Season 2 – Episode 22. Released on July 28, 2015.
When Love Brings Your Awakening (with Dee Worley)
INTRO
Today I’m chatting with Dee Worley known in the world of sports as Dee Foster, USA and NCAA national and International Gymnastics champion. Today, Dee is a sought-after global branding, marketing, PR and business consulting expert who talks about how a long lost love helped her to awaken to her purpose.
BUMPER
I am Tajci.
At 19 I was a superstar and I was lost inside. I left it all behind, switched continents and started all over. Years later I found myself lost again. This time in the American dream.
This is a story about awakening. About living the life you were created for. About going inward and discovering the joyous and purposeful person you and I are both meant to be.
This is “Waking Up In America.”
TAJCI
Dee, thank you so much for being here.
DEE
Thank you so much for having me.
TAJCI
I am so excited.
DEE
Me too!
TAJCI
You know, every waking up moment in our lives is beautiful because it shifts us to a more purposeful living. But I love yours
because it’s about love
DEE
Yeah, it is.
TAJCI
You started out as a gymnast and you knew you were… you knew you were a gymnast from very, very early on.
DEE
I did, I mean when I was two I really wanted to start. I’m told I wanted to start I don’t really remember my memories from two, but when I was 4 I was really serious and my mom couldn’t keep me from bouncing off the walls in the house and she signed me up in a at a local YMCA and they said, she doesn’t belong here. She’s needs to go to a gymnastics gym.
Like a real gym. So she registered me at a gym. We were living in Michigan at the time. I was little, little. And she… it took off from there. By the time I was seven I was competing.
TAJCI
And at ten you actually moved away from your family to pursue.
DEE
Yes, I moved away from home. We lived in Huntsville, Alabama at the time, we moved there from Michigan and I moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama which is where the University of Alabama is and also the University coaches there happened to be the club gymnastics coaches as well. It was the gym called Bama Bounders.
And it was… my coaches were David and Sarah Patterson. They trained us before the trained the college team in the afternoon. And I was there for three years, three and a half years and then I moved to Huntington Beach, California to train with the ’84 Olympic coach.
TAJCI
And the reason why I asked that is because, it really sounds like it was your dream. It wasn’t your parents pushing you know it wasn’t something… you weren’t living someone else’s dream.
DEE
Absolutely!
TAJCI
It was really yours. And you knew it.
DEE
Definitely! It was not my parents’. I saw Olga Corbet in the Olympics in the 72 Olympic Games and I said, that’s me. That’s what I want to do. And, she was, I don’t know if you know, she was kind of the anti-Nadia.
She was more of an acrobat than a graceful, beautiful Gymnast. She was an athlete. And I just really connected with her. Identified with sort of the flying high and you know risking her neck with every move. I just got it
TAJCI
Yeah
DEE
And that was that was what I wanted to do.
TAJCI
And when I watched the videos that’s exactly what I sensed. Like, this girl is not afraid to break her neck.
DEE
Well, afraid makes you break you neck so you actually can’t have fear. If you have any fear at all… in fact one time I landed on my neck and that night that I hurt myself I called my coach and I said I gotta go back in tonight I mean I had a neck brace on and they told me to be in bed for three weeks and I said, I gotta go back in the gym tonight and do this…
I have to do this trick again tonight or I’ll never do it again.
If the whole … if the next day passes and I haven’t done it and I’ll never do it again.
TAJCI
Because it will stop you.
DEE
Yeah I would have blocked. I’d be blocked completely.
TAJCI
Interesting! So that experience and you’ve achieved tremendous success as a gymnast and I just… I just admire you so much for it because there is so much discipline and strength that just exudes from those videos that obviously made you who you are… helped you to be who you are today.
DEE
My parents had one rule. My mom always said. okay if you start a season you have to finish it. You can’t quit in the middle of the season.
That’s my only rule. I have… I don’t even know what you’re doing out there don’t really care you look cute when you’re doing it that’s the beginning and the end of it for me.
I’m here to serve you however you want to… however far you want to go in this.
