Healing After Loss with Loren Ridinger

*This transcript was auto-generated*

Loren Ridinger:

At the end of the four weeks, JR Picked me up at the airport, ultimately became my husband. And he said, if you don't go home right now and tell your dad you're not gonna do this, you're gonna become a version of yourself. You're never meant to be.

Kim:

That's probably the best piece of advice that anyone listening within earshot needs to hear.

Kim:

Okay, y'all. My guest today is a PAC powerhouse businesswoman who suffered the tragic loss of the sudden death of her husband. And she's turned her mess into her message with this powerful new memoir called I love the title of this. Scrambled or sunny side up? Living your best life after losing your greatest love. She is the Co founder and CEO of Market AmericaandShop.com. she is a champion for all women in business. And there is so much I could talk about, and we're going to talk about. So everybody please welcome Loren Riding.

Loren Ridinger:

Hi, Kim.

Kim:

Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the show. I love your book. There's a quote that means so much to me I want to talk about, but, girl, you have. How did you turn your mess into your message? Loren, you're a powerhouse of a person.

Loren Ridinger:

I just didn't have a choice. I mean, I really was put into a position where I really needed to figure out how I was gonna see sunshine again. The struggle was so real. I really lost my best friend. You know, some people are just married and go through the motion. Some people are married and they actually love each other. You know, Jer and I really loved each other. We had this, you know, unperfect but perfect for us type of marriage.

Loren Ridinger:

You know, unperfect as, you know, there's nothing that's perfect but worked for us. And I think that for me, I just never expected this to happen. I never expected to be here on my own without him. In a million years, I would have.

Kim:

Well, and this story is so powerful and incredible, but can we just start from the beginning a little bit? Tell me how you met him, this love of your life. How old were you? Like, give me the background, girl.

Loren Ridinger:

I was 18 when I met him. And I was working at. He was consulting for a company that did, like, you know, those as seen on tv, like the ad buster and things.

Kim:

Yeah, Love it.

Loren Ridinger:

It was many years ago in the late 80s. And I remember he walked into the office where I was an office assistant, and he said, you look like a tiger. And I thought, is this guy trying to hit on me? You know, and he was 18 years older than me. I had always dated the, you know, the jock from school. I just didn't understand, but I was intrigued by him. And I thought, yeah, I'm a tiger.

Kim:

Just talking to you.

Loren Ridinger:

Yeah, I can tell.

Kim:

He was right. He was right. You are a toad, tiger.

Loren Ridinger:

I remember that he took me out on my second date, and he took me to a. We pulled up at a cemetery, and I couldn't believe it. And I was like, what is going on? Am I dealing with a mass murderer? Am I going to make it out of this alive? And so he said, get out of the car. You know, and he's like. Started pacing up and down all the walkways between the gravestones. And I remember thinking, I'm never going to get out of here. What happened? Where did I miss this? And he said, pick any one of these. Pick any one of these.

Loren Ridinger:

And he's like, what do they have in common? And they all have a birth date and they all have a death date, but what is in the middle? I said a line, and he said, that's the dash. And if you're going to be with me, we're going to do something with the dash. And I think I fell in love with him on my second date. You know, that was it for me. I just knew it. And he wasn't in love with me at all at the time, but I was in love with him. He was 18 years older and wiser and smarter. And I couldn't understand why he didn't madly fall in love with me because I was really cute at 18 and really kind, and I was mad for him.

Loren Ridinger:

And he just, you know, wasn't on the same program as I was at the time. You know, lots of girlfriends. He was cleaning up a former marriage. And he was like, you know, I'm trying to sort my things out. I'm not on the same time zone as you, but when I get there, I'm gonna get there. And I didn't understand that. My mom had told me, you know, not everything happens on your time zone, Loren. Not everything can happen.

Loren Ridinger:

And I didn't get that. Cause most people are just like, okay, well, if you're gonna have all these other girlfriends, I'm outta here. But I was patient. And I waited until I knew he would fall madly in love with me. And he did. And we had this incredible love affair for 36 years. And we spent our life doing something with the dash and helping other people. And for J.R.

Loren Ridinger:

you know, I never really. In all the years that we were together and all the years, you Know, we had very deep pillow talk. J.R. was, you know, the kind of guy that if you asked him what a definition was, he'd stop everything he was doing to give you the definition of how to explain what the definition of that word is, make you use it in a sentence back to make sure you understood what he described. He was a teacher, he was a coach, and he was mine. And because of it, I felt always so blessed. But, you know, some things I took advantage of. And so, like, scrambled or sunny side up? You know, every day he would wake up and say, should I have my egg scrambled or sunny side up? And, you know, for the first 10 years, you're kind of like, okay, scrambled, or today you have sunny side up.

Loren Ridinger:

But after 10 years, you're kind of like, I don't know, J.R. it's your eggs, your stomach. You're the one who's asking for it. I'm not eating when you are. Which do you want? And I didn't realize, instead of getting frustrated, I should have just said scrambled or sunny side up. And what we don't realize is that was actually his love language. Me demonstrating that I could help him, that I would help him pick out his clothes, pick at his shirt, pick at his shoes, tell him what to eat for breakfast.

Loren Ridinger:

And instead, I saw it sometimes as a burden. Later.

Kim:

Yes.

Loren Ridinger:

Amongst the busy life that we have, I thought, come on. And I didn't.

Kim:

After I was gonna say, when did you realize that it was no longer a burden? Because I think what happens is in life, we go through this, and we're living our daily lives, and we don't.

Loren Ridinger:

I'll be honest with you. You don't see it. You don't see it. You don't see it, Loren. I think I saw it as work, which is awful. And I didn't see it till afterwards, after I lost him. Cause I even actually gotten to the point where I trained people around us. Like, if he wakes up, first thing to do is ask him if he wants scrambled or sunny side up.

Loren Ridinger:

He' you know, you got to a programming place that you became more programmed rather than present. And I didn't understand that then. I thought I was to do what he wanted me to do in business because, you know, I worked for him. So it was like, I need to focus on the marketing of a new product, a launch of something that was happening. Whatever it was, I was more focused on not. Not realizing that that was all part of who we were. And I lost that.

Kim:

That was the good stuff. That was the good stuff.

