for Whitney Houston.

Sandy Kovach  [00:01:54]:
Woah. Yeah. I wanna dance with somebody.

Lanée Blaise [00:01:57]:
Exactly. So today, with all that in store, we are imagining ourselves embracing the different seasons of our lives, and we wanna thank Tony Kennedy for helping us do that. Tony, girlfriend, welcome to Imagine Yourself podcast.

Toni Kennedy [00:02:17]:
Oh my gosh. Pinch me. Thank you so much for the lovely, lovely, lovely introduction. I'm just fangirling over here.

Sandy Kovach  [00:02:27]:
I don't think we've ever had that before, fangirl or fanboy.

Lanée Blaise [00:02:30]:
Oh, Toni. We are fellow podcasters, and we the respect and the love is mutual.

Sandy Kovach  [00:02:36]:
But that's just one of the aspects of your life, I know, and so many, and I know you've had good seasons and bad seasons in your life. And what we wanna kinda cover is or I guess what I wanna ask you specifically is what do you hope to pass on to women in this episode and in general through telling the story of the seasons of your life and the good and the bad that you've been through.

Toni Kennedy [00:02:58]:
What I would like to pass on is something I only recently learned. For every bad thing that happens, for every tear you cry, that somebody wiped it either in the moment, eventually, or yourself. But we get stuck in it, and I think it really boils down to bad things that happen, they really find their way into your bone marrow. Can't just brush them off. Right? Right. And so that memory replays like a loop. What we forget to focus on is the healing that happened afterwards.

Sandy Kovach  [00:03:38]:
So you're saying that even after healing happens, where sometimes our brain still gets stuck in the past.

Toni Kennedy [00:03:45]:
Because the thing we're Have you ever been driving and then, like, a bad memory out of nowhere just catches you off guard?

Lanée Blaise [00:03:52]:
Mhmm. Yes.

Toni Kennedy [00:03:53]:
And it makes you so uncomfortable if we just take the time to consciously go to that next thing of when it was Health, because we all get this happened and then that happened, this happened and then that happened. But a lot of times, we'll just think this happened.

Sandy Kovach  [00:04:13]:
And We're not following up in our mind about

Toni Kennedy [00:04:15]:
Yeah. Or even that and then Sandy came along and wiped my tears, and that was so nice. I wasn't alone. All the scary things associated with that fear, all the scary things that happened during that moment, somebody came and made those invalidated those scary things. And it could be someone else. It could be you, yourself. But for me, it's always been my relationship with god.

Sandy Kovach  [00:04:41]:
Yes. Yeah. That's the most important, and the most can be the most healing.

Toni Kennedy [00:04:47]:
Yes. And I had to learn how to nurture myself. Yeah. But God was there every step of the way, like, my mom actually you know, she loved the Lord, and we were in bible school, we were in vacation bible school. We were in Sunday morning service, Sunday school. You know, we were always there. So I, from an early age, had a wonderful, wonderful nurturing relationship with God. Mhmm.

Toni Kennedy [00:05:19]:
When I was in, middle school, I segued into Sister William's class in church. And Sister Williams gave us she was wonderful with us, rambunctious children, but she also said, you're going to have to find a song that matches your mission in life. And whenever you go off your path, this song will bring you back to it. Interesting. She was very serious. You know? Kids would say this little light of mine, they would choose, and she'd be like, No. I need you to really, really think about this because we're kids. We're trying to get out of the assignment.

Toni Kennedy [00:05:58]:
Make it fast. Make it easy. And so I sat there with that little red hymn book, and I went through every every song, reading every lyric, And I got to if I can help somebody. If I can help somebody as I travel on, if I can cheer somebody with a word or song, if I can show somebody that they're traveling wrong, then my living has not been in vain. Wow. Women. And that has kept me so centered, and that was the first part of healing for me. What it means to heal, it's bigger than yourself.

Lanée Blaise [00:06:40]:
Yeah. You also have me thinking about the importance Of nurturing little children, whether it be your own children or grandchildren, whether it be if you do serve as a Sunday school teacher, I just remember even with, like, my Sunday school teacher back when I was a little girl made such a huge impact on My relationship with God, on how I felt about myself, on how I, you know, was gonna have to, like you said, deal with things in life that You don't expect as a little kid and all the way through until now, this teacher has you singing a new song, which is what god wants us to do.