I’m here to facilitate that. But there’s no quitting in the middle. So we’re gonna start each season and finish each season. And at the end of each season if we need to reevaluate whether or not you wanna keep doing it we’ll do that but no quitting in the middle. That was our only rule.
And as far as the strength and all of that you don’t really think about it in those terms you know maybe from your vantage point it seems that way but it was just my life you know it was just what I knew to do. You graduate from level to level in the sport, from coach to coach you know the training gets harder, the competition in the gym every day gets harder, the competition in meets gets harder and you just sort of either aspire to win or not and I just was one that… I just wanted to keep going and going and going. I just I loved it and and it served me while I was trying to serve it.
TAJCI
And I heard two lessons you already taught me. One, work through the fear and two, don’t quit.
That sounds like… and three, obviously it’s like third one that I just realized, if you set to heart to win you’ll win…
DEE
Eventually!
TAJCI
Eventually
DEE
And winning by the way may not look like what you think it’s gonna look like.
TAJCI
There you go
DEE
Yea, for me originally winning was making the ’88 Olympic team and that was it. That was my definition of winning and there was no there were no exceptions. There was no second place there was that or bust. And when I tore my ankle two weeks before the eighty eight Olympic trials which inconceivable to me it never occurred to me that I could get hurt, you know, and not on a level where I wouldn’t be able to compete. I mean, we competed hurt all the time. But injured is a different thing
TAJCI
Yes.
DEE
Competing hurt is you know, a part for the course but competing with an injury is… that’s more difficult. And you start rationalizing… If I had only broken it. If I’d broken my ankle then I could still complete ’cause they would shoot it up and I could just still compete.
But it was ligaments, so there was literally nothing holding my foot together, so I… So, I couldn’t. I couldn’t walk and so it just never occurred to me that I wouldn’t win and that way and then you know unbeknownst to me the most fulfilling part in my career ended up being my college career.
Which was four years after the Olympiad and I just… I never dreamed that the best part in my career would be the last four years of it, on a team with thirteen other people, fourteen other people who had the same goal as me and we’re pushing me towards that goal. I was pushing them towards the goal. We were… It was about the team championships not the individual championships which is you know, why I wear this ring a lot because this is our team championship that we won together. And it’s just a bonding unit for us . And it’s… just no one can ever take it away from us, no one can buy this ring. You had to earn it you know it’s just…
It’s kind of our badge of honor. And we’re all married now with children and everything but that’s kind of our thing. That’s our thing together
TAJCI
Being a part of… yes something you’re a part of together.
DEE
Yeah, and that ended up being winning for me is being on a team.
TAJCI
Interesting. Yes! Define your winning. Very important
DEE
Yes
TAJCI
So here you are living your dream not somebody else’s totally in and believing you are within your purpose: on a team, everything is aligned, everything is beautiful. Where did you get lost?
DEE
I got lost… Really the first instances of real bitterness setting in my heart was my senior year of college. I was ranked really high in the country.
I was in the top three. And I was in the top three every year in college. And my freshman year I won the national championship and I came in first, second, third and second in all my four years in the all-around. And you know the second, third and second places I hate talking about ’cause they weren’t first.
And I just… I was really… it was by the narrowest of margins each time. Like a half an eyelash and so I didn’t really make any mistakes in those meets I just wasn’t as perfect as I needed to be, to be on the number one stand. So I was really bitter.
Not necessarily at the sport or even at judges or anything…
I was bitter with myself. I felt like what more could I have done where I could have set a better example for the rest of my life, that second place is not acceptable, and second place is not optional, and third place isn’t even… don’t even discuss it.
So I had this tremendous amount of pressure that I put on myself and I started getting bitter and… So I took that bitterness and I drove it into my professional life. And I got bit by the public relations bug, and the marketing bug and branding and I moved to Atlanta. I was working with the 1996 Olympic Games and did that for three years, moved to New York, moved to LA, and by the time I got to LA I was full blown into just you know, major career or bust.