Loren Ridinger:

It was the good stuff that you missed, though, you just see him as, like, I don't know. I eating right now, Babe. Well, I'll eat when you eat. No, no, you don't need to wait for me. I may not eat till one. I don't know. And so when. When I lost him, I realized that every day he asked me about that.

Loren Ridinger:

Every day would ask me to pick out his shirt or his shoes, which shoes he would match with his clothes, because that was a sign for him that I loved him. Even the morning I lost him, the hardest day of my life. When we were, you know, we were. We went on vacation. It was actually October 20, October 17, 2021. He had written me a letter, and he'd said, I want you to go away with me. We've given 30 years to this company. We're getting ready to celebrate our 30 year conference in a couple weeks, in a couple months.

Loren Ridinger:

I want you to go away with me, and let's start spending time for Loren and Jer. We've done this. We've done a great thing. We had nothing. We built into a giant company. We've helped thousands of people along the way. But we're on our last quarter. Because he was 18 years older, I think he was a little bit more panicked than me.

Loren Ridinger:

But I always knew that Jer would outlive me because his parents lived till 99, his grandmother lived till over 100. So everybody knew that, you know, I was the one with the brain aneurysm. I was the one with health issues that I thought for sure that, you know, I used to tell him, if you ever get remarried, I will haunt you from the grave. You know, I'd haunt you. I'll haunt you. I'll come back and get you.

Kim:

There's that tiger. There's that tiger there.

Loren Ridinger:

It's there. And so, you know, I wrote him back on October 18, 2021. And JR would leave things by my bedside, knowing I was busy during the day doing things that I do for our company, so would leave it there. And I wrote him back saying, let's go away. We'll pack our bags, but let's wait till August of 2022 till we get done with our 30th convention, and we'll leave the next week. And it was Ben and Jennifer Lopez's wedding, whose Jen is one of my best friends. So I was like, once we go to the wedding, we'll get right on a plane to Croatia, which is what we did. And three days in, I lost him.

Loren Ridinger:

And that was Our first trip without our children, without our grandkids. It was just a couple friends with us. We had not done that since long before COVID We had been working so hard.

Kim:

Wait a minute, wait a minute. He passed on vacation?

Loren Ridinger:

Yeah, we were on vacation. We were on vacation. He got on that plane. I'll never forget. I took a picture of us on that private plane. We were on a private plane. The plane had canceled before I found a plane to get us there. He thought it wasn't going to happen.

Loren Ridinger:

We arrived in Croatia, which was a place on his bucket list. And I didn't understand why. I was like, let's just go to Italy. Let's just go to France like we do. And he's like, no, I really want to go here. And I was like, okay. I didn't seem like I knew why, because nobody we knew had been there. And it was kind of an up and coming thing.

Loren Ridinger:

And I got this beautiful yacht I chartered out there. And when he arrived, he. I just remember he gave me this big hug. He said, I can't believe you made this happen. I can't believe with the convention and pulling off the 30th and, you know, we're gonna celebrate. And I said, when are we going home? He's like, it doesn't matter. We'll figure it out.

Kim:

Did you find him?

Loren Ridinger:

Yeah, I didn't find him. He was standing beside me, and I was on the only conference call. I was on the only conference call of the trip, and it was actually about our own yacht that we had at home. And I was on the phone arguing. It had been away for a year, and he hadn't seen it, and I wanted it to be perfect for him. There were things, Junior, that he never asked for much, ever, but there were things that were really important him. And I always made sure those things were lined up. So I was doing that, and he walked in and he saw me getting upset with the people on the phone.

Loren Ridinger:

And he's like, you know, trying to take my. My side and, you know, tell those people, do what I was doing, Take over the con. I said, don't get yourself upset. I shouldn't even be on this call right now. We should be enjoying ourselves. He's like, well, why can you get upset and I can't join you? I was like, I don't want you to. And then he got up and he walked past me and he went. And I was like, what is that? What is that noise? Why are you breathing like that? And he's like, stay here.

Loren Ridinger:

Stay here. And. And I didn't know if Jer had, like, acid reflux at night, and so sometimes he would, like, be gagging on acid reflux. And he always told me, it's fine. I'm fine. Stay put. I was in charge of our entire us in our life. But.

Kim:

Right, right, right. You were the boss.

Loren Ridinger:

But. But when Jared would say, stay here or do something, and he would do it in a tone, then he was a man, and you knew not to cross that line. So I gave him his moment. He walked away. That was his last breath. They found him at the bottom of the stairs, and he never. He wasn't breathing anymore. He.

Loren Ridinger:

Pulmonary embolism had killed him instantly. So he was, you know, struggling to breathe. And I didn't know that. I thought maybe, you know, they were trying to save him with cpr and, you know, anything I would have done wouldn't have saved him because I didn't know what I was dealing with. I didn't know that. He had just had an MRI eight weeks before on his knee. He had a knee injury from sports in school, and he was fine. And they told him the cartilage was missing, but he had the booster vaccine, and his tested again, and his test came back wonky, crazy.

Loren Ridinger:

And the doctor said, oh, it must have been something he ate. We can retest it when you guys are back. And I said, are you sure we shouldn't retest it before we go? Like, no, we can retest it. When you came back, that blood clot was hiding behind that damaged knee that needed to be repaired. And that's exactly where blood clots go, where the injury is. And I didn't know that, nor did he, but that morning he woke up and he said, you have made me the happiest person in the world. I just want you to know.

Kim:

Oh, my gosh, Loren.

Loren Ridinger:

I just want you to know that I want to let. I want to let you know that I love you more than life. And I say it all the time, but I want you to hear that you have made me the happiest person. And I said, why are you talking to me like that? Why are you saying things like that?

Kim:

Do you think he. Do you think he knew? Like, I mean, you know what I'm saying? Like, I. Because I'm a person of strong faith, and I believe the sign. I think God is always showing us.

Loren Ridinger:

There's no doubt in my mind that in 24 hours, the 48 hour period, he got some spiritual guide. I don't know what happens. We Don't. None of us know, because we're not. Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die to get there, right now.

Kim:

That is the truth, girl. That is the truth.

Loren Ridinger:

It's so true. It's true. And so he. I think he got a sign. He was very quiet. He was pondering over the water. And he said things to me, you know, in 36 years of being together, when you're with somebody who has nothing, and then we build everything, right? And you have this lifestyle that is hard to believe. You hard to believe that it's like.

