From Loss To Legacy

Grief can stop you in your tracks—or it can become the ground where purpose takes root. We welcome Debbie Simmons, a “legacy architect” whose life moved from devastating loss to intentional impact, as she shares how she traded the unanswerable why for the empowering how and designed a life that serves families for generations.

Debbie tells the story of losing her quadruplets at 26 weeks and the two questions that reshaped everything: how do I survive, and later, how do I thrive. That shift led to adopting nine children from sibling groups and learning trauma-informed parenting the hard, human way. She explains why a child in crisis isn’t the problem but is having a problem, and how our calm presence becomes the medicine that nervous systems seek. Along the way, we talk about the unsung kindness that holds families together—meals on the porch, an hour of respite, and a foster family who prepared kids to trust new parents on day one.

We also dig into leadership. As founder and CEO of Anchor Point, Debbie builds a culture where extreme grace meets clear accountability. Assumptions are challenged, curiosity leads hard conversations, and the default posture is we are for each other. She walks us through Anchor Point’s ecosystem—medical clinic support for unexpected pregnancy, case management, parenting education, a maternity home for homeless moms, and therapeutic camps for adoptive families—showing how practical tools and stable relationships lift the tide of parenting across a community.

If you’re navigating loss, adoption, team dynamics, or the desire to build something that lasts, this conversation offers a blueprint: lead yourself first, ask better questions, accept help, and keep taking the next best step. Subscribe, share this episode with someone who needs hope today, and leave a review to help more listeners find these stories of grace at work.

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Chapters

• 1:28 Meet Debbie: From Loss To Leadership
• 4:22 The Quadruplets And The Question Of Why
• 9:40 From Why To How: Survive And Thrive
• 13:29 Adoption Journey And Building A Family
• 18:10 Kindness That Makes Families Stronger
• 22:53 Founding Anchor Point
• 27:00 What Anchor Point Does
• 30:00 Parenting Through Trauma With Grace
• 34:20 Leading Teams With Extreme Grace
• 39:00 Modeling Kindness In Everyday Conflicts

Transcript

Meet Debbie: From Loss To Leadership

SPEAKER_00 1:27

Hey, hello, and welcome everybody. Thank you for joining us on the Kindness Matters podcast. As always, I am your host, Mike Rathbun, and um I I sincerely thank you from the bottom of my heart for because you you made a choice, right? You chose to spend 30 minutes or so of your time, your valuable time, um, listening to us here on this podcast. And I appreciate you and I appreciate uh that act, that choice. Um, I have such an amazing show for you guys today. Uh, my guest today is Debbie Simmons. She's the legacy architect designing designing legacies worth living and leaving. She's a CEO, author, and adoptive mom of nine. We're gonna talk about that. Debbie's collin was uh was forged in the fire of loss. After losing her quadruplets, she chose to take the next best step, uh, transforming grief into a life of clarity, purpose, and impact. She is the founder and CEO of Anchor Point, a multi-division nonprofit equipping families to heal, grow, and thrive. As the legacy architect, Debbie equips executives, entrepreneurs, and business builders to design organizations that reflect their deepest values, blueprints that create lasting impact and outlive them. Welcome to the show, Debbie. Thank you so much for being on.

SPEAKER_03 3:07

Hey, super excited to be here with you guys.

SPEAKER_00 3:10

Oh, it's are you are you in you're in Texas, right?

SPEAKER_03 3:15

Yes, uh-huh. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:17

Yeah. Well, I'm sure you're warmer than we are, but that's okay. It doesn't matter. This is what we signed up for, right? We moved to Minnesota, this is what we get.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:26

Um I it it's just it's been such a ride, and and your new year was good.

SPEAKER_03 3:36

Yeah, it was absolutely great, and I'm glad to get 2026 kicked up.