TAJCI
It sounds like you transferred the winning and the discipline and all this energy
DEE
But it was very distorted it was not healthy. And it was not in a way that was very productive. It looked productive because I was you know accelerating in life, I was getting promoted, I was getting jobs I wanted, I was getting… you know, I was… you know from the outside looking in, it looked really good. But what was going on inside was total destruction. I was really unhappy.
And in between all of that you know I had I was in my relationship with my now husband who was my then boyfriend when I was in college, and when we broke up I just that was… contributed a lot to the bitterness.
TAJCI
Oh, I see… Ok so I understand. In college you were dating Tim.
DEE
Oh yes.
TAJCI
Okay. And then how did…
DEE
I was dating him before collage, I started dating him when I was a senior in high school
TAJCI
Wow. So he was a part of your that life that dream that you had
DEE
Oh definitely! I mean, I was gonna graduate and get married have babies.
TAJCI
What happened?
DEE
He betrayed me unfortunately. Well, I was a sophomore in college and he came clean. He told me what happened, and I was devastated. Again never occurred to me… just like the injury my ankle injury… never occurred to me that something like that could happen. I didn’t even conceive that he could, would leave me I just never thought of that. So it just gonna rocked my whole foundation.
And my faith in stability was really shattered and I didn’t think it was possible to have stability outside of myself. It can only come from me, and I had to be… it was on me or it wasn’t gonna happen.
TAJCI
Well it comes from training. You see the result and so you are in control, really.
DEE
Exactly
TAJCI
You are further away from God and from your who you know you are
DEE
Yes
TAJCI
You’re shutting that off?
DEE
Yes, yes and getting really interested in things that just don’t matter you know climbing the corporate ladder. Climbing the social ladder. Living in a certain zip code in LA.
Having a certain view, having this having that, so it was about the haves the having, not so much the being
TAJCI
The being, yes… and you had the perfect life from the outside the one that we all see on the television
DEE
Looked like it! But it was… up to my eyeballs in debt and it was… it was a facade and what it was a facade for was that I was really hurting. And I didn’t know how badly I was hurting. I really don’t know the depth of what that break up did to me. And I’m not blaming Tim. It’s not you know… well, it is his fault, but (laugh) it’s not about blame. It’s about that I didn’t process that pain properly.
And I didn’t process the hurt properly, and I was really not equipped to handle it. I just never had any experience. He was my first boyfriend. I didn’t know any better.
And… so I sort of went on a rampage in every area of my life. I was just sort of like a little Tasmanian devil. I was just tearing through things. Tearing through employment situations. Tearing through boyfriends. Tearing through friendship. Tearing through.
I just was sort of like a little cyclone and had no idea how destructive I was being. And I just wasn’t pleasant to be around and I really I was getting on my own nerves. And it all came to a head in 2009.
I had finally gotten married to somebody I was dating I was 35 years old almost 36. No I was 36 and… so I waited that long to get married, ’cause I really was waiting for Tim and when that looked like it wasn’t gonna happen I got married because I went into escrow on a house in LA.
TAJCI
Oh, that’s a good reason
DEE
Isn’t that a good reason to get married?
TAJCI
Yeah
DEE
I went into escrow on this house and I panicked. I’m from the South. I’m a southern girl. And we just don’t go into debt like that with people without being married. So I got married. And I take full responsibility for that.
It was completely my design. I was leaning on my own understanding, which was totally warped.
I was used to a very formulaic way of living. Set a goal, work very hard, achieve the goal, set another goal. Work very hard, achieve the goal.
That was how life worked for me for a very long time and when it stopped working that way, when all these other decisions that I was making started having consequences… ’cause I lived in a bubble when I was an athlete, so outside of the bubble, I really didn’t know how to function and had nothing to do with me not being raised well or my parents not equipping me. They equipped me very well. I did not manage that equipping effectively. Period.