Toni Kennedy [00:07:22]:
Exactly. Which was really important to me because my family go to is victimization, And I get it. My mom was born in 1926. Think about everything that happened to a black woman born in 1926, just historically. It doesn't even have to be personal. Just historically look at those times of her life forming, Positive years. I have more in common With my children than I did with my mother. My mother was 43 years old when she had me.

Toni Kennedy [00:08:02]:
The woman was born in 1926 on a plantation, Sumter, South Carolina. She was born a sharecropper into a sharecropper family on the same plantation in which my family had been enslaved on. Mhmm. So she had a 5th grade education because that's all after 5th grade, children could no longer go to to the colored school.

Sandy Kovach  [00:08:29]:
Yeah.

Toni Kennedy [00:08:29]:
They had to go to work. The fields or go into the homes as housekeepers or cooks or you name it. They had to go to work. 5th grade, they were deemed adult. Wow. So she didn't have a childhood, and she was full of really bad, horrible memories, and she was fear based. And then 43 years later, god drops into her lap, Mary sunshine.

Lanée Blaise [00:05:57]:
That's you.

Toni Kennedy [00:09:03]:
right. And she's just baffled. Stop your foolishness. I would pretend. You know, kids pretend tea party, and I would beat all the characters, and I would do it out loud. And my mom would scream at me to shut up that foolishness. And I'm like, what kind of person tells a child to stop pretending? Right. Yeah.

Lanée Blaise [00:09:24]:
That was that was your heart. Yes.

Sandy Kovach  [00:09:28]:
But based on her background, you kinda get it. Right?

Toni Kennedy [00:09:31]:
Yeah. She didn't get it. She just it was the best she knew how to do. She was very full of fear. She wanted to protect her children. She figured this is not going anywhere. We gotta get her focused in life, I've had time to heal my relationship with my mother even though she passed at the age of 96, you know, some years ago. Yeah.

Lanée Blaise [00:09:58]:
And you have a legacy now where you really do help preschoolers. You've had a A business, to help preschoolers. You've done entertainment. You have a podcast now. That seems to be exactly how you used your song to help others, to help children and families.

Toni Kennedy [00:10:16]:
I went out and I found my tribe, and it just so happened my tribe we're a group of 3 year olds.

Lanée Blaise [00:10:23]:
God used it. God uses everything.

Toni Kennedy [00:10:26]:
You wanna like, I think in our hearts, we wanna find a place where we can come from behind. Because of my my experience as a kid, I would hide in plain sight. And so I think that we all want to. I know I certainly did. Wanted to find a place where we could be our authentic self And just put down all your guards and show all your shiny spots. Mhmm. You know, but it comes along and tries to dim them. And for me, that was around kids and their parents.

Toni Kennedy [00:11:01]:
Yeah. I got paid to be a preschool teacher, but it was one of those things I would have done for free.

Sandy Kovach  [00:11:08]:
Wow. And encouraging people to have childhoods and to enjoy their childhoods because it's childhoods can be I mean, there are definitely traumatic things that happen, but there are magical things that happen too that can affect you growing up.

Toni Kennedy [00:11:21]:
Yeah, fortunately, I did have a I've I've mentioned I'm the youngest of 9. I had a sister that was 8 years older than me, And she was magical. Magical. And she cherished, honored, not cherish. She honored childhood. That's the power that adults have over children. And for some I know the reason. I was gonna say for some reason.

Toni Kennedy [00:11:47]:
It's my relationship with God. I never soured on people. I had just realized through Sister Williams also made us read the bible through the summer, front to back, front. So I read it, like, 7 times. And I remember thinking, I love the Old Testament. It is so full. It's like, Oh my gosh. The Real Housewives of Something.

Toni Kennedy [00:12:14]:
It's full of joy. Samaria. I know. Right? It's Housewives of Samaria. It's got the begats. People don't like the begats and all of this other stuff right at the at the beginning of the new testament. I love them Because I imagine my brain automatically fills in the void with a of, image of someone, but it was so great. I didn't really like the New Testament a lot for a long time.