Loren Ridinger:

And you've worked your whole life and you're in awe with what you built together. But you. You. You don't know where the appetite gets full when people are successful. Say that again.

Kim:

Say that again.

Loren Ridinger:

It's a very important. Because I always knew that Jared was hungry to help other people, that the scoreboard was never money anymore because you could only spend so much money. The scoreboard was, how many more can help in between now and then? And so he was always hungry. He was never full. And I used to say, when will you ever get full? When can we ever slow down? When can we, you know, not go so hard? And that. Are you happy? You know, are you really happy? Because you never know when somebody's so successful and they're going so hard. You know, we laugh. We have the most beautiful life.

Loren Ridinger:

We love each other. We have kids that we love. We travel together, we do things together. I mean, you know, we couldn't function without each other. But I never said, do I make you happy or do I make you happy? And. And that morning, he told me, I want to let you know you've made me the happiest person in the world, if you ever wonder. So I think he said it because he knew I needed to hear it in many ways.

Kim:

And that you'll always take with you. How did you so. So fast forward to today. Like, how did you get through? I know. Are you crying?

Loren Ridinger:

It's hard. No, no, it's okay. It's okay. It's life, right?

Kim:

Well, it is. And you're very. Yeah. And. And I will say, he is on the other side. He is in heaven, looking down, going, now look at her.

Loren Ridinger:

Right in this. I'm sure he's never leaves me. He's always around me. I can assure you that I come home and lights are flickering, going crazy. He's always around me to let me.

Kim:

Know, you know, I believe all of that.

Loren Ridinger:

I didn't at first, but I do now.

Kim:

You do. You do. You guys sound like you had a soul connection. It wasn't just, I love you, we're having kids, we're doing the thing.

Loren Ridinger:

No, by the way, it was always backwards. We started backwards. You know, we. I got pregnant first. We ended up together. We fell in love. I was mad for him. It took him time.

Loren Ridinger:

The journey had always been bumpy, even though we have been successful. I remember he had. Look, you know, when you have this moment in your life, I'm sure everybody has just one. And you may not have had it yet, and you may not recall yet, but I recall one time when I was laying in the bed about three years ago, right before he passed, and I was in my home in Connecticut, in Greenwich, with him. We had this beautiful estate he bought me for my birthday. And I told him, one day, I'm going to have grandchildren everywhere, and they're going to run all over this yard and ride their bikes through the house. And he's just visualized it. He saw it, he wanted it.

Loren Ridinger:

And he used to tell me, they're not only going to ride their bikes in the outside, they're going to ride them in the hallways. I want kids everywhere. And so we lived our life by that. And I remember I woke up in the middle of the night once, and my granddaughter was sleeping beside us in the middle, as she was, and he was holding her hand. And I looked over and he was holding my hand, but he was awake staring at me. And I was awake staring at him. But no words were ever exchanged. But it was a moment in time when you realize you're at the place, you finally reach where you need to be.

Loren Ridinger:

And you have these moments of your life that you remember going, wow. That was that moment that I knew you were you and I was me. And we were in the right place after all these years. And so I think when you get there and you have that epiphany, it's like you search your whole life. And I finally made it. I'm here. And so it was such a journey for me to even begin to overcome it and to get where I am today. The struggle was anger, and I was pissed off, and I was mad that everything was stolen from me.

Loren Ridinger:

I felt like, how could he leave me? I was mad at me that I didn't do things right then. I was mad at him. Then I had this big company that was still existing. And, you know, I envision all these people having this idea that I had to fill his shoes. And how was I going to do that. I felt like I was starting over again. And everything I had done before didn't really matter. It was what was going to be now.

Kim:

Yeah. It was loss.

Loren Ridinger:

Oh, I was lost. Lost. It was all of it. It was overwhelming. And, you know, I showed up and I felt like, you know, it was very hard, and I was angry, and I did not understand how grief can affect you, you know, in ways that you just. And so I started to write, and I wrote hundreds of pages in my phone. My girlfriend said to me, she's my best friend for so many years. She said, keep a journal.

Loren Ridinger:

And I thought, I don't write shit. I don't have time to write. I opened up my phone and I just started to write all the things I would remember that he would tell me. He used to say to me, lauren, we can do anything you want to do, and we don't have to do anything you don't want to do.

Kim:

Ooh, that's a. You know what? That's something to live by right there.

Loren Ridinger:

It's the way we lived.

Kim:

And so that's a freedom. That's a freedom that most people. And it's a freedom that they don't have. Yeah, but they can have it. They can have it. It's a mindset, right?

Loren Ridinger:

It's all a mindset. It's all a mindset. And he used to tell me all the time, you know, Loren, when I was 18 years old, we were riding around, he would go to these meetings, not like they are today with 20,000 people, when I speak in front of 20,000 people today. But back then, he would go to these meetings, and he would speak in front of 10, 15 people. He'd say, one day, there'll be the mall without walls. People will be to shop online and buy anything they want and need. And I thought, this guy's crazy. And people would look at him like he was crazy in the meeting.

Loren Ridinger:

So after the meeting, come out of there, he's like, we were great, right? You know, people are going to get it, Loren. There'll be the mall without walls. And I was like, I don't know if they get it, J.R. they didn't look like they got it. Because it doesn't matter what they understand. What matters is what do you believe? Do you think we can do it? Do you think we can do it? And I was like, yeah. He goes, okay, well, then you tell the meeting tomorrow. You hold the meeting tomorrow.

Loren Ridinger:

I said, I can't. I'm 18. I don't know how to do a meeting like that. I can't speak like you. You have 18 years on me. I can't speak like you. He said, if you believe, you'll do it. I said, well, I can't do it.

Loren Ridinger:

The whole way to San Antonio, I tried to figure out a way to break up with that guy. Got up there on that stage in front of seven to 10 people. And I fainted in front of everybody. And I said, when I looked down. When I looked up, he was looking down at me with all the people fanning me. I was horrified. And he said, get up. They turned the AC off.

Loren Ridinger:

Anybody would have fainted. You're going to be great in Houston tomorrow. I got in that car, was trembling. He didn't get in that car and say, you know what? You're right. Stick to driving. He didn't get in the car and said, get up. You're going to be great. You got to do it again.

