We are so excited for you to meet Amy Grove!
In this episode, Amy shares her story and journey through her brain aneurysm to her new act as an author and inspiration to many!
Amy is a long-time friend of Dina’s and was the Co-Chair of High Five for Supplies with Mandi at Simon Says Give. She’s a force of goodness in the world, and her story will inspire you!
Resources:
Email: Amy@GroveWorks.us
Website
Facebook
Instagram
Transcript
John Simon Sr. 00:06
John, welcome to Simon Says, inspire a podcast about life, leadership and building legacies. I'm John, Simon
Dina Simon 00:14
and I'm Dina Simon,
John Simon Sr. 00:15
and today we have Amy grove with us.
Amy Grove 00:19
Hi there. I'm Amy.
Dina Simon 00:21
Amy, we are so excited to have you, and I know John has met you along the way, but he's going to get a chance to get reintroduced to you, because you've been a part of my life, Mandy's life, Rich's life for at least a decade now, right?
Amy Grove 00:35
Yeah, my gosh, yes,
Dina Simon 00:37
yes, if you look back on on the dates. So we're extremely excited for our podcast listeners to get to know your journey, the amazing Amy that you are, and everything that we've actually been able to do together as well, because we've had a lot of fun with Mandy's nonprofit, and just in life and leadership and legacies, you're the perfect guest for us.
Amy Grove 01:00
Thank you.
Dina Simon 01:01
Yeah, so why don't we share where it began? So it's been over a decade, right? Like, how many at least 11,
Amy Grove 01:08
I guess maybe 2010 2011 Yeah, so
Dina Simon 01:11
let's call it a decade plus. So we had the good fortune of meeting, because we worked together for a brief period of time, and that was right when Mandy was thinking of a nonprofit called Simon says, Give And so John. You may or may not know this, but Amy immediately stepped in and helped us with our big backpack event, high five first supplies, and was truly the operations guru behind us, organizing and making it really a turnkey event. And that ended up that turnkey event. We made it look so easy because of Amy's hard work that it turned into a Guinness World Record organization event because of all of the amazing just work that Amy brought to the table, a lot of sweat and tears and joy and fun that was had over all those years that you were co chairing with Mandy, and when she was eight, 910, 11 years old, super young back then.
John Simon Sr. 02:07
So now we know where Mandy came up with her organizational skills. Yes, we do. A lot of them from from Amy, and I can remember one of the ones that granny attended, and she said, You can't believe how Mandy can get tables set up and everything needed to put the backpacks together, and how quickly she was able to do it. So apparently, a lot of that came from Amy.
Amy Grove 02:33
It did well. Thank you. It was fun. I had more fun doing that than most things that I've done. So yeah,
Dina Simon 02:40
so Amy co chaired for many years and brought her amazing friends to the table. So a lot of our key volunteers that gave every year their time and talent were, you know, a whole entourage of your friends and people that wanted to get involved and were super engaged and inspired with that. So that's where we got to play really hard together and have so much fun and make impact. So I just thank you for all of those many years of support, and then along the way, obviously we became very close friends. So you are like a sister to me, and John, I have a February birthday, and then Amy has a march birthday. So we're very similar in age as well. So we just have a lot in common, from, you know, just who we are and how we grew up, where we grew up, and we have sisters and all of that. So, Amy, will you share so we work together? You've had you will you share a little bit, maybe about your growing up? You talked about Maynard, but share with us a little bit about your story and who you are and how you got here. Okay,
Amy Grove 03:40
I will do a really condensed version, but yep, I did grow up in Maynard, Minnesota on a farm. It was a true working farm. We had animals and we had crops. I had no brothers, as Dina mentioned, I have a sister. So my father thought it was extremely important for me to learn how to do everything. So I learned how to drive tractors, and I learned how to weld, and I learned my ethic for hard work from him and and from my mom. I also got a lot of my creativity from my mom. So grew up there, did a couple years I did my associate's degree, and then moved to the Twin Cities with a job offer, and so worked here in the Twin Cities for many years, started in the executive assistant arena, and then as an adult, I finished my bachelor's degree from Bethel, and then moved into operations and then operations leadership and operations IT and HR leadership. So that's where we were at when we met. Yeah, absolutely.
Dina Simon 04:44
And just a rock star. So I mean, just, and I know any, anybody that worked with you, or had the opportunity to work with you in business, certainly appreciated what you brought to the table, because it was everything that we talked about, as far as what you also brought to then, you know, Simon says, Give, and any nonprofit or thing that you get involved in, from. A community perspective. Will you share with us your life changing event that happened? So it's your story to tell, and we can ask some questions along the way, but love for you to kind of kick that story off Absolutely. So
Amy Grove 05:12
I was driving home from a regular day on Thursday, February 2, 2017 I was headed to the store to go get supplies. We were having a Super Bowl party dip contest the next day, and I was sitting at a stoplight probably about a mile from my house when it felt like somebody who was sitting in the back seat took a baseball bat and hit me in the back of the head. I honestly do not remember how I got home, but I got home, my car was in the garage, and I made it into the house. Over the next couple days, and several doctors, we figured out that what had happened is I had had a brain aneurysm rupture in my brain while I was in the second hospital during that time frame, I had a subsequent stroke in the back of my brain. So my brain aneurysm is located behind my right eye, and the stroke, secondary stroke, was in the back 55 days from that February 2 I wound up having or 57 days, I'm sorry, 57 days after that, I wound up having a craniotomy, and they went in and clipped the aneurysm behind my right eye. From that point on, I wound up going through quite a bit of speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and have continued to do that on and off for the past six years, yeah, to get to the point where I'm at now. So, yeah, it's quite an adventure. It was
Dina Simon 06:51
an adventure. And I remember just Amy, and just Amy, even just the medications that you had to take, like, it was so massive. And I know, you know, every kind of month, there were different things that you went through to process out of that journey, and different things and and because I, I've known you prior to that, like you're super open to different medicines and homeopathic stuff and what, what can we be doing, but always researching for new ways to help yourself, even so trial, things that you've done and things of that nature.
John Simon Sr. 07:24
Amy, prior to the incident on that Thursday, did you have any other previous symptoms of anything
Amy Grove 07:32
earlier that day, I had a really short dizzy spell, and I mean, probably last maybe 10 seconds, if that I had had a couple headaches, but there was nothing that would have indicated that was coming. And
John Simon Sr. 07:46
how common or uncommon Is it where you have two in two when you have the aneurysm, and then all of a sudden they do tests and they find out you have another issue on top of that.