SPEAKER_00 3:41

Let's do it. Let's do it. Yeah, I know I slipped through it. The new year, not 2026. Um and your story is is so it's got everything. It it could be a movie, right? I mean, you've got tragedy, you've got triumph, you've got resurrection, you've got all of these components to your story. Um and it's the hardest one, so I'm gonna want to get it out of the way first. You lost quadruplets, is that correct?

SPEAKER_03 4:12

Yes, I did, yes, in 1995. It's been a while.

The Quadruplets And The Question Of Why

SPEAKER_00 4:17

95. Okay. Um how that I don't know. I I feel weird asking, but I I feel like I want to know what happened.

SPEAKER_03 4:28

Sure, that's a great question. Um, and if you go back just a little bit before that, you know, I think if you want kind of the whole story, is you know, people we all have kind of dreams and aspirations. And mine as a younger person was that I wanted to be this young grandma. And so I had this in my mind, and you know, I'm a go-getter, so you know, I knew I had to find a guy, fall in love, get married, have children, and then I could be a young grandma, right? Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I went to college, it started perfect, found the guy, fell in love, did get my degree, and I also got married. And then we struggled with, interestingly enough, infertility for years and years and years. And this was a real challenge for me because it was it was me that had the issues. And so my worth as a person and uh do I value myself? I mean, I just remember struggling with that as the years passed by, right? And ultimately we did get pregnant, which was wonderful. We were originally diagnosed with twins, and then um my body started to try and miscarry, and they were able to get that under control. And then lo and behold, we find out there's not two, there's four. So there was quads. And in that process, what we know is in a high-risk pregnancy, every day it's pretty amazing to make it to the next day.

SPEAKER_02 6:01

Yeah.

From Why To How: Survive And Thrive

SPEAKER_03 6:01

And our goal became to get them to 30 weeks. Uh, and we were, I was at about 13, 14 weeks at that point. So we set out and knew and just super grateful that we could make it to the next day and make it to the next day, and make it to the next day. And at around 26 weeks, uh I found myself kind of standing in water, which one of the baby sacks had ruptured. So then they go, you gotta go to the hospital, and now you can stay in the hospital in a bed until they get here. And so my goal was, okay, I got four more weeks, get in that bed and just stay there. Um, but the next morning, contractions came. And when they did, one of the babies had literally stuck a hand through my stitched cervix. It was kind of waving to the world, hello, it's time. I'm coming. There's no putting it back. And you know, for me, for me, I was like, oh God, this is too early. I can't deal with this. Uh, put this back, forget it ever happened, you know, and you try and go into that, uh, and the doctor's like, no, you have to deliver. And I was like, just closed my eyes and breathed and kind of was like, I'll just have to figure my way. And so we did that. And little Zach arrived, and they placed him in my arms because at that point, technology really was not around that could save them. Today, probably a different story. But they placed him in my arms and I was just able to hold him and love him as he drifted into eternity. And then we got to the next question. And the next question was: would my body reject the other ones or would I be able to carry them? We waited hours and I got sicker and sicker, and my blood work was a mess. And the doctor just walked in, put her hand on my shoulder, and said, You have to induce the other ones. You're getting too sick. And I looked up at her, just like, is there any way around this? I don't want to do this. That's beautiful. Um, yeah. And she's like, no. And I breathed again and resolved again. And a little bit later, Josh, Nate, and Chris arrived on the scenes each individually, and they placed them in my arms. And I held them and loved them and rocked them until they drifted into eternity. And then you sit, empty arms, broken hearts, my dream of being a young grandma kind of gone. And you're like, how do I figure my way through this? And so that's where I sat. Um, and where I landed. And um for me, I didn't really know any other way through that other than to trust God with the situation I sat in. I I tried to think of other ways and I really couldn't. And here the thing that God taught me in all of this, which has served me so well since then, is um, you know, I would have liked uh, I guess when we all struggle, we all end up in this kind of concept of uh why? Why me, why now, why this? And why is a very inward-looking question. And I, of course, was asking that, and God was like, give me your why. I need you to give me that question and trust me with it. And I'm like, nope, I like that question and I want an answer to it. And you, you know, and the reason we cling to it so tightly is because it's all I have left. The boys are gone, I've lost, you know, uh my dream is gone. At least if you can give me a good answer to why, then I feel like I can figure my way. Um, and he was like, You got to give me the the question. And I finally said, Okay, I'll give you the question, but what do I do? I don't know how to figure my way through this. And he said, Ask a different question. And the question was, how do I survive? How do I survive? And what I've learned is the answer to why this side of heaven will never satisfy. Because as soon as I would have gotten the answer, my next question would be, why? That's not good enough.