Toni Kennedy [00:12:41]:
It was boring to me until sister Williams pointed out, Well, that's the accountability. That's the accountability test, but this over here, we get to hear about God and what he's doing to other people. Over here, Jesus is asking us, what are we gonna do for ourselves and other people? That's the accountability. And, Sure. It's not as fast paced

Lanée Blaise [00:13:05]:
and maybe not as drama filled. I know. So how do we take Some of the lessons that you've mentioned, and for people who are listening, who really do want to understand more how to have Health compassion and self support and self love and get to that season of healing instead of staying in the hurt, what do you recommend for those people?

Toni Kennedy [00:13:35]:
I recommend the lord's prayer starts out our father. Inclusive. Yes. So we're in the lord's prayer, and we're saying our father. We're not saying my father. We're not saying those other people father. We're saying our father, Which means we are all his children. No matter what man has put divisions man has put up for us, about us, we are his children.

Toni Kennedy [00:14:08]:
We gravitate, and we live in a them and us society. Whether it's sports, whether it's religion, whether it's gender, you know, women versus men, we live in a them and us society by choice individually. Everyone has the choice to continue to live in a them and us society Or to find empathy and sympathy in their hearts and wear it like an armor when they are dealing with people. And if you're airing, I can let you know that. And when you're shining, I can let you know that because it's just us. Sometimes it's gonna be comfortable, and sometimes it's gonna be greatly uncomfortable. But that's okay because you can say anything in love.

Sandy Kovach  [00:15:02]:
If you believe that person is saying it in love. But when you're divided, when it's divisive, you, a lot of times, feel like they're saying it to be judgmental. And that could be True.

Toni Kennedy [00:15:13]:
But that doesn't take the responsibility off of you. People can say what they like, my sister would always say, it's Their mouth, they can haul garbage in if if they want to. When I was in nursing school, we were doing clinicals. And I'm, you know, Mary Sunshine. Good morning. And I said to doctor Dixon, I said, that woman is so rude. And she goes, why? And I said, because I said good morning, and she just looked and went morning and walked away. She goes, you don't set the agenda for anybody else.

Toni Kennedy [00:15:47]:
If you wanna give your happy good morning, give it. But you don't know what that woman has been through this morning. You don't even know if that woman's just mean. But she's under no obligation to be what you think she should be. And I want mic drop. I sat with that for years. No one's under any obligation to be what I expect them to be, And I am not under no obligation to be what someone else expects me to be. I show up as me, And they show up as them, and that's good enough.

Toni Kennedy [00:16:24]:
My advice to people who are looking for who want to be in a season of Health. God has scattered it all through your life. Go back and gather it. Go back and get it. It's there. You've got it. God has not abandoned anyone, but maybe your hurt has made you not see it. But you've got it.

Toni Kennedy [00:16:49]:
Go back and get it.

Lanée Blaise [00:16:51]:
That's beautiful right there. That's The part where we talk about gratitude and being grateful, but you're giving very active advice on how to be grateful, how to look for it, How to not let the hurt cloud over, how to remember those beautiful people who've been in our lives doing things that they Didn't have to do to make us feel special and to lift us back up even if some of the other people that we wanted to do better didn't necessarily do that. You have me thinking right now back to some of my little aunties and uncles from when I was a child and and even now who Lift me up when other elements of my life are not necessarily doing so. You brought me back to I'm from East Cleveland, Ohio. You have me back In East Cleveland, Ohio with my Sunday school teacher, and I had this 1 auntie. She is right now, she is 97 years old. My Aunt Kitty. And she was the person that I used to have to go to her house whenever I'd get sick.