Amy Grove 07:57
So generally speaking, one in 50 people has a brain aneurysm, and then the odds of surviving dropped considerably, having a secondary issue at that same time i I'm pretty lucky to be alive, let alone being able to speak with you and doing the things that I do. So did you say one in 51? In 51? In 50? Yeah,
John Simon Sr. 08:21
wow. I did not realize that they were that prevalent, that that many people ended up having aneurysms.
Dina Simon 08:28
I remember when you talked about the story too, like the doctors told you that you're because it happened when you were driving like that alone. You're lucky to be alive, like you said. And then, you know, you went through so many days where people were trying to figure out. You went to multiple doctors and hospitals and them really trying to figure out what was going on, even at that time. So we're super blessed that you are here, and you have certainly had to, you know, fight through it every day to get to where you are, and have done so with so much grace. You've also done a lot of research and advocacy for people with brain aneurysms and things of that nature. What would you what would you like to share, as far as that kind of stuff with our listeners, as far as education or knowledge or ways to learn more?
Amy Grove 09:14
So first, I'll tell you some of the things that I really find important now is and brain aneurysm is a form of a stroke. It is a bleeding form of a stroke. There are clot forms of strokes. There are bleeding forms of strokes. I didn't know that when I was sitting in the hospital, the stroke training person came in and tried to tell my sister I'd had a stroke, and she's like, No, she didn't. Because we, we assimilate a stroke or we, we think a stroke as a person who can't feel the one side of their body and their face, there's so many different ways. So yes, I do a lot of advocating as far as strokes. I do a lot of advocating for brain aneurysms. I work and share some information, and then I donate to the Joe necro foundation to there's the. Foundation. There's same you, which is Amelia Clark, a lot of people know from Game of Thrones. Gosh, there's, there's so many out there. The Breen aneurysm Foundation, or bafoundation.com is, is a great place to go find information. Okay,
John Simon Sr. 10:15
you mentioned earlier about the people that helped you along the way, your physical therapist, your occupational therapist, your speech pathologist, and the amazing help that those people can be,
Amy Grove 10:28
they are specialists, aren't they? They walked me through and they taught me how to do things. But I mean, balance was huge since, since I had the secondary in the back of my brain, my balance was off considerably. I still struggle with that at times, especially if I'm tired. My cognitive ability, since the aneurysm was up in front, it's a lot of speed of processing. It's a lot of memory issues, it's a lot of multiple step kind of activities that I still struggle with. Full disclosure, I napped already this morning before coming to talk to you so that I was fresh. I'll take a nap after this as well. The other therapist that I would say, was a huge piece of that was my psychologist. I will be honest and tell you, my first year, I smiled at everybody and told them I was great and so thankful to be alive. And underneath, I was so angry My life wasn't going to be the same as it was, and that made me so angry. I wanted having that work ethic and that achiever mentality I felt trapped in my own body to be able to get back and do what I wanted to do. And people were telling me, Well, you're probably never going to get to do that again. And all that did was make me more angry. I tried to smile a lot, but yeah, it it took a good full year for that anger to dissipate.
John Simon Sr. 11:59
Do you think to writing your book helped you along the way?
Amy Grove 12:03
I think that has helped Absolutely. I think I had gotten to a good place before I started, which was probably a blessing. Yeah.
Dina Simon 12:14
How did you get there? So what did you so talk to us a little bit about that, because that first year, obviously, yes, your entire I mean, young, vibrant, amazing rock star always on the goal moving, and then your whole life changes, right? So that anger and having to get through that, but you did get through it. And then before, like, what happened between then and writing the book? Because there was a journey there.
Amy Grove 12:35
There was so I and part of it is gone. I don't remember, but I remember still to this day, and we laugh about it. The first day I walked into talk with my psychologist, and I had a list, because I was a list maker. I think I had a list of 52 different things we needed to answer before I could go back to work. And let's keep going. We got to get these done, and that's how I approached it. And she still laughs at me today, we wound up trying to dig back into I said, you know, for me, a value that I had prior to this was achievement. That was how I was raised. That was if on a farm, you had to get things done, getting things done meant you could move forward and you were succeeding. And, you know, you got the crop in, you got the animals taken care of. For me, it was, got to achieve, got to achieve, got to achieve. And learning to just be was foreign, learning to be good enough and not do anything
Dina Simon 13:43
to be still, yeah,
Amy Grove 13:44
to have that self worth when you're not accomplishing anything, that was probably one of the first things we worked on, because you Take your job away. They took my job away, and my self worth was tied to that. So that'll tie into a little bit of the books, but that's what we had to work on. First was just any you are valuable without a job, without a role with the charity, without coaching the girls, without doing these things, you know, take away all the labels and all of the titles and all of those things, you're still good enough. So once we worked on that, then we could move forward and work on other things. Yeah,
John Simon Sr. 14:32
I took a lot out of reading your examples of qualities in the back of the book. You have 80 different examples there, and they're all great adjectives about a lot of people, and I'm sure those came from people that you knew or that you worked with, or that their relatives and family and friends of yours. But when you take a look at some of them, like punctual, I'm a fanatic on punctuality and and that's important. Yeah. And other ones, like poised, yeah, and so when you look at all those, I'm sure they help to inspire you also to keep on going absolutely
Amy Grove 15:09
and it's, I think for me, the biggest thing was to become authentic. Not that I wasn't before, but I had a new being, and I figure out what authentically Amy meant at this point now. So I'm gonna take a Liberty here and tell you, while I was in that time frame, I started sewing and I started sewing gifts for my great niece and nephew at the time, and I sewed gnomes are in and I wound up having several of them sitting on the couch, and they were all kind of pointed different directions. They all looked like they were having little conversations, and that's how the books became. I was looking at them like, what do you think they're talking about? What do you you know? And I took my Christmas card, happened to be my dog in the middle of several of them, and I still use that picture now when I work with kids, what do you think she's thinking? So what are the stories they were telling each other? And how could I take the questions I was struggling with to answer and turn them into things that others could learn from? So who am I was the first question I had to answer.