Loren Ridinger:

And that was the first time in my life I ever had somebody believe in me.

Kim:

Yeah.

Loren Ridinger:

And then I believed in myself. And so I tried again. It took me eight years before I felt. Felt like I could ever really speak. But I practiced all the time until now. You know, of course, I speak in front of 10, 15, 20,000 people without a prom. I'm going next week to Asia. And, you know, we sold 20,000, 26,000 tickets.

Loren Ridinger:

I do that naturally. But it didn't happen without some belief.

Kim:

Right. And someone to believe in you. And you were so blessed to have that partner.

Loren Ridinger:

Yeah. And to flip that switch. So when I lost him, I lost my confidence. I lost who I was. I felt like I was at square one, starting over again. And then, you know, I had to rebuild myself up. Every day I'd have to wake up and look in the mirror, go, come on, Loren. You've done this.

Loren Ridinger:

You can do this. You got to get up. You got to go again. And you talk yourself through it, and you realize that you're the one. And I started tackling the hardest things first and getting those off my list and not making excuses and getting things done. And the things that weren't right in my life, I would cut them out immediately. And if I cut you out of my life, you gave me the scissors. You know, I was doing things that were big.

Kim:

I had to have you taken the mantle and continued on. Because you. You. I mean, he nailed you. You are a tiger. I can tell. Just talking to you for two minutes. I wanna go to lunch.

Kim:

Cause it looks like, you know, me, too. Have a good Time. Do you now, are you whole? Like, are you continuing to take the mantle up and help people?

Loren Ridinger:

I've been back at, at work since five months after Cher passed away, doing conventions, doing traveling all over the world. I haven't stopped. I've been leveling up and I've really poured myself into work and I've showed up because, you know, I knew that he was such, he would want me to do that, and he was such a big part of who they were that they needed that belief. And it's for the first time ever that I've gotten letters that say, hey, thank you for being there for us. Because now we know you're our leader and we'll follow you anywhere to the end of the world. I had to prove that to myself, that I could actually do that, you know, you couldn't just. You just can't be past these reins. I don't care what anybody says.

Loren Ridinger:

Everything. I doesn't matter that people loved me before in our business. Doesn't matter. I was a great speaker, a great coach, a great leader. Anything I had done prior to losing JR did not matter and did not count. The clock started over. Everything goes wipe clean. And I had to show myself up and show up more than ever before.

Kim:

It was a do over. It was start over. It was a brand new rediscovery.

Loren Ridinger:

People expect to. You have to understand, there's thousands of people that look to us and they expected to see, could she do it? And I did, and I had to. And I'm doing it every day. And that doesn't mean it doesn't come with that tears. You know, I can go on stage and say, okay, I'm gonna have a moment now, guys. And they just, you know, they wait with me, they go with me, they give me grace. I don't have the solution for grief. There's no way out, right? There's no way.

Loren Ridinger:

There's no way out. You will never. It never ends. It comes in different waves. A song could play. You know, you run into an old photo. Somebody sent me a picture this morning. I started sob when I saw it.

Loren Ridinger:

You know, every morning I wake up and say, good morning, honey. Let's go tackle the day together. You know, I do that, but, you know, it's two and a half years in now, almost three years in August. You know, people are like, are you going to date again? And I haven't thought about that yet, to be quite honest with you, because I'm still trying to learn to like me again. You know, I had to Go through all this. I had to go through this guilt of why didn't I see this clot? Why didn't I catch this? Why did he get the damn booster? You know, blaming myself when I didn't get the booster. Cause I got Covid so many times, and he didn't. He believed it worked.

Loren Ridinger:

And so I think I had to forgive myself for that. And then I had to find a.

Kim:

Way to like myself. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You had to go through.

Loren Ridinger:

And now. And now I'm just trying to say, you know what? I'm falling back in love with Loren.

Kim:

That's it. Which was what he would want you to do anyway. It is.

Loren Ridinger:

It is. Oh, hell, he would die if he knew I would even consider having a date.

Kim:

Well, and, you know, date yourself.

Loren Ridinger:

He would die.

Kim:

When you were younger, did you have that kind of belief in yourself, or were your parents that. Because there's a quote I want to read. Cause weren't you, like. Weren't you pushed to be a flight attendant? Was that the story?

Loren Ridinger:

Tell me your. Yeah, my dad was tough. He was so tough. I have this amazing mother who was incredible and loved me and worshiped me. My parents were married, but she was just not seen by him. To be honest, when I look at it now, it wasn't normal. You know, it was abnormal. She wasn't seen by him, but she spent her whole life trying to impress him.

Loren Ridinger:

And she died at 42, unfortunately, of a massive heart attack. And then, you know, my dad at 18 told me, look, you're going to be a flight attendant. I said, dad, that's impossible. I just met this new boyfriend. We're going to have this company. It's going to be the mall without walls. He's like, that's nonsense. That's for Disney World.

Loren Ridinger:

That's for Disneyland. You'll never have that type of life. Forget about it. Nobody's going to be buying products on the computer. They can't even afford it. And I thought, but, Dad, I want to do that. And he made me. Drove me in the car, and I was living at home at the time.

Loren Ridinger:

And he said, you're going to go apply to be an Eastern Airlines flight attendant. And I thought, jesus, I don't even know if you know who what Eastern was. It was an airlines flight. I do. I remember. And there was 300 people in line, Kim. I thought, why am I doing this? There's no way to call Uber, no way to be picked up. Can't call a friend.

Loren Ridinger:

He was waiting outside. I got up to the front of the line. I thought, how am I going to make sure I don't get this job? And she's like, well, what makes you want to fly the friendly skies? I can hear her today. And I was like, nothing. I don't want to fly the friendly skies. My dad made me come here. I don't want to do this. I don't want.

Loren Ridinger:

I'm going to start something called the World Wide Web. You know, it's my craziness. And she's like, oh, that's funny. And you're. You have beautiful lips and pretty legs. Back in the day, it was like a me too type of thing to be a flight attendant. It was, you know, you had a. You know, long legs and, you know, it was fine, but it wasn't for me.