Lanée Blaise [00:17:51]:
Because if I got sick and I couldn't go to school, my parents had to work, they'd send me to aunt Kitty. Well, aunt Kitty did just like you're saying. She tried to make everything special and fun, and she still does because she's still alive. But for example, she would say, okay. So you're sick. She's like, we are going to get hot cocoa mugs, And we're gonna climb into bed and get under the covers and take little naps. Now remember, kids don't like naps, but the way she put it, it made it sound fun. And then she's like, and when you wake up, we're gonna pull out all the encyclopedias, and we're gonna write that book report that you're supposed to do for class, and it's gonna be fun, and we're gonna make it and then she Spoke French, and she would say and we're gonna practice our French.

Lanée Blaise [00:18:34]:
And it's just everything was delightful. And I wonder if we live in a way, you're you're teaching us, Tony, if we try to live in a way that is delightful for ourselves and for others and especially for Children so they can remember these things. This is I'm back 43 years ago, and I'm still remembering, you know, what aunt Kitty did for me. This is the way To live life, this is the way to Health. Because I did have a lot of other things going on in my childhood. Some things were not great, but those were some beautiful moments, and you brought me back to that. You did help me see this.

Toni Kennedy [00:19:13]:
I'm so happy for you. I don't know why hope is so undervalued in our society and something to be made fun of.

Sandy Kovach  [00:19:24]:
The hope made fun of? You mean people that are too positive or too

Toni Kennedy [00:19:29]:
They've even given it a new name. They call it toxic positivity.

Sandy Kovach  [00:19:34]:
Right. Yeah. I've run across some of those people, on social media because I I post a lot of positive things, and, I don't know if those words have ever been used, but yeah.

Toni Kennedy [00:19:46]:
How can something positive that's where our rebound happens. If you don't have hope, you don't get the rebound. And life is all about the rebound. If you won't rebound, you've given up. You're in despair. You can get more of the thing you don't want. But if you have just a Mustard seed of hope. Yeah.

Toni Kennedy [00:20:11]:
We get the rebound.

Sandy Kovach  [00:20:13]:
I see where some of the motivation for this comes from. And, again, it's kinda back to your empathy is it can make people feel like if they're not rebounding or if they're not hopeful or they're not feeling it right now because it takes people can take people years or months or days or you know, we don't know. People could, you know, have depression. They could be going through all kinds of things. If it's too much positivity, it makes people feel less than if they are not able to jump in and be positive. So what do you think of that perspective when people say that?

Toni Kennedy [00:20:46]:
Comparison is the thief of joy.

Sandy Kovach  [00:20:48]:
Great quote. Yep.

Toni Kennedy [00:20:50]:
No one's asking you to match my hope. Just kinda leave it in my hands, though. Don't you don't have to snatch it. You don't have to compare I'm not your watermark for what life should look like. I'm just living my life. You're just living your life. And if you're feeling down, aren't we instructed to go and aid and help you? Yeah. How do you have that connection if you aren't showing what's actually going on, give people a chance.

Toni Kennedy [00:21:24]:
Give yourself a chance. No matter what your circumstance is, no matter what it is, I didn't get diagnosed with Asperger's until I was in my thirties, I think. And it was my gynecologist. She no talking. And I was talking, and she was just noticing saying all the little things about me. And she said, have you ever been diagnosed with autism? And I said no because I was supposed to just be normal. All those little traits were met with be normal. Stop that.

Toni Kennedy [00:21:59]:
Right? Yeah. One parent may say, oh, that's odd. Let me take my child to a specialist and find out. Yeah. Another parent struggling the pressures of life in survival mode never had the opportunity to go into living mode. We say we're living our lives. Some people are Surviving their lives. Just stop that.

Toni Kennedy [00:22:20]:
Be normal. Don't do that. So just try to be north, I know what he wants. Who do I look forward for that? Yeah. So I didn't get a proper diagnosis until I was an adult, and you have no idea How freeing and wonderful that was for me. And, like, I am normal. I am rocking at being me. Yeah, it's okay.

Toni Kennedy [00:22:51]:
But had my gynecologist had not said, you know, I'm gonna look further at you. I'm gonna actually see you. And like you said before, without judgment, I'm gonna put my clinical hat on Yes. And I'm gonna help you. And so she sent me over to someone else, And I got a diagnosis, and I've been just like, oh, I'm cool with that. I'm cool with all these little things about me now.

