The Life with Lisa Show

Chicken Soup for the Soul: Power Moms

BY: Lisa Bradshaw

The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles than in growing with them.
~Bernard M. Birch

I could not have known when I was starting my Internet company, in order to supplement my husband's income and to stay at home with our four-year-old son, that a year later I would be a thirty-two-year-old widow and a single mom finding my way through an abyss of grief and recovery that seemed impossible to bridge much of the time.

After a year-long illness, my husband of nearly eleven years died and I was left with the agonizing reality that the two-person team that once brought this family through all things good and bad, had been reduced to just me. I'd met my husband, Wesley, when I was only eight years old and I couldn't remember my life without him in it. Wesley trusted that I would take care of our son and myself after he died, but facing life without him was arduous and lonely. Our son was counting on me to pull us both through.

Over the next several months, I learned to delegate responsibilities and concentrated on my son and rebuilding our life. There was nothing to juggle in the first two years after my husband died because I didn't allow chaos in our lives. I worked when I could and when I couldn't -- I didn't. There was no negotiating what was needed of me. My son needed me and I needed him. Sales decreased in those early years of rebuilding my personal life but never to a level where the business wasn't profitable. Somehow, everything managed with and without me, with the care and extraordinary help of the quality people I had in place.

Within five years of starting my Internet company, I had been a guest on The Rachel Ray Show and the Oprah & Friends radio show. Numerous placements in national magazines sang the praises of our children's decorative products and our story, and our products were placed as set decoration on hit national television shows. It was then that I decided to make a change in my life and close my business, but not without a plan to better our lives and continue our ever evolving story.

When my son was nearing ten years old, I started to feel like I needed to show him more of the world outside of my home office and teach him that some people actually go to work to earn a living. I spent the first ten years of my son's life being there for him at every turn, every hour of every day. I loved this about our life and so did he. Now it was time to refresh my goals, achieve new dreams and bring him along as I did it.

I had been wanting to do a radio show for several months. I had developed an interest after being interviewed when my first book was released, and I was encouraged by a radio producer to move forward with my efforts. I told myself I would have a show by December 2007, within six months of setting the goal. By January of the following year I had done nothing to work toward that goal, so in February I finally got with it, produced a demo CD, and got a meeting with the general manager of seven radio stations in my area. After an hour-long meeting, I was given the opportunity to produce The Life with Lisa Show and was offered an additional job that I would be creating as the Community Service Coordinator for all seven stations.

I committed to part-time and made sure it was known that I would only work twenty hours a week on the community service aspect of my job and that my son was my first priority. I would still pick him up every day after school and be at every school and athletic event. And when summer came, we would need to create a new schedule that would accommodate my son's schedule. My new boss understood that I'd made promises to my son's dad to take care of him for both of us, and being the mom and the dad and doing it well was a full-time experience that I wouldn't trade for any job or opportunity. It is my life and I am grateful for all that it brings me every day.

One of the greatest benefits of my new venture is that it belongs to both of us. My son is involved in the community aspect of my work, learning to reach out to those in need who can benefit from our help. He enjoys coming to my office and often sits in the studio quietly listening as I interview guests and conduct my show live.

He recently asked me, "Mom, how did you get your radio show?"

"I paid attention," I told him.

"To what?" he asked.

"To life," I answered.

He smiled big. I love it when he smiles big.

I always tell my son that we can ask any question. We have the right to ask for anything, and it's best to have earned the right to ask the question. When I asked for my radio show, I knew I had lived enough life and worked through enough adversity and triumph to have earned a show I wanted to produce and call The Life with Lisa Show. The station I asked to air my show also had the right to say no, but they didn't. They said yes. And had they said no, I would've asked someone else, because I knew what I had to say was worth asking for.

In the past decade of my life I have been a wife and mother, a cancer survivor, an author, an entrepreneur and a widow. I have met countless survivors like myself, both in illness and in life, and my message has remained the same and is borrowed from Henry Ford: "Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right."

This holds true in all areas of life and I consider this statement and its possibilities every day. Whether facing a life threatening illness, changing careers at middle age, going on a first date after fifteen years of thinking I'd never have to, or being enlightened by my child who I hope to inspire each day, there is possibility at every turn. I've always believed in finding the balance between what I have lost and what I can gain from the experience of life. And if I help others along my own journey, then it's the right life.

http://www.beliefnet.com/Inspiration/Chicken-Soup-For-The-Soul/2010/02/The-Life-with-Lisa-Show.aspx?source=NEWSLETTER&nlsource=49&ppc=&utm_campaign=DIBSoup&utm_source=NL&utm_medium=newsletter