Wake Up With Marci

A real traumatic event that has happened in your life and you lost your son. You always picture the evolution of life. It happens to people who’ve lived their lives, not somebody’s just starting there. So, it was really bizarre, unnatural. There’s a incredible emptiness going on. And my wife and I luckily stayed together as a lot of couples break up over this. People around the world that have less than us or go through difficult times are actually more thankful and grateful than we are. Gratitude is a magnet for miracles. This is Zay Harding, the dynamic host of CBS’s hit Saturday morning series, The Visioners with Zay Harding. Zay has built a reputation for storytelling that is not only visually stunning, but deeply meaningful. He brings a rare mix of curiosity, courage, and genuine humanity to every place he visits. Zay has a way of making the world feel connected and making the future feel possible. His passion for impact, his commitment to elevating unheard stories have made him a standout voice in environmental storytelling. You know, one in three girls are sexually abused and about one in five boys, you know, and it’s always somebody close to us. If you’re feeling something is uncomfortable, the most powerful thing you can do is just tell the person this makes me feel uncomfortable. And I also want to say that you don’t need a catastrophe to choose a better life. Right. Y you just need to say I want more and start creating that shift. When somebody dies, they have a remedy. Go to a neighbor who has never lost anyone. Get something from their garden. Plant it in your garden. Z, welcome to Wake Up with Marcy. Such an honor to have you on the show. Thank you, Marcy. It’s an honor for me to be here. Yes. So, we were just talking about it a little bit. You’re there in London and uh already had a full day. So was talking about your show Visionaeers and a second season was just picked up and that is so exciting and it airs on CBS on Saturday mornings. I don’t get to watch TV a whole lot on Saturday mornings but one morning I actually did turn on Visionaires and I was so intrigued I stopped and it was the episode about the seaw wall. I was like the seaw wall. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, “That makes so much sense.” And like I was like, “Oh my god, I gotta like I have a house in Florida. Like I gotta tell everyone to start changing the seaw wall.” Yeah. Yeah. I mean, they’re they’re so smart because they’re incorporating exactly how they already put seaw walls in, but they’re doing it in an eco-friendly way and the the animals, the sea life is loving it a lot more. And it it also filters the water if you do it this way. Yeah, 100%. So, can you tell us about visionaeers and and this was a vision of yours, isn’t that correct? Yes. Yeah. In in an odd way, I’m a visioner, too. But I’m But it’s it’s everybody who’s, you know, taken the the risk to to make the show happen. We’re all We are all visioners and uh it’s just really exciting to see it it play out. And um I mean I I’m pinching myself right now. Life has never been so good. And you know, we all have our ups and downs through life. And and I thought this I I envisioned this a long time ago, but life’s about timing. And this is the right time for it. You’ve got to get mad to make change. And I think right now people are getting mad. They’re like, “Look, what’s going on with our world? Why aren’t we doing anything about it?” And actually, there are a lot of people doing a lot about it. And I just want to put focus on it. And I’m I’m super grateful that Bolo Foundation got behind this. And I’m really grateful that that my agent already had working relationships working relationships with Hurst Media Production Group and so they got behind it and then they have relations with CBS. So it’s really like each of us doing what we can to get it to the mainstream which we’ve done and amazingly you have already seen the show just by chance. So that’s that’s the best and you know we can we can push it so you know it’s out there but when it happens organically I mean there’s there’s nothing better than that 100%.

So why don’t you tell us what we can expect this second season? So more of the the first I mean it’s just we’re going up to the skies. We’re flying uh with hybrid planes. We did in the first season, we did hybrid ships and talk about how they’re working on a completely electric ship. Same thing with the planes, but at the moment we’re taking steps at a time. There’s an amazing initiative where these guys are in Louisiana because of, you know, all the hurricanes that are coming up the Gulf. They’re they’re really losing a lot of their um you know, their protection. And so these kids, college kids, decided when they finished the bottle of wine, they’re like, “What are we going to do with this glass? Why why can’t we do something? Everyone’s sitting around with these empty bottles. Maybe we can figure out a way to use these bottles to restore our shorelines. It’s the sand that’s going away. So they decided, we’re going to figure out a way to pulverize this glass. Break it down and then break it down even further so that it becomes sandsiz glass, which is where glass comes from. So it’s really returning the glass back to its origins and then putting that sand into little borders, fences that they fill up. So they’re making little islands and then they’re replace they’re replanting the cyprress that has been lost, which is the protection for that area. So little things like that. There’s a guy who’s taking mimicking seashells like he’s from India from Goa India. He grew up really loving shells and studying them. And now that he’s a professor at UCLA, he thought why can’t we mimic this? Because these shells are made out of materials from the ocean that are in that water and it’s a process of electrolysis that happens. And so he’s speeding up that process, mimicking that and making little limestone shells out of the carbonation, like the carbon dioxide that’s in the water. And and so he’s capturing the carbon. So that’s helping the greenhouse gases problem, which is getting too hot, too much of that. The ocean already absorbs some of that, but now he’s taking that out of the ocean so it can absorb more. Lots of people just thinking of ways. I mean, there’s there’s so many different things. you think of the issues are in the atmosphere, the issues are in the water, the issues are in the land. So, there’s people doing different things. There’s a guy he figured out that he’s he raises cattle and so he figured out that there’s weeds, certain weeds that the cows won’t eat and he thought, why why won’t they eat it? So, then he realized there’s they’re toxic and they’re called pig weed. And so he also somehow figured out that usually there’s there’s a cure next to the issue in in plants especially. So he has extracted the oil from these pig weed plants that are toxic normally, but that oil actually counterbalances the methane. And so he’s able to to not have these cows burp as much when he puts this in their food. It’s nothing. Yeah. I mean, this is like let’s eliminate the problem before it starts. In Jamaica, they’re they’re capturing all the bottles in just outside the gully where they all collect and come down in the rain uh whenever heavy rains and that ends up in the waters which end up in the world oceans. There’s big uh massive ocean clutters that are happening at at the five major currents. And so those guys are trying to clean that up, but they figured out we’ve got to go to the source. So they’re going around to all the Caribbean islands especially because those are what really feed into the the system and they’re stopping all this stuff before it gets to the ocean. So a lot of prevention going on. It is so fascinating.