Sandy Kovach  [00:23:18]:
It is amazing how freeing it can be when you think you're abnormal. And especially growing up back in the day, it wasn't out there as much. So I think even well meaning parents just they'd say, okay. Well, you gotta start acting like other kids. And, I mean, I love reading about I was reading about the Detroit Lions have a thing at Ford Field for autistic kids that can go watch the game. I mean, it's, just I mean, people are accommodating now.

Toni Kennedy [00:23:46]:
Yes. I think we are in a renaissance as Women, and there's a pushback on bullying. There's a pushback on All the antis, you name it. Antisemitism, anti gay, anti and I think as a result, our society as a whole and, again, I This is only my opinion. Our society as a whole, we're finding more things in common than our differences. People are generally more willing to accept just realizing we're all different. This whole sameness would fit into the little pigeonhole. It's being broken away.

Toni Kennedy [00:24:31]:
I really like that. I know not everyone will agree. People, you know, have a tendency to think things are getting worse. My theory on that is you're getting older, so you're realizing more. And it is getting better and better and better in some ways, particularly in the relationships that we have with each other, particularly in the relationships that we have with others because of the open dialogue that, like I said, can sometimes be uncomfortable, but the open dialogue I see it between you and Linae. The open dialogue that you guys go to the levels, the rich, rich levels that you 2 go to and we get to hear, it raises us all up. At least that's what you do for for me. Wow.

Toni Kennedy [00:25:19]:
Sure it does for me. You really raise my vibration, but you also raise me up to be just look at myself as a human, be that better human in the face of somebody not speaking back to you, In the face of somebody saying something horrible to you, they haven't taken away your choice to be that Christian.

Lanée Blaise [00:25:42]:
And be that person who who still loves your own self and that you're still true to your own Health, and and you still have hope, and you still have love, and you still have Your own kindness. Because I think kindness is another one that's underrated as well. Hope and kindness.

Toni Kennedy [00:25:56]:
Yeah. You're a sucker. You're a sucker. No. I'm just kind.

Sandy Kovach  [00:26:05]:
It's like the society is cynical, and I get it, like, when every other email is spam and trying to get you to click on a link that's gonna suck data out of your computer, and advertising can be deceptive, and there are so many things that can be deceptive. I get why people can be cynical, but, being kind to other people is not part of that. Just because you live your life in a positive way doesn't mean you're letting people take advantage of you. .

Toni Kennedy [00:26:32]:
Right? Be as cunning as a wolf Be as gentle as a lamb. Oh, yeah. Just be humble.

Sandy Kovach  [00:26:40]:
Yeah, absolutely. So one thing we definitely wanna do before we wrap up, and we're kinda running out of time here, is get your information. And, there's so much packed in what you've said to us. And, I

Toni Kennedy [00:26:54]:
about my podcasting. Yeah.

Sandy Kovach  [00:26:57]:
But you were gonna tell us about your podcast. Yes. That is a very cool thing, and we wanna know.

Toni Kennedy [00:27:04]:
My podcast is called What's Poppin' Penny. It's about a little girl with brown skin and curly hair living life without a care because she has nurturing, supportive, multigenerational adults around her To guide her, to answer her questions, just show her that she is cherished And that no matter what life throws at her, it's gonna be okay because you're not coming at it alone. Aw. So it's my love letter to my granddaughters, but it's also my love letter to myself.

Sandy Kovach  [00:27:46]:
And it's helped in your healing.

Toni Kennedy [00:27:48]:
It is absolutely helped in my healing. Absolutely. The episodes you'll find are very relatable because kids don't change. Kids are the same kids in every household, basically. I'm able to pull from my Experiences with my grandchildren as well as the memories of my children. But for me too, I've never felt empowered as a little brown girl because I've never felt empowered. So when I had children, I was able to empower them with the love and stability of I'm here. We are here.

Toni Kennedy [00:28:25]:
Nothing you can say or do. It's not gonna turn me away. And now with my granddaughters, it's the same thing. It's like, why why do you have a trampoline in your living room?

Lanée Blaise [00:28:40]:
Well, I love my grandbabies. Yeah.