SPEAKER_00 10:20

You'd be like a two-year-old, why? Why?

SPEAKER_03 10:23

And it would, it's very negative and it gets me stuck. And it's like this tornado that just goes down and down and down. Oh, how do I survive? Is one where I can figure out a next best step and I can learn to take it and let him open or shut doors and guide me in that. And then that becomes how do I thrive after I've walked through some survival. And that has been those three kind of giving up the why, the how do I, how do I survive, how do I thrive? Those are the questions that have gotten me through the years. And I still use those today when I'm kind of shocked or taken aback by a situation and I'm like, why? I'm like, okay, this isn't gonna get me anywhere. If I can, if I can learn to let that go sooner, then I can get to these other questions and I can figure my way. And so that is that is the process um and the story of losing children and figuring my way through that.

SPEAKER_00 11:24

Yeah. I I I I can't, I can't even imagine that that kind of loss. We've I mean, we all deal with loss, right? If you spend more than a couple of years on lying on earth, you're gonna experience loss, but just that many that soon, all at one time, roughly. I I I can't imagine it. And and yeah, God is good, right?

SPEAKER_03 11:49

Yeah, he is well, I would say this, you know, uh, I don't wish that on anyone, okay, but I will tell you that it has been uh trusting God with it has been a moment that has defined me. Um, you know, and our legacies are generally born out of our pain, right? And so uh this this is part of that. So um I can look back and say I'm very grateful to have been in that experience. And as difficult as it is, uh seeing my boys will come again in what is relatively a short time while we think it seems like eternity while we're sitting here, right? Um so I trust that and their legacy gets to live on in the life that I lead now.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

So yeah, yeah. So uh and in your intro, we talked about how you decided to take the next best step. That led to nine children? Was that your next best step? Well, I okay, now I need to adopt nine kids.

Adoption Journey And Building A Family

SPEAKER_03 12:53

No, no, but you know, I like to encourage people, anybody that's struggling with anything, you know, I'm not a superwoman. You know, in the middle of losing the boys and trying to figure my way, some days the next best step might look like pulling the cover off of my head, getting up, brushing my teeth, walking around and getting back in the bed. And that was substantial, right? And then you get bigger and better, and you continue to grow and you can get back to doing amazing things. So, part of for us, we did uh think about and even try to start getting uh working on getting pregnant again, and I couldn't handle it. So we put that off for a while because my body was just exhausted, my mind physically, all that good stuff after all that. Um, as we went along in our life, about eight years later, I had left my engineering career, went into seminary, and was working on church staff. And my husband and I both had incomes, which was very unusual by that point. Uh so we both had incomes. And I told him, I said, hey, look, you know, if we're gonna have children, then maybe we need to consider trying to get pregnant again. Yeah, because I'm getting older, right? And um, and if not, you know, would what about this idea of adoption? Would we ever consider that? And we had never really sat down and talked about it. So we started talking about it. And, you know, a lot of people have never, they're curious about it and would be open to do it, but they don't know how to work their way through it. So um, you know, we faced questions like, could we love children that weren't our own blood? You know, and stuff like that. And I'm and I'm looking at my husband, I go, you know what? I love you and you're not my own blood. So God must be able to work that out, you know, or can we handle children with difficult backgrounds? And ultimately we just felt like God was asking us to be open to considering that. And so we began exploring that, knowing that we could invest all this money in fertility treatments and end up with nothing, or we could spend the rest of our life investing money in children that we got through adoption. Um, and we just kind of made our way through that and ultimately we have have adopted three different times sibling groups of five, and then a sibling group of two and a sibling group of two. Um, and I just got my youngest one out of the house last week.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

It's better sweet, isn't it?