John Simon Sr. 16:25
Well, you're a prime example of life. Gives you lemons. Make good lemon? Shallow, yes,
Dina Simon 16:33
absolutely, yes, yeah. So who am I was the first book, yeah. And then after that is, how do I feel? And you have some ideas for future books. Tell us a little bit about just even the experience of like writing your first book. How did that go? And then you pretty quickly did your second one. It sounds like you got more. So tell us a little bit about being an author. So
Amy Grove 16:56
the first book took probably between 18 months and two years because writing this story is one concept or one piece of it, finding somebody to do the the characters was another piece. But then learning what do you have to have? How do you do this? How do you make a book? How do you publish something? And my brain can only work for quote, unquote, work for a couple hours a day. There are plenty of days that it doesn't work at all. So you have to time that out and say, Okay, today I'm going to try and figure out what copyright do I have to have, or today I'm going to figure out, Is there a software I need to use? And so that took between two years and 18 months. Then we got it Live it launched. The first book was live, November 1 of 2021 the second book you more quickly, because we knew what we were doing. And that book launched, November 1 of 2022 I have a third book in process that is going to launch November 1 of 2023 nice. I hear a friend. Yeah. So each is a question that I've struggled with. And you'll say, Who am I from the grove story, and how do I feel from the grove story? Because all of the characters live in the grove, and that's where, even if you talk of like Brene Brown talks about going into the wilderness. Yes, the grove is my version of the wilderness. Nice. So nice
John Simon Sr. 18:28
is glory, the main character in the other book. Glory
Amy Grove 18:31
is not the main character in the second book, but she is. It is her sister who's the main character, and her name happens the Avery, who is my great niece, glory will be in all the books. Avery won't necessarily be in all the books, but there is a new character coming in the third book. Nice.
Dina Simon 18:49
A little tease, a little tease Exactly, exactly in
John Simon Sr. 18:53
reading the book. How did you come across the name glory is that a friend or someone that you're close with.
Amy Grove 19:01
Actually, it comes from the very end when you talk about being a glorious human being, and so glory is short or glorious, okay?
John Simon Sr. 19:11
Well, that makes, that makes a lot of sense. And this was your first book.
Amy Grove 19:16
That was my first book. Yep, many of the other characters have names that represent people or pets or places that I love. And
John Simon Sr. 19:26
at that point, you assumed my next question about the eight characters in the book, and you know, from Sophie to Miss dotley to orvey, are they either friends of yours that you tied them to? And how did you pick the animals that you used in it, you know the deer and the owl and the moose and the skunk and everyone else.
Amy Grove 19:47
So most of the animals have names that represent people in my life. So for example, Brooks, the bear, I have a great nephew who is six years old right now, whose name is Brooks, the rabbit's name is. Ray. His younger brother is Tatum. Ray orvi is my favorite uncle. My hometown is Maynard, Minnesota. Not a lot of people have heard of it. They've heard of other things named Maynard, but my hometown is Maynard, and that's the moose. And so a lot of the characters, just it was based upon the qualities that different animals have. And I kind of tried to tie that to people. The
John Simon Sr. 20:26
illustrator of your book, a young lady, I think, by the name of Schultz. How did you meet her? Run into her So
Amy Grove 20:35
Terry. Her name is Terry Schultz. She happens to be a neighbor of mine, and we were talking one day, she's retired, and talking about this book and what I was going to be doing, and looking for somebody to do the illustrations. And she had showed me some tennis shoes that she had painted for her grandson with characters on. I said, would you want to do that for my book? And she's like, Oh my gosh, yes. So we have had this great partnership, and she has taken her art practice far beyond my books, and now has paintings and galleries and things as well. And so she's kicking off her and act as well.
Dina Simon 21:14
Oh my gosh, I love that. I didn't know that.
Amy Grove 21:16
Oh yeah,
John Simon Sr. 21:18
it's amazing how you've tied your family and your friends and pets and everyone into it, almost similar to what we're doing with Simon Says, aspire, getting our family and friends and relatives and and co workers and everyone that we can think of.
Amy Grove 21:35
Yep, you guys have the Simon Says and I have from the girls, exactly,
Dina Simon 21:39
yes, you got to play on on your last name, Grove. I love that. So Amy, we will be sharing, you know, links and all that kind of stuff. But how do people find you?
Amy Grove 21:49
The easiest way is, I have a website. It's www, dot. GROVE works.us. So G, R, O, v, e, w, O, R, k, s.us,
Dina Simon 22:02
awesome and share with John and share with the listeners. So what have you been doing in taking the books into classrooms? Tell us about that.
Amy Grove 22:10
This is the best part of being an author. Is going to work with the littles. I go and read places like child care facilities through generally third grade is the old list that that I work with the books on, and I go in and read this story. And when I read this story, we talk through a bunch of the lessons, because there's so many hidden lessons in each of the books. And then, for example, the second book, when I read to them, and I talk about how to manage your emotions, and I bring in balloons, and we use the balloons, and we talk about how to, you know, exhale out when you've got big emotions, you know, take a deep breath and then blow it out like you were letting the air out of a balloon. So I try to do a lot of interactive things with them as well. But you get so many amazing questions from the kids, everything from I like your shoes. I like your dog to what if I had, what if I got really angry at my sister? What should I do? Oh, I love that. They're kind of thing, yeah, and being able to, you know, understand too, the difference between anger and frustration, because they're different emotions, and how do they feel in your body? We talk about, you know, if you're frustrated, maybe you feel like vibrating like you're trapped inside, whereas when you're angry, maybe you have a ball of hot heat in your chest. Or if you're really excited, all your cells are bouncing around. And so that's the fun part. When I grew up, I talk about this too, is my emotions that I got to have were like, when you could buy the box of eight crayons, there are only eight colors in that box. That's great, but there's a boxes of, what is it? 124 with the pencil sharpeners. Now, right? You know, there's 124 emotions. There's not just that pack of eight. Eight, Yep, let's start to play with them and actually identify them correctly, and, you know, explain them and feel them and so much
John Simon Sr. 24:21
like you have the 80 qualities, there's a whole bunch of different colors in each one of those qualities also,
Dina Simon 24:27
yes. And from working with adults to share a little bit about your hopes on this, this book is for kids. Of all these books and the series, they're really for kids of all ages.