Toni Kennedy [00:28:42]:
Why do you have stools where they can get up on the counters? Kids shouldn't be on the counters. Why? Just think it's okay. Yeah. Nothing nothing's gonna get broken that can't be fixed or I'm so attached to that I can't throw away.

Sandy Kovach  [00:28:57]:
So we can find your podcast on Apple, Spotify, all the usual places?

Toni Kennedy [00:29:02]:
All the usual places, then it's Poppin with an I n. Yeah. What's Poppin Penny?

Lanée Blaise [00:29:08]:
And we and that's how so I met you through LinkedIn because you are on LinkedIn and Instagram as well to promote the upcoming episodes and to just you've highlighted aspects of yourself and your life To just showcase how and and give an example on how to love children, how to love how to have fun with kids, how to nourish them, how to nurture them. I just love it. It's just

Toni Kennedy [00:29:34]:
I it's so funny to me because, you know, I have a saying that childhood is sacred. Because in my life, every person I've ever spoken to, they can tell you more about what happened to them in their childhood then they can in their twenties or thirties. That's how impactful it is. I think that if I can encourage someone to be more mindful of how they interact with children because it's gonna last for so long. We live in the moment, and so sometimes we'll just say things off the cuff or we're just in this moment. Children don't live in the moment to that degree, we're building,

Lanée Blaise [00:30:16]:
and it's important what we're putting into them because you're right. Even people I know my grandmother, she, one of my grandmothers eventually had Alzheimer's. And even in the thick of it, she might not have remembered What she had for breakfast, who certain people were, but she could tell you all kinds of things about her childhood and her cat Minnie And her sisters and all these fun things that they did. And she knew that she was an adult, but she was Uplifting. And she was able to Spot on reflect to the things of her childhood, which she had many of the things hadn't really shared with me before, But that was what was consuming her mind towards the end of her life. And you're right. Very impactful. She had great stories.

Lanée Blaise [00:31:03]:
It was She had seemed like she had a great childhood, at least the parts that she was sharing. But that is something I never thought about until you mentioned that. And that that is something to really hold as precious when we're forming and shaping different kids and their their experiences.

Toni Kennedy [00:31:22]:
My motto for, miss Toni is child development is human development.

Sandy Kovach  [00:31:30]:
Big time. So we can find you on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Toni Kennedy [00:31:34]:
I am Toni Kennedy. Toni with an I. Kennedy on LinkedIn, on Instagram, I am, hey, what's poppin' penny?

Lanée Blaise [00:31:45]:
We just wanna thank you, Tony. Thank you for listening to us each morning. Thank you for being our guest. Thank you for sharing. Thank you for the podcast that you put out to help bless families all over the world. People can check on Apple Podcast, Spotify, all the regular ways. But overall, we wanna thank you for being with us and sharing with us and encouraging us and helping to bring us hope that you talked about.

Toni Kennedy [00:32:13]:
Thank you. Thank you for having me. I admire what you do. What you do is so important for my quality of life, so I wanna thank you.

Sandy Kovach  [00:32:25]:
Wow. That's a pretty heavy compliment right there.

Toni Kennedy [00:32:28]:
Yeah.

Sandy Kovach  [00:32:29]:
Thank you for saying it.

Lanée Blaise [00:32:30]:
I think we're part of the mutual admiration club now.

Sandy Kovach  [00:32:33]:
Yes. We are. Founding members.

Lanée Blaise [00:32:36]:
Yeah. Oh, man. Well, everyone out there, please make sure that you Take a listen to Toni Kennedy. Check out What's Poppin' Penny. Please make sure that you try to continue to just elevate that sense of hope and kindness. And overall, imagine yourself entering into a season of beautiful healing and smoothness and self compassion. Try to remember all the different lessons that we learned today as you incorporate into yourself, to others, and especially to children. Have a great day.

Sandy Kovach  [00:33:15]:
Thanks for listening. We love your feedback in the way of a rating or review or drop us a note at imagine yourself podcast.com or on social media. All the links will be in the show notes as well as links to Toni Kennedy's social media and podcast. Until next time Women we have something new to imagine. Please take care of yourself, and God bless