SPEAKER_03 15:24

I mean, it's like, oh yay, oh yeah, no, I'm like after nine, I'm like, praise the Lord, we made it.

SPEAKER_00 15:34

I always thought that that last one though was was like, now what? Right? Yeah. I mean, you probably got it all figured out because that's the kind of person that you are, but for me to be like, now what?

SPEAKER_03 15:48

We're working on it, we're trying to figure that out. We did kind of look at each other and go, what do we do now? And so we're we're in the process. I mean, everybody goes through this.

SPEAKER_00 15:57

Um well, there's grandbabies.

SPEAKER_03 16:00

Yeah, and ours has just been such a long time. So it's like, wow, it's like this is the first time in forever I'm not had to have to be a parent with a kid in the house. But the grandbabies do come, and uh I love grandbabies and they get to come a lot, so that's a good thing.

SPEAKER_00 16:18

Yeah. So talk to me a little bit, um, because this is a show about kindness. What did kindness look like in your adoption journey as you were moving through that? What did you see any of that? Was there it was there, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_03 16:38

Well, here's what I found absolutely amazing in my adoption journey. My first sibling group of five. Remember, we we haven't I love children. I'm a children's pastor at the time, all this good stuff. I love being with kids. Um and my of my first five, four of them were in the same foster home. And that woman and her husband totally blessed us by the fact that they had so lovingly cared for these children and prepared them to be ready to go to a permanent family. When my children walked in the first day and met me, and it was kind of just a meet and greet type thing, they walked in with presents and they walked in calling us mom and dad. Do you know how unusual that is? Um, and they were in. I mean, they were like, and Scott and I are looking at each other going, man, if we weren't committed, we are now.

SPEAKER_00 17:45

But yeah, they're already calling us mom and dad. We might as well go with it.

Kindness That Makes Families Stronger

SPEAKER_03 17:49

Right, we're in. But that act of that that woman and her husband to take care of these kids and to do the hard work of helping these kids walk through a lot of their issues and to be open and prepared for going into a new home was such a blessing. And it's interesting because one of their uh the fifth child in that five was in a therapeutic home. She got a little bit from this lady because she would engage with her periodically, but she was nowhere near as prepared. And it was really hard for her. So it was such a blessing for them to love these children and to love my children and to love us and prepare them, um, that it was absolutely amazing. And then, you know, for my kids themselves to have so much grace with us as we learn how to parent them. Um, uh, you know, I'm always amazed by that. And these children, you know, taught me so much. And, you know, I like to say that children uh identify areas of woundedness that we need healing in. And God gave me nine because I had a lot of work to do. And so um, they have helped me become the person that God wants me to be so that I can lead and I can do the things that He's called me to do. And, you know, my kids have graciously been teachers of me in that. But we've had people that have come along all kinds of ways, um, and you know, doing acts of kindness, um, whether it was bringing a meal or a lot of them would come in and help babysit for me just to give us a break. Um, you see all those kinds of just acts of kindness um, you know, that are a super blessing to families as they're growing. And that those things happen all the time.

SPEAKER_00 19:55

Yeah. And you talk about just uh the bringing in the meals and When you're going through that kind of change in your life, you know, y you went from a period where you thought all of your dreams are over, you know, o of having a big family and being a young grandma and and what have you, um, to now you've got well, not at the time, not all at once, but eventually you had nine kids. And and in those moments, in that period of change, um, the smallest acts of kindness can really be lifesavers, can't they?

SPEAKER_03 20:35

Yeah. Oh yeah. They're definite. I mean, the people that would come over and just let me walk outside and become a good mom again.