And I actually abandoned what I knew to do in certain situations. Like I knew better than to harbor bitterness and anger but I did it anyway. I knew better than to not process breaking up with Tim but I did it anyway. I knew better than to get in that marriage. I knew better than to buy that house, I just knew better but I was so in engrossed, you know… I was so ingrained in… I call it “Lost” Angeles, but it was… it was just a really, I’m kind of stuck in…
TAJCI
Yeah
DEE
I also worked in the entertainment industry so that didn’t help…
I worked with a lot of people who were very driven by success and very driven by Next and very driven by the Haves…
So in 2009 I did my usual Tim search… I did a Tim search every six months for 18 years, and I could never find him. The best way I can explain is was just a spiritual longing and it wasn’t… I was searching for Tim but I was really searching for God. And you know, God functions through people. He uses people
TAJCI
To love another person is to see the face of God
DEE
Yes, that’s right and so the human that God used in this case was Tim to to bring me back to God. Subsequently the other reward was that I was brought back to Tim. But the real mission and that whole thing was for me to be brought back to God. And you know, I’d been just really sort of… it was a distant bell. My faith was, you know, I would get really convicted a Christmas time, really convicted on Easter…
I reached up to Tim on Facebook. He friended me back. We talked on the phone and within the first five minutes he asked me why I was lukewarm for the Lord and
TAJCI
Wow
DEE
Yeah, he heard it right away.
After not having spoken to me for fifteen years, he was hearing somebody else. He was hearing the facade’ cause I’m you know, that’s fifteen years since the last time I spoke to him it so I want him to know that I’m not the same 19-year-old whose heart he broke.
I want him to know I’m a big girl now and, yeah I’m an accomplished woman and I’m a professional and this and that. I’m just going on and on and on about whatever it is I thought I accomplished in LA and he’s like, Yeah aha… that’s nice. He wasn’t condemning me he heard something that was very foreign to him in terms of how he related to me.
TAJCI
Sounds like, okay this is all great but where’s Dee.
DEE
Exactly
TAJCI
Now here’s that wake up in a moment where your realizing you waking up from the fog wake up in a moment where, you are realizing, you are waking up from that fog.
DEE
Yes.
TAJCI
And it comes in form of this man who you’ve longed for, you were looking for.
DEE
When we, when I moved back to the South and we re-connected, we had to actually learn how to be with each other all over again. We had to learn… we dated, he courted me, you know, we had to learn, but the other layer that was attached to that was I had to forgive him for something that I hadn’t forgiven him for yet.
‘Cause we knew we weren’t gonna do sort of a conventional, go to therapy route, we weren’t going to do that. It had to be a supernatural thing, because my healing it was so old. These were old woulds. And all of sudden these scabs are getting picked all over again.
And I’m going, wait, I haven’t been mad about that in a long time and wait a minute. So, that’s your kids. And those should have been my kids. So it was a whole… it was a whole… but what happened was, I ended up falling in love with his kids immediately, so how can I be… there was this strange dichotomy, how can I be angry that they aren’t mine, ’cause really, they are mine. I get to have them now… And they are just…
I mean, the creme de la creme. They are amazing human beings. So, I fell in love with them right away. So it was, that was easy in terms of just making the transition from the awkwardness of not knowing what to do with this new life that I am inheriting. And that he is inheriting as well, and… I just forgave him from the bottom of my heart, and then I forgave myself for not forgiving him. I had to forgive myself for harboring that bitterness and that anger and that pain for that long, and having it made decisions for me. That pain really steered the ship for a long time, and lead me to different decisions, and making different choices that I otherwise would not have made had the pain not been there. I couldn’t do it on my own strength. I couldn’t forgive him on my own.
I couldn’t meet his ex who happened to be the person that he left me for when I was younger. I couldn’t do all of that on my own. I couldn’t do that on my own strength. I needed help to do that.
And when I finally did it, it was kind of like a big monster in my mind and once I actually did those things, and just kind of dove in very similar to when I was an athlete… I would be introduced to a new skill and it would seem daunting and scary at first, and then I would do it for the first time and, and I’d be like oh, that’s nothing I can do that. It was really the same thing. I was able to transfer that same mechanism into that.
TAJCI
So your waking up moment helped you to get back together with Tim and have this beautiful life, but it also allowed you now to be who you are always meant to be, a winner, not only on a gym floor or in the PR world, but winner at life.