Amy Grove 24:39
Yep, so we say they're books for everyone, disguised as children's books, and so yeah, generally, I mean, people of all ages are buying them, and they're geared towards the conversation with a little what I'm working on now is I'm taking all the information that I learned through the. Past six years, and trying to put that into more of a workshop situation where I can talk with teens, tweens, adults, and we're going to talk through lots of different things. You know about your emotions, about your identity, about your limiting beliefs. You know what is that? And you know for kids, especially when they talk about your identity, it's not a label somebody puts on you. No, that's theirs. What is your identity? What's inside you? And adults struggle with that sometimes, too. Amen, yeah. And so then you know going through your feelings and how your thoughts trigger your feelings that create an action to give you a result. So we talk about, if you get really angry in class and somebody runs out the door and slams the door back it up and go, Okay, what was the action? Was they ran out the door? The feeling was frustrated, probably, what was the thought that that that child was having, that you can work on. And I've talked with teachers about this as well. We talk about how just different, gosh, there's, there's so many things, yeah, beyond what's what some of it is in the next books. So,
Dina Simon 26:15
yeah, you can't give it away, right? Yeah, I gotta, you gotta hold on to some of that Exactly, exactly. So, Amy, I know you prepared, because I know you so I know you prepared for the podcast. Is there anything else that you were thinking of that you would just like to have the listeners know about you, about the growth stories, anything that you'd like to share? Yeah,
Amy Grove 26:34
definitely. So we talked a little bit about in the past, I know you've, you've asked people about advice? Yes, probably my biggest piece of advice that I would give anybody is to start. Don't let your fear of what other people are going to think of you stop you. That was huge for me because, again, tied to my worth this whole who's going to want to listen to somebody with a broken brain? Well, you know what? I'm the one who can tell the story. I'm the one who can share with you everything I learned. Nobody is better at telling this than me, agreed. So that is my key piece of advice for everybody.
Dina Simon 27:17
Yeah. So Amy, let's step on that. So don't let what what you think other people
Amy Grove 27:22
are going here, of what other people think of you. Stop you Yes,
Dina Simon 27:27
and so with what you went through with a major health life change. But then you think about, and not to trivialize that, but you've talked about so much of your journey and figuring out what your second act is. And you think about people that, you know, they rode the corporate ladder and just got fired from a job because of a layoff or something, and they struggle to to figure out, Okay, what's, what's this next act? What can that look like? Because so much is tied to, unfortunately, a lot of us those labels of what we do in business. And so when things do get changed, it is, you know, I think Brene Brown, it's the, you know, who's in the arena with you conversation, absolutely.
Amy Grove 28:04
And it whether it's a leader who has been laid off, or somebody who's gotten divorced or somebody who's graduated college, we all have these moments, yep. And whether it's even, you know, I have a neighbor who has started a weight loss journey, and, you know, have to take that picture of the first one. It's like, post it. Everybody's busy thinking about themselves, right, right? Just post it. It's for you. You know, don't let your fear of what other people are going to think stop you.
John Simon Sr. 28:36
You're certainly an inspiration. There's no question about that. And I'm sure the young people that you talk to after you're finished, they have to be pretty excited, because they you, I'm sure you tell them a little bit of the story which you went through, and how you got started on your journey, and how you continue to have a positive effect on so many people's lives.
Amy Grove 28:56
I tell them what I can um, based upon age, but Right, yeah, that's the fun part. Is just seeing, you know, hoping that they're going to take a nugget of this home with them. And for the second book, I have a handout that I send with them that talks about thoughts and actions and feelings and and both books, I have bookmarks for them that explain to them, you know, they can write on the back what are your qualities? And I love it. I love it.
John Simon Sr. 29:23
It's something they can carry with themselves for a long time, absolutely.
Amy Grove 29:26
So, yep, any other advice that you wanted to leave our listeners with when you guys talk about, you know, your podcast being around inspiration and leadership and legacy? I think for me, my legacy is I have a phrase to my monitor that says, I aspire to inspire until I expire, and I'm really close to expiring, so now we're going to work on the inspiring and the aspiring. So I think that, you know, just having two. Your attitude every day. We do get to choose it. You can roll out of bed and stub your toe and just go stub my toe. Or you can roll out of bed go stub my toe. You've got to choose. You do.
Dina Simon 30:11
And one of the, one of the words that I would use for you certainly through all of this, obviously, is resilient, because you've had to be in like what you just talked about, you can have a good day and a bad day. You can have good hours bad hours, but you've had to pick yourself back up and be extraordinarily resilient. And that's, you know, just such an admirable trait, because you have had to power through a lot, and you've come through with a lot of hard work. And I love to you, even talk with you about your therapist like you use the word we like you know, you've got people that have been in your community, of others that have that have helped you through this journey, and that they'll continue to be there with you and for you. And I love that you I love that you have found those people that have been able to support you through it.
Amy Grove 30:54
The other thing I wanted to make sure that you know I shared with you is from a leadership standpoint as well. You never know who's watching you. Yes, we absolutely never know. I have had people come up to me and say, I read your book, or your sister told me about you, or this happened and I found out about you, and oh, gosh, I'm just going about my own recovery here, you know, and people are watching, and they, you know, I just got done telling you they're not paying attention to you, but they're paying attention to you. And watch, watching you succeed, and watching you move forward. And they take from your journey or my journey, a belief system that they can, they can move forward too. I belong to several different brain aneurysms survivor groups and some stroke survivor groups, and I'm inspired by them, and hopefully I inspire them. We've had family, friends and neighbors who have had issues with their brain as well, and I hope that I can always be there to lend support and show them what's possible. I'm not, not going to get back to who I was, but I'm going to make the best of what I am and what I can do.
Dina Simon 32:09
And look at, look at all, oh my gosh, Amy, and so again, look at all the inspiration you have already. You will continue to you're on this amazing path and journey. I love that you're going to school. So you know, hopefully some of our podcast listeners are like, Oh my gosh, I have ideas for Amy. You could turn, you could turn the books into a, like, a children's movie or something. I mean, there's so much you could do with training, right? And getting into schools more and so just that, there's a lot of those avenues. I do know the 1000s of people, hundreds of 1000s of people that you've already impacted in our relationship with Simon says, Give, and then also now in what you're doing. So super excited for you. One thing too, John will share with you is with upcoming high five for supplies, we are hoping to do some fundraising to get Amy's books in as many backpacks as possible this year in our partnership and support with Amy. So Amy, you've done a great job. The hardcovers are beautiful, but we've gotten some soft cover examples, and the soft covers are a little bit less expensive, so that's awesome. So we can do some fundraising and try and get those into the backpacks, because that's what our partnership is all about is, how do we just continue to multiply and impact the kids, our next generation, that need these great conversations and leadership skills? John, any other last minute questions for Amy, no,
John Simon Sr. 33:31
you know, I've learned a lot in this last 40 minutes. And Amy, I wish you nothing but the greatest success as you continue your journey in the grove, and I look forward to taking the opportunity to read the other two books.
Dina Simon 33:46
I would like to thank my amazing friend Amy Grove, for sharing her story with us. Amy, we love you. We are blessed that you were able to make it through your brain aneurysms, and I know the hard work that you put in every day and continue to you are an inspiration to all of us, and you continue to live your legacy out every day in what you're doing. Please check out Grove works.us. To find out more about Amy and her current books and upcoming books and training and how you can get engaged as always, I would love to thank my co host, my father in law, John Simon, for his partnership in this podcast. And until next time, thank you. You.