SPEAKER_00 20:43

It sounds like a small thing, but it's really not.

SPEAKER_03 20:46

Yeah. And uh an interesting thing, and that I think it would help all of us is, you know, a lot of times when families bring in children in their homes from CPS or foster care, a lot of times those families don't get a lot of loving and kindness. Um, because we just don't we think, oh, well, they, you know, they brought it on, they brought it on themselves, therefore they're good. And I'm like, are you kidding me? I got five and I'm going, I have, I'm in over my head. I gotta figure my way out of this. And, you know, so the people who still stepped in and were blessings um just made that extra special because a lot of times we don't take care of adoptive families the way we do newborns, our infant adoptions, even. Um, and that's something to just remember is that even if I'm adopting a 15-year-old, I still it's a major transition in our lives that we have to go through. So anything that we can do to reach out to those families is truly a blessing for them. And a lot of times they're adopting children like that. They come with trauma backgrounds, and trauma is hard on all of us. And when those kids feel safe in our homes, then they will begin to start to deal with some of their trauma histories. And when they do, they take it out on new adoptive mom, usually, um, because she's the safest place and she's generally the caregiver. And so, you know, we can really bless these families by providing respite care or time uh or a meal or just coming, just uh we had people that just hung out with us. You know, when you got seven or eight or nine of us, and another person coming over to play games with us just put other good, healthy adults in my kids' lives. That was, you know, that was very powerful for us from that standpoint.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

So you're raising all these kids and you think I'm just not busy enough. I need to start anon.

SPEAKER_03 22:55

Well, actually, it's a little more complicated than that. I've always felt, yeah, I've always felt like I was not just meant to be, God had not just called me to be a stay-at-home mom. I love stay-at-home moms, and I believe that's a full-time occupation and honor that, but I really felt like God was telling me to do something different. So for many years, I was able to work out of my home and work for Chuck Coulson's organization, Prison Fellowship. And I ran three or four states of prison ministry, and that is what I was doing at the time. And God just began to plant this seed in me of starting Anchor Point. And I was like, no, I'm not really interested. Um, you've got the wrong girl. Uh, I work in full-time ministry, I have a full-time mission field in my house. Go somewhere else. Cause I'm like, this is gonna be too much. And um I God and I wrestle. If you know anything about God, you know that generally if you're wrestling, you don't win. But I'm wrestling thinking maybe I have a better shot than anybody else, you know, in the Bible. But I'm wrestling and I um God's like, he managed to allow my job to go away in about a week. And it was very, very painful. And um I remember after the dust kind of settled, uh, we had set we had seven kids at the time. Uh, God was like, okay, now do you have time? And I was like, yes, I'll do whatever you say. And so this, but if you look at if you look at my history, all our lives are not straight. They're all this messy little weave, right? Okay, but if I have a love from for children from the very beginning, and I lose the boys, and I love life and I want families to be successful, Anchor Point is just a natural extension of that. Would I do that on my own accord? No, because I'm busy. But God's like, no, this needs to happen. And so it is a real privilege, you know, it's 15 years old now, but it's a real privilege that it impacts lives, thousands of lives, and it'll be here long after I'm gone if we make sure it's set up right and the foundations are right and we're doing all of that. Um, so it's fun to think that I could be in heaven and I could still see Anchor Point having impact. So God put God just started putting this in my life, this thought, it just wouldn't go away. And he didn't relent. And finally I said, okay. And so I'm like, I don't know how we're gonna do it. I don't know how we're gonna afford it. I don't know how I I don't know any of those answers.

SPEAKER_01 25:48

Right.

SPEAKER_03 25:49

But guess what I ask? How do I figure this out? I have no idea.

SPEAKER_01 25:56

How?

SPEAKER_03 25:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:58

All different questions.