Loren Ridinger:

And I said everything wrong. I don't want to fly the friendly skies. I'm afraid to fly. I don't even like Eastern. I like US Air. And I got the job a week later. I was devastated. I was devastated.

Loren Ridinger:

And I had to go to Atlanta and train in person with staying in this hotel room with four girls on the ground and train. And at the end of the four weeks, JR picked me up at the airport. Ultimately became my husband. And he said, if you don't go home right now and tell your dad you're not going to do this, you're going to become a version of yourself you never meant to be.

Kim:

Can I read the quote?

Loren Ridinger:

Yeah.

Kim:

It says, every night I called my mom in tears, feeling completely out of place. Jerrah, who I had started dating, became my lifeline. He encouraged me to quit saying, if you don't go home and tell your father you're not going to do this, you'll become a version of yourself you won't recognize.

Loren Ridinger:

That's exactly what you're saying.

Kim:

That's probably the best piece of advice that anyone listening within earshot needs to hear. If you don't go home and tell your father you're not going to do this, you'll become a version of yourself you won't recognize. That can be relayed to everybody's life. Loren.

Loren Ridinger:

Doesn't matter what age they are. And when I.

Kim:

Doesn't matter.

Loren Ridinger:

When I think about it now, sometimes I'll tell. I didn't tell that story till Junior died. Isn't that funny? It's funny. The story of me passing out. I never woke up one day and said, hey, babe, thanks for believing me and making me start speaking. Hey, babe, thanks for me going home to tell my dad. That, you know, I'm not going to be a flight attendant. We're going to go do the World Wide Web.

Loren Ridinger:

I never realized the impact it had on my life till after I lost him. And I had no confidence left. And then I started to tell the story. You know what I started to realize that there was people 20 years old, 30 years old, 40 years old, 50 years old, who moved into becoming somebody they never meant to be because of somebody pushing them to make them do something they didn't want to do.

Kim:

Come on.

Loren Ridinger:

And that. That hurt me. You know, it hurt me. And I didn't. I kept telling people, doesn't matter how old you are. You can change it today. And it was hard. And I think, you know, Serena wrote the forward of the book, and I was, you know, failing it at therapy during this grief.

Kim:

Oh, really?

Loren Ridinger:

Yeah. I was failing terribly. How so? I'd never been to a therapist, and every time I would speak to one, not that there was something wrong with them. There's something wrong with me.

Kim:

Yeah.

Loren Ridinger:

And, you know, you're talking to the therapist, and they're like, oh, well, you know, this is wrong, and you should do this. And I just felt like I couldn't get where I needed to be. I could. I'm a person probably. Like, you need tools. If you're going to help me, give me the tool. Give me the resources. I'm.

Kim:

Tell me how to work it.

Loren Ridinger:

I'm driven.

Kim:

Tell me how to work for that.

Loren Ridinger:

I'm driven. I'm passionate. I'll go for it. But I need the tools. I wasn't getting tools. And then the last therapist I had was like, well, you know, you could start dating again. I don't need to pay you to tell me that I understand what the future can be or cannot be. So Serena sent me a passage in the.

Kim:

That wasn't your problem. That was not your problem.

Loren Ridinger:

It wasn't my problem.

Kim:

So.

Loren Ridinger:

It wasn't really their fault, though. I just. I couldn't get.

Kim:

No, no, no. Right, right. It just.

Loren Ridinger:

A lot of times that's what I needed in here.

Kim:

Don't you think, Loren, sometimes in grief or loss, we think we've got to replace it with something.

Loren Ridinger:

Yep. We're always looking to replace it and then compare it, and it's not what I want to do.

Kim:

No, no.

Loren Ridinger:

It's not what you're supposed to do. You cannot even expect to come out of it the same person at all.

Kim:

You're not.

Loren Ridinger:

I'm never going to be. I wake up every day and go I miss the old Loren. Every day I wake up, say, where is she? Will I ever see her again? Probably not. And so Serena sent me this passage in. The passage had a link. The link had a group counseling session here in Miami. I went to it. When I went to it, there was like seven women in there, Kim, that some loved their husband as much as I did.

Loren Ridinger:

You know, some people didn't. You had a mixture. Okay, they're a mixture of people. But as they started to describe what they lost, they weren't talking. What. They weren't just talking about husband anymore. They talked about how they couldn't afford to pay their bills, how they lost their way of life, that they lost their tuition for school. And I had a moment of, I'm so blessed that I can still live the life I live, that I can still send my children to school, that I can still wake up every day and my life doesn't have to change.

Loren Ridinger:

And I thought with all the grief and the pain, I was suffering without my grandkids. For a moment, I thought I could walk off a balcony without my daughter. And so for this one single moment, I realized that there was light and that I will survive this and I will spend the rest of my life just like he did. He used to say to me, lauren, money's not the scoreboard. Don't let that become the scoreboard for you and I. Then we could never, ever make enough money. We'll never be content. That's not the scoreboard.

Loren Ridinger:

The scoreboard is how many people we can help make it about that. And you can do whatever you want to do, become a servant to people. And I just really started to reach and remember what my why was always all along, which was to help people. And I went back and I said, I will never spend another day not helping people who had lost as much as I lost. Help them find a way out, have somebody to talk to, have somebody to have a conversation with. It's hard.

Kim:

But you know what? Loss is what we all have in common, hon.

Loren Ridinger:

Well, I say, you know, I've always. For the last 20 years, I've spoken about the same things on stage. Time, love, and death. We all want more time. We all want more love. And we're all going to die. The three things we. We have in common.

Loren Ridinger:

Anything else doesn't really matter. Those are the three things we all want, need. We don't want to die, but we want to go to heaven, right? But they're the three things that we have in common. So what else is there? In life, if you cannot relate to somebody through the words of time, or through love, or even to motivate them through death and losing people, then what is there?

Kim:

And when. When JR was saying, money is not the scoreboard, he's so right. But what should be the scoreboard? What should we be searching for?

Loren Ridinger:

He felt it was one word. I'll be honest with you. We always had these deep conversations at night and he would say, you know, we used to spend months back in 2004 talking about what is happiness? Over and over and over again. It's not having cars, it's not having yachts, it's not having homes, it's not having more and more kids. All of those things are wonderful things. But what makes somebody individually truly happy? Progress.