John, welcome to Simon Says, inspire a podcast about life, leadership and building legacies. I'm John, Simon
Dina Simon 00:14
and I'm Dina Simon,
John Simon Sr. 00:15
and today we have Amy grove with us.
Amy Grove 00:19
Hi there. I'm Amy.
Dina Simon 00:21
Amy, we are so excited to have you, and I know John has met you along the way, but he's going to get a chance to get reintroduced to you, because you've been a part of my life, Mandy's life, Rich's life for at least a decade now, right?
Amy Grove 00:35
Yeah, my gosh, yes,
Dina Simon 00:37
yes, if you look back on on the dates. So we're extremely excited for our podcast listeners to get to know your journey, the amazing Amy that you are, and everything that we've actually been able to do together as well, because we've had a lot of fun with Mandy's nonprofit, and just in life and leadership and legacies, you're the perfect guest for us.
Amy Grove 01:00
Thank you.
Dina Simon 01:01
Yeah, so why don't we share where it began? So it's been over a decade, right? Like, how many at least 11,
Amy Grove 01:08
I guess maybe 2010 2011 Yeah, so
Dina Simon 01:11
let's call it a decade plus. So we had the good fortune of meeting, because we worked together for a brief period of time, and that was right when Mandy was thinking of a nonprofit called Simon says, Give And so John. You may or may not know this, but Amy immediately stepped in and helped us with our big backpack event, high five first supplies, and was truly the operations guru behind us, organizing and making it really a turnkey event. And that ended up that turnkey event. We made it look so easy because of Amy's hard work that it turned into a Guinness World Record organization event because of all of the amazing just work that Amy brought to the table, a lot of sweat and tears and joy and fun that was had over all those years that you were co chairing with Mandy, and when she was eight, 910, 11 years old, super young back then.
John Simon Sr. 02:07
So now we know where Mandy came up with her organizational skills. Yes, we do. A lot of them from from Amy, and I can remember one of the ones that granny attended, and she said, You can't believe how Mandy can get tables set up and everything needed to put the backpacks together, and how quickly she was able to do it. So apparently, a lot of that came from Amy.
Amy Grove 02:33
It did well. Thank you. It was fun. I had more fun doing that than most things that I've done. So yeah,
Dina Simon 02:40
so Amy co chaired for many years and brought her amazing friends to the table. So a lot of our key volunteers that gave every year their time and talent were, you know, a whole entourage of your friends and people that wanted to get involved and were super engaged and inspired with that. So that's where we got to play really hard together and have so much fun and make impact. So I just thank you for all of those many years of support, and then along the way, obviously we became very close friends. So you are like a sister to me, and John, I have a February birthday, and then Amy has a march birthday. So we're very similar in age as well. So we just have a lot in common, from, you know, just who we are and how we grew up, where we grew up, and we have sisters and all of that. So, Amy, will you share so we work together? You've had you will you share a little bit, maybe about your growing up? You talked about Maynard, but share with us a little bit about your story and who you are and how you got here. Okay,
Amy Grove 03:40
I will do a really condensed version, but yep, I did grow up in Maynard, Minnesota on a farm. It was a true working farm. We had animals and we had crops. I had no brothers, as Dina mentioned, I have a sister. So my father thought it was extremely important for me to learn how to do everything. So I learned how to drive tractors, and I learned how to weld, and I learned my ethic for hard work from him and and from my mom. I also got a lot of my creativity from my mom. So grew up there, did a couple years I did my associate's degree, and then moved to the Twin Cities with a job offer, and so worked here in the Twin Cities for many years, started in the executive assistant arena, and then as an adult, I finished my bachelor's degree from Bethel, and then moved into operations and then operations leadership and operations IT and HR leadership. So that's where we were at when we met. Yeah, absolutely.
Dina Simon 04:44
And just a rock star. So I mean, just, and I know any, anybody that worked with you, or had the opportunity to work with you in business, certainly appreciated what you brought to the table, because it was everything that we talked about, as far as what you also brought to then, you know, Simon says, Give, and any nonprofit or thing that you get involved in, from. A community perspective. Will you share with us your life changing event that happened? So it's your story to tell, and we can ask some questions along the way, but love for you to kind of kick that story off Absolutely. So
Amy Grove 05:12
I was driving home from a regular day on Thursday, February 2, 2017 I was headed to the store to go get supplies. We were having a Super Bowl party dip contest the next day, and I was sitting at a stoplight probably about a mile from my house when it felt like somebody who was sitting in the back seat took a baseball bat and hit me in the back of the head. I honestly do not remember how I got home, but I got home, my car was in the garage, and I made it into the house. Over the next couple days, and several doctors, we figured out that what had happened is I had had a brain aneurysm rupture in my brain while I was in the second hospital during that time frame, I had a subsequent stroke in the back of my brain. So my brain aneurysm is located behind my right eye, and the stroke, secondary stroke, was in the back 55 days from that February 2 I wound up having or 57 days, I'm sorry, 57 days after that, I wound up having a craniotomy, and they went in and clipped the aneurysm behind my right eye. From that point on, I wound up going through quite a bit of speech therapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and have continued to do that on and off for the past six years, yeah, to get to the point where I'm at now. So, yeah, it's quite an adventure. It was
Dina Simon 06:51
an adventure. And I remember just Amy, and just Amy, even just the medications that you had to take, like, it was so massive. And I know, you know, every kind of month, there were different things that you went through to process out of that journey, and different things and and because I, I've known you prior to that, like you're super open to different medicines and homeopathic stuff and what, what can we be doing, but always researching for new ways to help yourself, even so trial, things that you've done and things of that nature.
John Simon Sr. 07:24
Amy, prior to the incident on that Thursday, did you have any other previous symptoms of anything
Amy Grove 07:32
earlier that day, I had a really short dizzy spell, and I mean, probably last maybe 10 seconds, if that I had had a couple headaches, but there was nothing that would have indicated that was coming. And
John Simon Sr. 07:46
how common or uncommon Is it where you have two in two when you have the aneurysm, and then all of a sudden they do tests and they find out you have another issue on top of that.
Amy Grove 07:57
So generally speaking, one in 50 people has a brain aneurysm, and then the odds of surviving dropped considerably, having a secondary issue at that same time i I'm pretty lucky to be alive, let alone being able to speak with you and doing the things that I do. So did you say one in 51? In 51? In 50? Yeah,
John Simon Sr. 08:21
wow. I did not realize that they were that prevalent, that that many people ended up having aneurysms.
