🎧 A $245k Inheritance Getting In Deep In Debt And Finding Hope Amid Chaos | Clever Girl Finance

hey Molly hi I'm so excited to be here I just feel like I mean I feel like we're like old friends I mean I on my podcast like I like seven years ago or something like that I know I know and time time has flown so quickly but I am so excited to have you back here on the clever girls no podcast you've been on the podcast twice already you were in my book clever girl finance my first book you shared your incred story of paying off $37,000 of of debt and now you are back as a special guest and you have just written your own book called if I don't laugh I'll cry and I can't wait to talk about your book but before we dive in please tell everybody who you are and what you do yes hi well I'm so happy to be back I'm just honored we got to have you back because you've done a lot since the last time you were on my show yes so my name is Molly Stillman and I have been in the content creation writing space for 20 years almost and I have written a Blog for about that time and I host a podcast called can I laugh on your shoulder formerly known I call the podcast formerly known as business with purpose I rebranded it love it year ago and it's called can I laugh on your shoulder and I also travel and speak at churches and conferences and things like that and as you mentioned yes my first book comes out in March March 26 2024 yeah we're we're just we're days feels like weeks away and I'm yes so excited and it's it yeah I I could not be more I just am like I have all this nervous energy because I'm so excited well I'm so excited for you congratulations again and the full title of your book is called if I don't laugh I'll cry how death debt and comedy Le led to a life of Faith farming and forgetting what I came into this room for and that title sounds very light-hearted and fun but at the same time it's very deep and just like there's it's it's a loaded title and I I'm just looking forward to having this conversation with you so I want to start from the beginning and for those of you who are new to the podcast or new to learning who Molly is she like I mentioned she's been on the podcast twice she was on episode 47 where you came on to share your Deb story and then you came back on episode 114 to talk about the emotions that came from being in debt and how you navigated those emotions during your debt free Journey but as it relates to your book because this is like your full end to endend from basically childhood to where you are now and everything that happened in between and everything we don't know about you outside of that Deb story you shared with us yeah so can you you share more about one of the things you talk about in your book is losing your mom at a very young age and I'd love for you to talk more about just that emotional journey of losing your mom and the impact it had on your life and the choices you made afterwards yeah so to to catch people up so my mom was an Army Nurse during the Vietnam war and you might say well what relevance does that have and it's everything and partly because you know for for people that aren't familiar Vietnam veterans came home to a very different America than we live in today it was just a a a deeply deeply divided country in as far as the war was concerned not that we aren't still divided over other things today but the military came home not to you know brass bands and welcome home signs or things like that the military was deemed baby killers and they were Paras and it was just a very different time we didn't you know have a term for PTSD and so you had all of these men and women coming home from war with severe PTSD and they weren't given the tools to deal with it and you know so my mom returned from Vietnam you know suffering from PTSD and alcoholism and she was doing drugs and so many different things and you know the first few years after she got home from Vietnam she didn't even tell her therapist that she had been to Vietnam like That's How Deeply was burying this reality and fast forward you know a couple of decades and I was born or actually just a decade and I was born in 1985 and in the fall of 1994 we were renovating we lived in a really old house like hundredy old house and if anybody that's ever lived or grown up in an old house something always has to be fixed or yes and so we had one bathroom in the whole house like one full bathroom one shower and you know I was getting older and we had a foster sister and let's just say two adults and a tweenager and a teenager sharing one it was just not happening so in any event they were renovating one of the smaller rooms to be another primary bathroom and in that process some of the hundred year old dust from the walls the horse hair insulation there was like dead birds in the walls all of that got into my mom's lungs and essentially because she had been exposed to high levels of Agent Orange the chemical agent Agent Orange in Vietnam her immune system was essentially vulnerable and unlocked to something that could come in and so this this dust got in the walls and within 24 hours she was in ICU on a ventilator and that began a very long journey of dealing with an extremely rare chronic illness that my mom had been diagnosed with and it all stemmed back from her service in Vietnam and it you know for anybody that's ever dealt with chronic illness or an ill parent it is it it takes everything from you and there were parts that I was fully aware of and then there was also parts of it that my parents really you know For Better or For Worse chose to keep from me you know she had been given initially a a a kind of a life sentence of about two years and so the disease was a just rare you know people always ask like what was it called it had a name that was really long only about four other people in the world have ever been diagnosed with anything similar but it was kind of a story autoimmune disease things and you know so the the doctor said you probably have about two years my parents kept that information from me initially they just felt like it was not something that they that I should know and so we did our best to you know treat the symptoms as much as we could but it was you know I watched my active mom who had run marathons and was vibrant and healthy I watched her deteriorate from the age of nine until I was 17 fall my senior year of high school when ultimately she passed away from it and so that whole process of like if you think about from the age of nine to 17 like these are vital years yeah you have a lot going on in those years as a young woman yeah yeah and so it it was just it was just a lot I just was carrying so much emotionally and so then by the time she passed away it just was really the straw that broke the camel's back as far as my emotional mental spiritual wellbeing however I I didn't have the tools the resources to deal with it nobody said you know what maybe you should go see a counselor or you know it's amazing how far we've come in the mental health and dealing wi