Kim:

The accomplishment. The accomplishment.

Loren Ridinger:

It's progress. If you know your kids are moving in the direction of happiness. If you know your kids are getting the job, that puts a smile on their face. If you know that you're going for your promotion and you're going to get it and you're working towards something, towards. If you know that you're working towards something and you see it come together. Progress. You don't have to win. He used to say, it's the progress that it takes.

Loren Ridinger:

And it's part of the process, right? Is the progress. But that was his meter.

Kim:

But what's the difference between the journey and progress? Because I think they're two separate things. They enjoy the journey. Enjoy the journey.

Loren Ridinger:

They are. They are. I think, for you.

Kim:

What does that mean? Because a lot of people are saying, enjoy the journey. And it's more than a journey.

Loren Ridinger:

It is so much more than a journey. Because it's progress. We have a tendency to set these goals that are unrealistic. All of a sudden we wanna stop smoking cigarettes tomorrow. Take that, for example. And you just. I'm never gonna smoke again. But you've been smoking for 20 years.

Loren Ridinger:

Let's be realistic. How about you start to cut back? How about you start to make progress? Cause the journey of that is not gonna be beautiful. It's gonna be messy.

Kim:

Amen.

Loren Ridinger:

It's gonna be messy. But once you do it, you will see the progress and you ultimately be happy.

Kim:

I think that's amazing. I think that's the word.

Loren Ridinger:

Little things, right?

Kim:

Little wins.

Loren Ridinger:

I started to celebrate little wins along our lifetime. And. And, you know, it's funny. I found this little sticker that I had cleaned out JR's office, you know, about six months after he passed away. And I found this little sticky note. He Wrote, he said, Loren and J.R. buy a. Have $1 million in savings.

Loren Ridinger:

You know, have a 20 foot boat. Have a. Buy our first home. And I. He had five. Five different things on there. And I realized that every year he made that sticker. Every year he wrote what his goals were.

Kim:

Progress.

Loren Ridinger:

Every year he wanted to make progress. And it didn't matter if he missed it or exceeded it. It didn't matter to him. It wasn't the scoreboard if he had six cars, the scoreboard was what he did. And the time it took and the journey that he saw. He'd have setbacks, he'd turn them into comebacks. He'd keep moving forward. He'd have progress.

Loren Ridinger:

He'd fail at. Stop smoking one day, he'd pick it right back up the next day and try again. It's the progress that we make along the way. And I think we don't celebrate that enough. So we bite so much more often, we can chew. And we fail. Then all of a sudden, it doesn't work. That doesn't work.

Loren Ridinger:

Why? Try it. Oh, not now. Next time. There is no more next time. You want to realize that when you run out of time. How many more times can we say next time?

Kim:

Girl, I love you.

Loren Ridinger:

I love you, too. And I can't. I tell my daughter every time. Every time you say next time. You don't know when that means. Your dad ran out of next time.

Kim:

You might not have. That's right.

Loren Ridinger:

Your dad ran out of next time. So I could run out of next times. You have to do it right now. And so I think, you know, I have turned this pain that still exists daily into something that can give back to others. Because if I don't do that, then what good is it?

Kim:

Is that Loren, the love letter that you now know?

Loren Ridinger:

It's the hardest chapter. And now that I know will be the name of my next book, which is interesting, but JR wrote me 5,000 love letters. When I tell you I have them all in a big Louis. I bought this beautiful Louis Vuitton trunk, and they're just filled in layers of them. And I didn't write the letters because I was the one who just said, well, I love you. I'm right here. Why are you writing me? I'm right beside you. He's like, one day you'll understand.

Loren Ridinger:

One day you'll understand that you can't undo what you say. But if I write it in a letter, you may really read it and understand how I really feel about you. And now I'm so Grateful that I have the letters where he write in the beginning day at 18, he would write me letters like, I don't have to be with you exclusively for me to fall in love with you. I'm going to get there. Then the letters started to be like, I do love you. Give me time, though. I'm moving into. Then the third love letter phase of our life became like, I'm mad and I can't imagine living without you.

Loren Ridinger:

Everything I do, I want to do it with you. I want us to grow together, be together, have progress together. You know? I want us to be defined by the same things. We want the same things, and we did. I wanted to help people.

Kim:

But you know what he did. You didn't have to write the letters. Isn't God good? You didn't have to write the letters. He had to teach them.

Loren Ridinger:

It took me a long time to realize that you're right. For so long, I punished myself for not writing him. But then I woke up one day and I was like, but you told him Amen.

Kim:

And then he's not here to. He knew he had to write those, to leave those letters.

Loren Ridinger:

He had to leave those letters for me. So I couldn't. Those would be the things that rescued me at the end of the day. And by the end of the book, I would be able to write that love letter that he would hear up in heaven. That would be the letter I would write to him. The letter about the thank you. No, but, you know, the thank you for believing in me. The thank you for making me get off the floor.

Loren Ridinger:

The thank you for telling me if I don't go home and tell my dad that I don't want to do this, I'm going to become a version of myself. I didn't want to. Want to be. I didn't value that then. I was too young, too stupid, too naive. But I do see it now. And I don't want somebody else to miss it. I don't want somebody to go home and realize it.

Loren Ridinger:

So I ask people now, like, maybe it's not eggs for you. Maybe he asked you to pick out his shirt. Maybe you ask him to do something and he's not acknowledging. Don't miss the moments that really matter. You don't have to miss it. You could see it now. You know, it's like every time Jared would go, we go to bed, and I'd be like, okay, I'll be there in 30 minutes. Minutes.

Loren Ridinger:

I'm gonna watch a movie, and I just want to finish watching it, okay? Don't be too long, okay? Five minutes after he walked away, I would get him. I can't sleep without you. Can you please come? I can't sleep without you. Can you please come? And I was like, really? I get in the bed. I was like, babe, I wanted to watch movies, like, I know, but you can watch it tomorrow. All I have is right now with you. Oh, that is right now with you. So when I think about those moments, I realized that that pillow top was the most important talks of my life.

Loren Ridinger:

They were the ones to change my life. And he used to say to me every morning the same word. Please don't get out of this bed yet. Give me five more minutes. As soon as you leave, I lost you. As soon as you get out of this bed, I'm going to lose you. And I said, well, Jared, there's people waiting on me, but I'm here. You work with me.