DEE
As a wife, you know, as a mom… And he was just really instrumental in my growth, he kind of ushered me along and encouraged me, and but also gave me the space to learn what I needed to learn on my own. To rediscover God in a new way, at a different age, you know. I’m a different age now. I’m more mature now. So he gave me the freedom to do that without sort of crowding me and saying it has to be this way, or… His way was his way and my way was my way and we met in the middle.
And, you know, it hasn’t been easy, but it’s been very fulfilling. And now we’re sort of on the other side of everything and just really started to enjoy each other.
We call it perfecting our dance. We have a dance called Our Life Together, and so we are starting to perfect our dance now.
It’s just getting awesome, we are looking forward to the next seventy years.
TAJCI
So, Dee now. You are, you have your own company
DEE
Yes.
TAJCI
And you are in your power shoes, but in a different way.
DEE
Oh yes. All the angst, all the bitterness, all the climbing all of the… now I’m all about how can I help other people. I kind of flipped the switch, and I got it. It really was a light bulb moment. I realized, okay really, what made me successful, and I didn’t even realize it, it was that I was helping people do what they wanted to do I was helping them achieve their goals. I was helping them reach their, their next goal that they wanted to accomplish. So I get it now that’s really what it’s all about. It’s sowing and reaping.
You sow a certain way, you are gonna reap a certain way, but you don’t do it to reap. You do it because your heart says, this person needs my help. I have something they don’t have and they need it. So I’m going to give it to them, so that they can flourish. And then thereby extension someone else flourishes and so on and so on. And so it goes.
TAJCI
Exactly
DEE
Pay it forward.
TAJCI
Make beautiful ripples and change the world.
DEE
Exactly! That’s it.
TAJCI
Thank you Dee…
DEE
Thank you Tajci
TAJCI
Thank you. You know, Dee’s story, really is what I just love… I mean I love your waking up moment and the fact that, which is true once we open up our heart to love and some believe it’s God, because God is Love, Some believe it’s source of all life, once we open our hearts to Love, then the healing happens.
DEE
Yes.
TAJCI
The healing in our souls and then it helps us truly to live the life that we are created for. So remember that. And don’t be afraid to open you heart and love. In my conversation with Dee, I kept thinking about this song that I wrote a while back, and Brian, my friend Brian Hanson, thanks for being here we play together a lot, and he is going to help me to do this song that I kept thinking about because you know, it’s so much about really taking off the masks and coming out of that fog and and just showing up as we are, and believing that that’s what we are called to do.
SONG
NOT COOL ENOUGH
I WANT TO TELL THE WORLD ABOUT THE WAY I FEEL AND WHY A CRY
I WANT TO SHOW MY TEARS AND LAUGH REAL LOUD
I WANNA SPEAK TO YOU RIGHT FROM MY HEART
UNTIL ALL WALLS FALL APART,
I AM GONNA KEEP ON DREAMING AND I’LL BELIEVE
I’LL BELIEVE.
IT ISN’T COOL ENOUGH TO HAVE A DREAM IN YOUR HEART
TO HAVE HOPE WHEN IT SEEMS LIKE HOPE IS GONE
IT ISN’T COOL ENOUGH TO BELIEVE WE ARE NOT
THE ONES WHO WILL DECIDE
I DON’T NEED THE COOL STUFF IT’S ALREADY BEEN COLD ENOUGH
IN THIS WORLD WHERE DREAMS ARE PUT TO SHAME
I WANT TO TELL THE WORLD ABOUT THE WAY I FEEL AND WHY A CRY
I WANT TO SHOW MY TEARS AND LAUGH REAL LOUD
I WANNA SPEAK TO YOU RIGHT FROM MY HEART
UNTIL ALL WALLS FALL APART,
I AM GONNA KEEP ON DREAMING AND I’LL BELIEVE
I’LL BELIEVE.
OUTRO
For more stories about Waking Up to live the life that you are created for visit us at Wakingupinamerica.net where you can find our community and all kinds of tools to help you to wake up someone else’s dream and live your own.
Thank you so much for watching and see you next time!
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