SPEAKER_03 25:59

The why was two years of why me, why this. But you know, how do I survive this? How do I figure my way through this? You're a God of wisdom, give it to me. And then, you know, now the question is, you know, obviously over the years we've always asked, how do I thrive? And then, you know, how do we make it such that it can it can continue even without me as a CEO one day? Um, that is the important kind of next step is to prepare it for that. And we're doing that. And I'm so proud of the staff as they're learning and growing um and expanding what we're doing. And that's a, you know, that's a it's been a I don't regret it, but that two years of struggling with it, I put up the best I could and didn't win. So God, God, God really is the one that planted that and is the one that's brought that to fruition. I just got to be part of the journey of that.

SPEAKER_00 26:53

Yeah. So for my listeners who might not know, what is Anchor Point exactly?

What Anchor Point Does

SPEAKER_03 26:59

Sure. It is a nonprofit that really focuses on giving families hope. And we kind of start with from the very moment that a young lady might find out she's pregnant and she doesn't know what to do, and she's struggling with that. So we start with our medical clinic. We have case management that works alongside them to go, okay, how are you doing? What's working, what's not working, here's your next step. Let's figure your way. Baby mom, baby dad, all everybody's involved in that. Parenting, education, anything you can think of to help that family um move through this new phase of life that they're trying to figure out and to be successful. And, you know, that comes with you and I also bring a lot of our own baggage to stuff, right? So these are people that are generally have trauma backgrounds, stuff in their histories that we've got to work with to get them prepared to be the best parent that they can be. We have a maternity home for girls that are homeless and pregnant and need to figure their way and then get set up. And then usually that goes about 18, 18 to 20 months to get them out on their own where they can sustain uh both the baby and themselves and be successful. And then we just uh we do therapeutic camps for families who have adopted um to help them understand um this child that God has given them to love and how the trauma may be causing tension and challenges and how we can kind of work through that. Um, so it really is, I just like to think of it as it's a way to lift the tide of parenting um so that we are stronger as a community and as uh individuals within that community.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

Yeah, and that's so needed, I think, in this world today, because you know, we always say, well, parenting doesn't come with a guidebook or a handbook. But in a way, you guys are kind of doing that, aren't you?

Parenting Through Trauma With Grace

SPEAKER_03 28:55

Well, and we add something to that. We say that uh, you know, that kids don't come with a handbook, but the kids are the handbook. And so the kids will teach us if we know how to connect with the child. And so that is really what we're working on doing is teaching those parents um how we don't have to like when I have a child that's losing it, you know, generally I want to see that child as the problem. But that that child's not the problem. The child is having his own problem. And I think it feels very personal, which means I feel like it's an attack and it's not an attack. There's something in me that's getting lit up, and he's lit up. When I get lit up, he gets lit up more. I it's a very dangerous cycle, right? So I need to work on me so I can be fully healthy and be fully present to help this child figure through his strong emotions and the survival instincts or whatever that are kicking in. And by me being fully present, it means I can look in his eyes and I can say, I see your preciousness and I'm here, buddy, versus hearing cuss words or whatever's going off in the real world. But I can go, I can be there with you. And the reality is that, you know, as adults, we can't lead people where they need to go unless we've gone before them. So I need to be healthy to be able to lead this child and help them be healthy. And so that is that is the process, that's the sweet spot of being able to reach back and bring people along. Same thing goes for my staff. I can't take my staff places that I've never been. So I've got to go first and reach back and and bring them with me and raise them up to be successful.

SPEAKER_00 30:46

Yeah, I would that was gonna be kind of that's kind of was one of my other questions is how do you cultivate a a culture of kindness among your staff and your volunteers or your clients?