Loren Ridinger:

Don't leave me. Give me five more. And some days I would, and some days I wouldn't. But you know what? What does five more mean? Everything.

Kim:

Everything.

Loren Ridinger:

So you got to do it. Why not give the five more? Why not pay attention to the words that are said? That's where love letters really get exchanged. That's where the words that will be said will really matter. That's where the growth will come from. That's where progress happens in a marriage. You know, when your marriage isn't doing well.

Kim:

Any relationship, really, anything. Relationship, children, whatever.

Loren Ridinger:

If things aren't good at home, you're not making progress. If things aren't good and work, you're not making progress. But if things are progressing, you're moving in the right direction and progress is happening. You're winning, Kim. You can feel like, wow, this is what life is supposed to look like. It's kind of beautiful.

Kim:

Oh, my gosh. Okay. I love you. I think you're a fantastic person. You are a powerhouse. You are a flipping tiger, girl. You are a tiger.

Loren Ridinger:

You're awesome.

Kim:

I love you. Okay, before you go, we have to do this, everybody. I'm gonna tell everybody to get the book, but we do this thing called rapid fire. Okay?

Loren Ridinger:

I love it.

Kim:

So we're just gonna ask you a question. And, Zac, I know with a thousand percent, she will have absolutely no hesitation at all. She's gonna be the best one yet. So what comes up, comes out. Okay?

Loren Ridinger:

Loren.

Kim:

Okay, we go rapid fire. Questions? What book has been the biggest influence on your life?

Loren Ridinger:

My book, Scrambled or Sunny? Setup. It really made us.

Kim:

Honey, I was dying. If you said anything Else I was gonna get mad.

Zac:

I don't know. That doesn't count. Come on.

Loren Ridinger:

It does count. Come on. Okay, I'll tell you a second. One Acres of Diamonds. It's about somebody who searches, searches their whole life to find the diamonds, and they forget to look right underneath them, within them.

Kim:

Okay, I'll have to read that. Thanks a lot, Loren. I'm your book. And laugh. What is it like to be JLo's best friend?

Loren Ridinger:

Oh, she's amazing. I mean, it's amazing. I love her. She's amazing. She's incredible. Y'all known each other forever, 25 years. It's incredible. She's the godmother of the kids.

Loren Ridinger:

I love her. And she's a wonderful human being, and she's a giver, and she's a good friend. You know a lot of people. She's a girl's girl. I mean, she wants you to herself, and I love that. And I'm blessed. I love her. Amazing.

Loren Ridinger:

And then, you know, you're kind of irritating sometimes because her body's amazing. She's gorgeous. She's stunning. Freak's sake. Do you have to come in here looking like this every day?

Kim:

Yes. I mean, the butt. The butt. I do have butt envy. Okay, anyway, tell us.

Loren Ridinger:

No cellulite, no bumps, nothing.

Zac:

Well, wait, can I. I want to jump in with a celebrity question. I like, I just, like, I'm so fascinated. Is it from your point of view as, like, a friend of JLO and lots of, like, huge celebrities? Obviously Serena Williams wrote the intro to your book. Like, do you. Do you look at that and, like, does it look really hard to be a celebrity? Like, part of me is like, oh, man, you can't go anywhere. Like, you can't.

Kim:

You're.

Zac:

You can't, like, exist in the world without people just being all over you. Right?

Loren Ridinger:

There's no doubt. It's a challenging life for them. I see it. I watch them live. Jamie Foxx is arriving today. I see them live through it. But I will tell you, this circle of love and friends that I've had, and they're the same. It's.

Loren Ridinger:

It's. It's Jennifer. It's Alicia Keys. It's Jamie. It's so many, Serena. So many of these people, they all do their best to just to remind people they're people.

Kim:

They're people.

Loren Ridinger:

They cry like us and they bleed like us. And so I'm really blessed and I'm really conscious of it. People always like, how do you have so many friends? I'm like, it wasn't curated this way. Trust me. It just ended up this way. And I think it's a mutual admiration society. People like, you know, look for people like them, who. Who breathe like them, who aren't afraid to cry like them.

Loren Ridinger:

And we're all really supportive of each other. Like when JR Died, Alicia Keys came in and said, listen to me. You're not doing anything. I am going to make his celebration of life and every friend that we have ever had as a family, our circle of friendship, is going to perform, show up and do X, Y and Z. And if they don't want to, they don't come. You're not going to pay for anything. You're not going to do anything. You're going to show up.

Loren Ridinger:

Because I was in a fog, I couldn't do anything.

Kim:

You're going to receive. You were just going to receive.

Loren Ridinger:

She had everybody from Jamie Foxx, DJ Khaled, herself, Swiss Beats, Jamie Foxx, Gloria Estefan, Jennifer. Everybody was there, performing, giving, doing. It was the most beautiful celebration of life. And I had never had a plan. One thing, her and my daughter, it was incredible.

Kim:

But this is the thing with the celebrity thing. We always forget that they deal with loss, too. They're people.

Loren Ridinger:

Oh, they go through. Serena lost her sister. She was the first person who pushed me to write a book. She was the first person who told me, this is going to be hard. You will never overcome it, but you will get through it.

Kim:

You'll get through it, and you'll bless others in the process, which is you and your husband's holding.

Loren Ridinger:

That's what we did.

Kim:

Favorite drive through fast food.

Loren Ridinger:

McDonald's french fries.

Kim:

Oh, my God. There's nothing like it.

Loren Ridinger:

The best. Agreed.

Kim:

I think they soak them in sugar.

Loren Ridinger:

I know it's just, like, awful, but I love them.

Kim:

I think I'm gonna have some as I'm leaving here. Okay. What advice do you have to women listening to this? Who's going through grief?

Loren Ridinger:

Give yourself a lot of grace and be patient with yourself, and understand that the anger is coming from somewhere and it's not you. You didn't lose your mind. You're losing yourself, and you gotta find a way through it. There will be sunshine again. The clouds part again. You will see rainbows again. You just need to give it time, and you need to learn to navigate it differently. It will look different for you, but you can manage it.

Loren Ridinger:

You can become somebody different and find your way through it.