Dina Simon 08:28
I remember when you talked about the story too, like the doctors told you that you're because it happened when you were driving like that alone. You're lucky to be alive, like you said. And then, you know, you went through so many days where people were trying to figure out. You went to multiple doctors and hospitals and them really trying to figure out what was going on, even at that time. So we're super blessed that you are here, and you have certainly had to, you know, fight through it every day to get to where you are, and have done so with so much grace. You've also done a lot of research and advocacy for people with brain aneurysms and things of that nature. What would you what would you like to share, as far as that kind of stuff with our listeners, as far as education or knowledge or ways to learn more?
Amy Grove 09:14
So first, I'll tell you some of the things that I really find important now is and brain aneurysm is a form of a stroke. It is a bleeding form of a stroke. There are clot forms of strokes. There are bleeding forms of strokes. I didn't know that when I was sitting in the hospital, the stroke training person came in and tried to tell my sister I'd had a stroke, and she's like, No, she didn't. Because we, we assimilate a stroke or we, we think a stroke as a person who can't feel the one side of their body and their face, there's so many different ways. So yes, I do a lot of advocating as far as strokes. I do a lot of advocating for brain aneurysms. I work and share some information, and then I donate to the Joe necro foundation to there's the. Foundation. There's same you, which is Amelia Clark, a lot of people know from Game of Thrones. Gosh, there's, there's so many out there. The Breen aneurysm Foundation, or bafoundation.com is, is a great place to go find information. Okay,
John Simon Sr. 10:15
you mentioned earlier about the people that helped you along the way, your physical therapist, your occupational therapist, your speech pathologist, and the amazing help that those people can be,
Amy Grove 10:28
they are specialists, aren't they? They walked me through and they taught me how to do things. But I mean, balance was huge since, since I had the secondary in the back of my brain, my balance was off considerably. I still struggle with that at times, especially if I'm tired. My cognitive ability, since the aneurysm was up in front, it's a lot of speed of processing. It's a lot of memory issues, it's a lot of multiple step kind of activities that I still struggle with. Full disclosure, I napped already this morning before coming to talk to you so that I was fresh. I'll take a nap after this as well. The other therapist that I would say, was a huge piece of that was my psychologist. I will be honest and tell you, my first year, I smiled at everybody and told them I was great and so thankful to be alive. And underneath, I was so angry My life wasn't going to be the same as it was, and that made me so angry. I wanted having that work ethic and that achiever mentality I felt trapped in my own body to be able to get back and do what I wanted to do. And people were telling me, Well, you're probably never going to get to do that again. And all that did was make me more angry. I tried to smile a lot, but yeah, it it took a good full year for that anger to dissipate.
John Simon Sr. 11:59
Do you think to writing your book helped you along the way?
Amy Grove 12:03
I think that has helped Absolutely. I think I had gotten to a good place before I started, which was probably a blessing. Yeah.
Dina Simon 12:14
How did you get there? So what did you so talk to us a little bit about that, because that first year, obviously, yes, your entire I mean, young, vibrant, amazing rock star always on the goal moving, and then your whole life changes, right? So that anger and having to get through that, but you did get through it. And then before, like, what happened between then and writing the book? Because there was a journey there.
Amy Grove 12:35
There was so I and part of it is gone. I don't remember, but I remember still to this day, and we laugh about it. The first day I walked into talk with my psychologist, and I had a list, because I was a list maker. I think I had a list of 52 different things we needed to answer before I could go back to work. And let's keep going. We got to get these done, and that's how I approached it. And she still laughs at me today, we wound up trying to dig back into I said, you know, for me, a value that I had prior to this was achievement. That was how I was raised. That was if on a farm, you had to get things done, getting things done meant you could move forward and you were succeeding. And, you know, you got the crop in, you got the animals taken care of. For me, it was, got to achieve, got to achieve, got to achieve. And learning to just be was foreign, learning to be good enough and not do anything
Dina Simon 13:43
to be still, yeah,
Amy Grove 13:44
to have that self worth when you're not accomplishing anything, that was probably one of the first things we worked on, because you Take your job away. They took my job away, and my self worth was tied to that. So that'll tie into a little bit of the books, but that's what we had to work on. First was just any you are valuable without a job, without a role with the charity, without coaching the girls, without doing these things, you know, take away all the labels and all of the titles and all of those things, you're still good enough. So once we worked on that, then we could move forward and work on other things. Yeah,
John Simon Sr. 14:32
I took a lot out of reading your examples of qualities in the back of the book. You have 80 different examples there, and they're all great adjectives about a lot of people, and I'm sure those came from people that you knew or that you worked with, or that their relatives and family and friends of yours. But when you take a look at some of them, like punctual, I'm a fanatic on punctuality and and that's important. Yeah. And other ones, like poised, yeah, and so when you look at all those, I'm sure they help to inspire you also to keep on going absolutely
Amy Grove 15:09
and it's, I think for me, the biggest thing was to become authentic. Not that I wasn't before, but I had a new being, and I figure out what authentically Amy meant at this point now. So I'm gonna take a Liberty here and tell you, while I was in that time frame, I started sewing and I started sewing gifts for my great niece and nephew at the time, and I sewed gnomes are in and I wound up having several of them sitting on the couch, and they were all kind of pointed different directions. They all looked like they were having little conversations, and that's how the books became. I was looking at them like, what do you think they're talking about? What do you you know? And I took my Christmas card, happened to be my dog in the middle of several of them, and I still use that picture now when I work with kids, what do you think she's thinking? So what are the stories they were telling each other? And how could I take the questions I was struggling with to answer and turn them into things that others could learn from? So who am I was the first question I had to answer.