SPEAKER_03 31:00

Yeah, okay, that's a wonderful question. And I would say, hey, grace must rule the day. Okay, extreme grace. Um, and we have to know, we have to always have a mindset that we are always for each other. No matter what you do, we are still for you. So, I mean, there's been lots of times where I've told a staff person, hey, don't go home. I'm almost there, and we're gonna talk because the relationship with that person is way more important than anything we're trying to deal with, right? And so I want to walk into that with just a ton of grace and go, I need to ask good questions. I need to understand what's kind of going on, I need to see where there's a communication breakdown because most times issues arrive because there's a communication gap. Okay. Or we've assumed something, right? And we assumed wrong. Okay, that's the most dangerous form of communication. So when I get that staff member, I'm gonna go, hey, you really had a really strong reaction to this. Help me understand what's going on, because there must be something deeper that we gotta get to, you know, and sometimes they'll say, Well, you did this or you did that, da-da-da-da-da. And the thing is, is once the talking starts, we are able to then I'm able to go, oh no, that's not what I meant. I could see how it came across that way, but here is what was rolling around in my head, and this was kind of the assumption that they were making. And so let's get to a good space because at the end of the day, we are for each other and the world will come try and take the ministry out. It will come try and take relationships out, it will come try and take your family out. And so we have for me, true kind of kindness and graciousness with each other comes because we go, we're going to protect each other and what we have, and we're gonna work hard at making sure that if we need to have a challenging conversation, we're gonna have it with love and grace, and we're gonna figure our way forward because I am never going to assume that you are out to get me or hurt me or anything like that. I'm going to always assume that your heart is in the right place, you're trying to do the right things, and something just is off, and we got to figure that out. And I think, you know, in this world, if we could take that relationships with that way of relating with all of us, how powerful is that to creating a world that would be such a much more wonderful place, you know?

Leading Teams With Extreme Grace

SPEAKER_00 33:52

I was just gonna say, if we could apply that to everything in our world these days, um you know, politics, whatever. If we one didn't assume and two, we're open to have a real conversation without the yelling, without the screaming, just a this is what I heard you say. Oh, you didn't say that? Okay, thank you for you know uh the world would be such a better place.

SPEAKER_03 34:26

Anyway, um well, I will say it starts it starts with us, right? So I mean, the more you or I or any of your listeners do that, the more powerful our circles of influence become. And I what I would tell you is that my staff, my children, they're watching me. And how I choose to respond in those challenging situations, um, and how I walk through them, teach them how to do it, right? And how they can do it. And so, you know, and we always learn more by what we see than what we hear, right? And so, you know, I have children that lose it and they're they get mad at these girlfriends or whatever that we now got in our lives. And I'm like, you gotta have grace, you need to breathe and you need to calm down and you need to go into it. You know, could it be that there could be another perspective, you know, and stuff like that. And so helping them because they've watched us do it over the years is very, very powerful. Um, as a first step, right? Uh, we'd love to be able to change the world all at once, but we can certainly change our interactions for sure.

SPEAKER_00 35:43

Yeah, absolutely. Um, thank you so much for coming on the show today, Debbie. It this has been so uplifting. I feel uplifted. Um, and uh I'm going to have all of your links in the show notes, but I understand you have a free offer for our listeners today.

SPEAKER_03 36:04

Yeah, I love that. This can be my act of kindness. How about that? Uh there you go. Um, if they will just go to the website The Heart of Legacy, I have a book that's out called The Heart of Legacy. Um, and it is about how to live a faithful, focused, and fearless life. And it has more of my story in it, but it also deals with those questions of why and how to survive and how to thrive. And it gives you wonderful uh stories of Anchor Point's impact in there so you can see how it makes a difference. And I think it'd be a wonderful kind of next step for anyone who's just going, how can I take my life kind of to the next level? This is a great book, and it's absolutely free. Um, and I would love to bless your listeners with that.

SPEAKER_00 36:54

That's fantastic. That link will also be in the show notes. I I so appreciate your your life experience, Debbie, and and what you're doing uh for families. And um, thank you for blessing me with some of your time today.

SPEAKER_03 37:13

Yeah, my pleasure.

SPEAKER_00 37:16

Take care, and we will talk soon.

SPEAKER_01 37:19

It's time. We are time.

SPEAKER_00 37:25

Thank you so much for joining this episode of the Kindness Matters podcast. Are you with us that our guest, Debbie Dimens?