Kim:

Favorite junk food? Salty and sweet.

Loren Ridinger:

No, my favorite junk food is, I have to say, it's crazy. It's spaghetti with a lot of salt. I love it. It's not even junk food. I could just eat it all day. I had it for breakfast.

Kim:

What about on the sweet side?

Loren Ridinger:

I love for. For sweet. I love, like, chocolate ice cream. I'm like an ice cream.

Kim:

Just plain old.

Loren Ridinger:

Just what I could do for a milkshake. I could take a milkshake. I like Breyers or Edie's. Always. It has to be one of the.

Kim:

Edie's is good.

Loren Ridinger:

I like Edie's, and I actually find Edie's chocolate better, but Breyer's vanilla better than Edie's vanilla, but the chocolate's better on the Edie side. I've tested them all. I'm a big tester of ice cream.

Kim:

Okay, okay. Now I'm going. Now I've got to go get that French fries from McDonald's and the Edie's ice cream. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot, Loren.

Zac:

Anyway, you could dip the French fries in the ice cream. That's next.

Kim:

A lot.

Loren Ridinger:

You could dip the French fries. And the funny thing is, I don't. You don't even need the ketchup with McDonald's french fries because the salt is so good on it.

Kim:

It's so tangy. It's. You know me.

Loren Ridinger:

It's just so tangy. You're good.

Kim:

Okay. Celebrity crush.

Loren Ridinger:

Celebrity crush. Gosh, I've never had a celebrity crush. Let me think.

Kim:

See, she has to be careful because she. She hangs with a lot of celebrities.

Zac:

Yeah, she knows all the.

Loren Ridinger:

No, but I was thinking maybe Brad Pitt, I guess. I like Brad Pitt.

Kim:

Brad Pitt is hot.

Loren Ridinger:

He's hot.

Kim:

Brad. He's hot.

Loren Ridinger:

I like Brad Pitt.

Kim:

I've mad like that.

Loren Ridinger:

I like Brad Pitt.

Kim:

Uh oh, she said that.

Loren Ridinger:

Fourth time.

Kim:

We're gonna move on from that. Okay, what is the one thing that if J.R. could come back and tell us today, what would it be that.

Loren Ridinger:

He would tell me? Tell us.

Kim:

Tell all. Everybody.

Loren Ridinger:

He would say, believe in yourself. It was his. He wrote every letter he signed to me. And everybody he ever wrote in his entire lifetime said, I believe in you. And he signed every letter saying, I believe in you. And he would end every sentence with saying, keep growing. Yeah. He just really believed that you can never give up on believing who you are.

Loren Ridinger:

So he would say, believe in yourself. Don't quit. You know, don't quit. Keep going. Keep doing. Keep showing up. Don't. You know, he just was a big believer in that.

Loren Ridinger:

He had this. When I first met him, when we were poor, he had this alarm clock. And, you know, we were working for other people at the time because we didn't have any money. Used to every month break that alarm clock, say, one day we're going to destroy this thing. It's not going to control our life. And within a year, we had our own business. And the second year, we were already doing $50 million. When we first started, it was crazy.

Loren Ridinger:

It was like a journey that just blew up so fast. And now my grandkids break that alarm clip every month, no matter what, and say, we will not be controlled by this thing. And they're only 11 years old, 10 years old, and 8 years old. And he would want them to believe that with their life that they can do whatever they want to do.

Kim:

What's it like being a grandma?

Loren Ridinger:

It's the most amazing experience of my life. It has been the thing I have loved more than anything. And the thing he loved. You know, when Amber first told me she was pregnant, she was very young. Like I was Maybe she was 20, like I was when I got pregnant. And I was so devastated at first because I was like, you should have your whole life ahead of you. You don't have to. You know, why don't you give it time? And she's like, mom, I just did the same thing you did.

Loren Ridinger:

What's the big deal? And I thought JR was going to kill her. And he came home, he was so happy. He was jumping up and down. I was like, for God's sakes. I gave her a whole lecture. What are you talking about? He goes, lauren, our life has become the most beautiful journey of all. There's nothing wrong with what you and I did. And we don't want her to think there's anything wrong with what she did.

Loren Ridinger:

She is. And so I didn't understand that. I had learned. And he spent his whole life, every two weeks, no matter what, he would go back and forth for the grandkids. We would. Every two weeks, he would get on a plane, go see the grandkids. Even if we went for one day and we'd come right back. It has been the greatest journey of all, of all of the things that is the legacy that he wanted.

Kim:

All right, you've gotta go buy Loren's incredible book. It's her memoir called Scrambled or Sunnyside Up. Living youg Best Life After Losing youg Greatest Love. It's available everywhere, books are sold, and you can follow Loren everywhere on social media. Go get the book. Be encouraged and believe in yourself, Loren. Thank you so much for being on the show.

Loren Ridinger:

I love you, Kim. I can't wait to see you in person and hug you.

Kim:

I know you are truly. I don't know. You've made me believe a little bit more in myself today. I love you, sis.

Loren Ridinger:

I love you, too. I think that's the most important thing of being a little bit better each day. Working on ourselves. We're not perfect, but keeping making progress.

Kim:

What's the word? Progress. I love it.

Loren Ridinger:

Progress.

Kim:

All right, girl. Come back and be with us.

Loren Ridinger:

I'll see you soon. I can't wait.

Kim:

All right, baby. 

Kim:
The Kim Gravel Show is produced and edited by Zac Miller. His production company is Uncommon Audio. Our producer is Kathleen Grant from the Brunette Exec. Production help from  Emily Bredin and Sara Noto. Our cover art is designed by Sanaz Huber at Memarian Creative. Our show is edited by Mike Kligerman. Our guest intros are performed by Roxy Reese. Our guest booking is done by Central Talent Booking. Our ads are furnished by True Native Media. And y'all, I want to give a big huge thank you to the entire team at QVC+ and a special thank you to our audience for making this community so strong. If you are still listening then you must have liked a few episodes along the way. So tell somebody about it. Tell somebody about this show and join our mailing list at kimgravelshow.com. I cannot do this show without you and so I thank you from the bottom of my heart for listening. I hope you gain a little bit of encouragement, light and love love from watching and listening to The Kim Gravel Show. I love you all so much. Till next time. Bye.