John Simon Sr. 16:25
Well, you're a prime example of life. Gives you lemons. Make good lemon? Shallow, yes,
Dina Simon 16:33
absolutely, yes, yeah. So who am I was the first book, yeah. And then after that is, how do I feel? And you have some ideas for future books. Tell us a little bit about just even the experience of like writing your first book. How did that go? And then you pretty quickly did your second one. It sounds like you got more. So tell us a little bit about being an author. So
Amy Grove 16:56
the first book took probably between 18 months and two years because writing this story is one concept or one piece of it, finding somebody to do the the characters was another piece. But then learning what do you have to have? How do you do this? How do you make a book? How do you publish something? And my brain can only work for quote, unquote, work for a couple hours a day. There are plenty of days that it doesn't work at all. So you have to time that out and say, Okay, today I'm going to try and figure out what copyright do I have to have, or today I'm going to figure out, Is there a software I need to use? And so that took between two years and 18 months. Then we got it Live it launched. The first book was live, November 1 of 2021 the second book you more quickly, because we knew what we were doing. And that book launched, November 1 of 2022 I have a third book in process that is going to launch November 1 of 2023 nice. I hear a friend. Yeah. So each is a question that I've struggled with. And you'll say, Who am I from the grove story, and how do I feel from the grove story? Because all of the characters live in the grove, and that's where, even if you talk of like Brene Brown talks about going into the wilderness. Yes, the grove is my version of the wilderness. Nice. So nice
John Simon Sr. 18:28
is glory, the main character in the other book. Glory
Amy Grove 18:31
is not the main character in the second book, but she is. It is her sister who's the main character, and her name happens the Avery, who is my great niece, glory will be in all the books. Avery won't necessarily be in all the books, but there is a new character coming in the third book. Nice.
Dina Simon 18:49
A little tease, a little tease Exactly, exactly in
John Simon Sr. 18:53
reading the book. How did you come across the name glory is that a friend or someone that you're close with.
Amy Grove 19:01
Actually, it comes from the very end when you talk about being a glorious human being, and so glory is short or glorious, okay?
John Simon Sr. 19:11
Well, that makes, that makes a lot of sense. And this was your first book.
Amy Grove 19:16
That was my first book. Yep, many of the other characters have names that represent people or pets or places that I love. And
John Simon Sr. 19:26
at that point, you assumed my next question about the eight characters in the book, and you know, from Sophie to Miss dotley to orvey, are they either friends of yours that you tied them to? And how did you pick the animals that you used in it, you know the deer and the owl and the moose and the skunk and everyone else.
Amy Grove 19:47
So most of the animals have names that represent people in my life. So for example, Brooks, the bear, I have a great nephew who is six years old right now, whose name is Brooks, the rabbit's name is. Ray. His younger brother is Tatum. Ray orvi is my favorite uncle. My hometown is Maynard, Minnesota. Not a lot of people have heard of it. They've heard of other things named Maynard, but my hometown is Maynard, and that's the moose. And so a lot of the characters, just it was based upon the qualities that different animals have. And I kind of tried to tie that to people. The
John Simon Sr. 20:26
illustrator of your book, a young lady, I think, by the name of Schultz. How did you meet her? Run into her So
Amy Grove 20:35
Terry. Her name is Terry Schultz. She happens to be a neighbor of mine, and we were talking one day, she's retired, and talking about this book and what I was going to be doing, and looking for somebody to do the illustrations. And she had showed me some tennis shoes that she had painted for her grandson with characters on. I said, would you want to do that for my book? And she's like, Oh my gosh, yes. So we have had this great partnership, and she has taken her art practice far beyond my books, and now has paintings and galleries and things as well. And so she's kicking off her and act as well.
Dina Simon 21:14
Oh my gosh, I love that. I didn't know that.
Amy Grove 21:16
Oh yeah,
John Simon Sr. 21:18
it's amazing how you've tied your family and your friends and pets and everyone into it, almost similar to what we're doing with Simon Says, aspire, getting our family and friends and relatives and and co workers and everyone that we can think of.
Amy Grove 21:35
Yep, you guys have the Simon Says and I have from the girls, exactly,
Dina Simon 21:39
yes, you got to play on on your last name, Grove. I love that. So Amy, we will be sharing, you know, links and all that kind of stuff. But how do people find you?
Amy Grove 21:49
The easiest way is, I have a website. It's www, dot. GROVE works.us. So G, R, O, v, e, w, O, R, k, s.us,
Dina Simon 22:02
awesome and share with John and share with the listeners. So what have you been doing in taking the books into classrooms? Tell us about that.
Amy Grove 22:10
This is the best part of being an author. Is going to work with the littles. I go and read places like child care facilities through generally third grade is the old list that that I work with the books on, and I go in and read this story. And when I read this story, we talk through a bunch of the lessons, because there's so many hidden lessons in each of the books. And then, for example, the second book, when I read to them, and I talk about how to manage your emotions, and I bring in balloons, and we use the balloons, and we talk about how to, you know, exhale out when you've got big emotions, you know, take a deep breath and then blow it out like you were letting the air out of a balloon. So I try to do a lot of interactive things with them as well. But you get so many amazing questions from the kids, everything from I like your shoes. I like your dog to what if I had, what if I got really angry at my sister? What should I do? Oh, I love that. They're kind of thing, yeah, and being able to, you know, understand too, the difference between anger and frustration, because they're different emotions, and how do they feel in your body? We talk about, you know, if you're frustrated, maybe you feel like vibrating like you're trapped inside, whereas when you're angry, maybe you have a ball of hot heat in your chest. Or if you're really excited, all your cells are bouncing around. And so that's the fun part. When I grew up, I talk about this too, is my emotions that I got to have were like, when you could buy the box of eight crayons, there are only eight colors in that box. That's great, but there's a boxes of, what is it? 124 with the pencil sharpeners. Now, right? You know, there's 124 emotions. There's not just that pack of eight. Eight, Yep, let's start to play with them and actually identify them correctly, and, you know, explain them and feel them and so much
John Simon Sr. 24:21
like you have the 80 qualities, there's a whole bunch of different colors in each one of those qualities also,
Dina Simon 24:27
yes. And from working with adults to share a little bit about your hopes on this, this book is for kids. Of all these books and the series, they're really for kids of all ages.
Amy Grove 24:39
Yep, so we say they're books for everyone, disguised as children's books, and so yeah, generally, I mean, people of all ages are buying them, and they're geared towards the conversation with a little what I'm working on now is I'm taking all the information that I learned through the. Past six years, and trying to put that into more of a workshop situation where I can talk with teens, tweens, adults, and we're going to talk through lots of different things. You know about your emotions, about your identity, about your limiting beliefs. You know what is that? And you know for kids, especially when they talk about your identity, it's not a label somebody puts on you. No, that's theirs. What is your identity? What's inside you? And adults struggle with that sometimes, too. Amen, yeah. And so then you know going through your feelings and how your thoughts trigger your feelings that create an action to give you a result. So we talk about, if you get really angry in class and somebody runs out the door and slams the door back it up and go, Okay, what was the action? Was they ran out the door? The feeling was frustrated, probably, what was the thought that that that child was having, that you can work on. And I've talked with teachers about this as well. We talk about how just different, gosh, there's, there's so many things, yeah, beyond what's what some of it is in the next books. So,
Dina Simon 26:15
yeah, you can't give it away, right? Yeah, I gotta, you gotta hold on to some of that Exactly, exactly. So, Amy, I know you prepared, because I know you so I know you prepared for the podcast. Is there anything else that you were thinking of that you would just like to have the listeners know about you, about the growth stories, anything that you'd like to share? Yeah,
Amy Grove 26:34
definitely. So we talked a little bit about in the past, I know you've, you've asked people about advice? Yes, probably my biggest piece of advice that I would give anybody is to start. Don't let your fear of what other people are going to think of you stop you. That was huge for me because, again, tied to my worth this whole who's going to want to listen to somebody with a broken brain? Well, you know what? I'm the one who can tell the story. I'm the one who can share with you everything I learned. Nobody is better at telling this than me, agreed. So that is my key piece of advice for everybody.
Dina Simon 27:17
Yeah. So Amy, let's step on that. So don't let what what you think other people
Amy Grove 27:22
are going here, of what other people think of you. Stop you Yes,
Dina Simon 27:27
and so with what you went through with a major health life change. But then you think about, and not to trivialize that, but you've talked about so much of your journey and figuring out what your second act is. And you think about people that, you know, they rode the corporate ladder and just got fired from a job because of a layoff or something, and they struggle to to figure out, Okay, what's, what's this next act? What can that look like? Because so much is tied to, unfortunately, a lot of us those labels of what we do in business. And so when things do get changed, it is, you know, I think Brene Brown, it's the, you know, who's in the arena with you conversation, absolutely.
Amy Grove 28:04
And it whether it's a leader who has been laid off, or somebody who's gotten divorced or somebody who's graduated college, we all have these moments, yep. And whether it's even, you know, I have a neighbor who has started a weight loss journey, and, you know, have to take that picture of the first one. It's like, post it. Everybody's busy thinking about themselves, right, right? Just post it. It's for you. You know, don't let your fear of what other people are going to think stop you.
John Simon Sr. 28:36
You're certainly an inspiration. There's no question about that. And I'm sure the young people that you talk to after you're finished, they have to be pretty excited, because they you, I'm sure you tell them a little bit of the story which you went through, and how you got started on your journey, and how you continue to have a positive effect on so many people's lives.
Amy Grove 28:56
I tell them what I can um, based upon age, but Right, yeah, that's the fun part. Is just seeing, you know, hoping that they're going to take a nugget of this home with them. And for the second book, I have a handout that I send with them that talks about thoughts and actions and feelings and and both books, I have bookmarks for them that explain to them, you know, they can write on the back what are your qualities? And I love it. I love it.
John Simon Sr. 29:23
It's something they can carry with themselves for a long time, absolutely.
Amy Grove 29:26
So, yep, any other advice that you wanted to leave our listeners with when you guys talk about, you know, your podcast being around inspiration and leadership and legacy? I think for me, my legacy is I have a phrase to my monitor that says, I aspire to inspire until I expire, and I'm really close to expiring, so now we're going to work on the inspiring and the aspiring. So I think that, you know, just having two. Your attitude every day. We do get to choose it. You can roll out of bed and stub your toe and just go stub my toe. Or you can roll out of bed go stub my toe. You've got to choose. You do.
Dina Simon 30:11
And one of the, one of the words that I would use for you certainly through all of this, obviously, is resilient, because you've had to be in like what you just talked about, you can have a good day and a bad day. You can have good hours bad hours, but you've had to pick yourself back up and be extraordinarily resilient. And that's, you know, just such an admirable trait, because you have had to power through a lot, and you've come through with a lot of hard work. And I love to you, even talk with you about your therapist like you use the word we like you know, you've got people that have been in your community, of others that have that have helped you through this journey, and that they'll continue to be there with you and for you. And I love that you I love that you have found those people that have been able to support you through it.
Amy Grove 30:54
The other thing I wanted to make sure that you know I shared with you is from a leadership standpoint as well. You never know who's watching you. Yes, we absolutely never know. I have had people come up to me and say, I read your book, or your sister told me about you, or this happened and I found out about you, and oh, gosh, I'm just going about my own recovery here, you know, and people are watching, and they, you know, I just got done telling you they're not paying attention to you, but they're paying attention to you. And watch, watching you succeed, and watching you move forward. And they take from your journey or my journey, a belief system that they can, they can move forward too. I belong to several different brain aneurysms survivor groups and some stroke survivor groups, and I'm inspired by them, and hopefully I inspire them. We've had family, friends and neighbors who have had issues with their brain as well, and I hope that I can always be there to lend support and show them what's possible. I'm not, not going to get back to who I was, but I'm going to make the best of what I am and what I can do.
Dina Simon 32:09
And look at, look at all, oh my gosh, Amy, and so again, look at all the inspiration you have already. You will continue to you're on this amazing path and journey. I love that you're going to school. So you know, hopefully some of our podcast listeners are like, Oh my gosh, I have ideas for Amy. You could turn, you could turn the books into a, like, a children's movie or something. I mean, there's so much you could do with training, right? And getting into schools more and so just that, there's a lot of those avenues. I do know the 1000s of people, hundreds of 1000s of people that you've already impacted in our relationship with Simon says, Give, and then also now in what you're doing. So super excited for you. One thing too, John will share with you is with upcoming high five for supplies, we are hoping to do some fundraising to get Amy's books in as many backpacks as possible this year in our partnership and support with Amy. So Amy, you've done a great job. The hardcovers are beautiful, but we've gotten some soft cover examples, and the soft covers are a little bit less expensive, so that's awesome. So we can do some fundraising and try and get those into the backpacks, because that's what our partnership is all about is, how do we just continue to multiply and impact the kids, our next generation, that need these great conversations and leadership skills? John, any other last minute questions for Amy, no,
John Simon Sr. 33:31
you know, I've learned a lot in this last 40 minutes. And Amy, I wish you nothing but the greatest success as you continue your journey in the grove, and I look forward to taking the opportunity to read the other two books.
Dina Simon 33:46
I would like to thank my amazing friend Amy Grove, for sharing her story with us. Amy, we love you. We are blessed that you were able to make it through your brain aneurysms, and I know the hard work that you put in every day and continue to you are an inspiration to all of us, and you continue to live your legacy out every day in what you're doing. Please check out Grove works.us. To find out more about Amy and her current books and upcoming books and training and how you can get engaged as always, I would love to thank my co host, my father in law, John Simon, for his partnership in this podcast. And until next time, thank you. You.