So with this, I mean obviously the environment is something that was very important to you and you wanted to make a difference, but like what were you doing in your life to then have this idea and and find these people that are are making this difference? Yeah, when you put it like that, it sounds like a major major mission, but it was all right under my face, under my nose. So, I was I’m from Hawaii and one of our pastimes is surfing and I was also an Eagle Scout or I am an Eagle Scout. I was in scouting and uh one of my fellow Eagle Scouts and I were out surfing with my brother and he does very well and and gives back in a way to raise awareness. It’s really important to him to to raise awareness of environmental issues. And his name is David Vogle and he’s married to Tais Lopez. Sorry. Yeah. Tais Lopez Vogle. So he’s the VO, she’s the low and they have a bolo foundation and and they have been at it for 11 years and when I got to them is about 10 years old and he was getting frustrated that they they’re putting all this energy into raising awareness and it wasn’t really reaching the masses. And I said, “Well, what about a we were out in the ocean so we’re enjoying this stuff and thinking how can we protect this? how can you know we love being out there and we can appreciate it and not everybody gets to but we got to go camping all the time and really appreciate nature and being in Hawaii so we want to protect it and you know we all have kids and so we’re thinking how can we set up our future more for for our kids to not worry so much and and we realized that with my background in the travel adventure travel that I’ve done for the last 20 years I could team up with them to redirect the focus less on the travel and more on you know travel with meaning. So what if we’re seeking out people who are doing these initiatives and he loved the idea he said look I want to get behind this and they funded a pilot and then the pilot really wowed Hurst Media Production Group they were saying we’re looking for a green show. So I mean it’s just it’s all been happening. It’s like sometimes you try so hard and it doesn’t work. But this has just been happening. And we’ve already won an environmental media association award. And I mean, I always say if it keeps happening and it’s just easy, it was meant to be. And yeah, absolutely. And it it feels right. I mean, our whole crew gets so excited. Uh they’re like, “Wow, we could be making any type of show, but this feels so great at the end of each episode.”

So, what about for someone out there though that like it seems so massive, right? Like how can little old me make a difference? Yeah. So, what are some things that we can do at home to try to contribute? Yeah. Well, I was at the the New York Climate Week and I was on a panel there and it was interesting because they had me and TV. They had a woman who did set up film festivals. There was a a musician who’s doing reverb who we ended up featuring on our show. They’re doing sustainable concert venues and just making the entire the entire environment, you know, just eco-friendly where you don’t even bring in plastic bottles. You you bring in your own reusable. They help fill them up and they’re generating all their power from solar power. And there was a an athlete and there was also a cook. And so we’re all very different, but yet we’re each looking inward and thinking, how can we make a difference in our own field? So I think that’s really the important thing is there are there are things in our own lives we can do. And you know, if you’re writing, you can write about a subject that’s worth reading, not just like to fill pages. I personally am trying to keep the lights off when I don’t need them. I’m really aware that I’m I used to waste a lot of energy without without thinking about it. If you pay attention to it, you realize you can do better. You can always do better. And I’m I’m living in London and, you know, I’m I’m trying to walk wherever I can. Luckily, all the buses out here are electric already. And we use the train system out here. It’s really great. We compost. That’s something that’s just starting to catch on in California where I’m going back and forth. And which is exciting because that they actually dropped off a big compost bin all across our neighborhood for each place. So, yeah. and and water too, you know, just turn it off as you’re brushing your teeth. Little things, it all adds up. Awareness. And it all does add up. That’s so true because if you think about how many gallons of water you’re actually wasting when you just tap the water on to brush your teeth. I mean, yeah. Yeah. And and single use anything is just wasteful. So, if you can reuse a grocery bag, if you can reuse something that otherwise, you know, plastic’s built to last. It’s good. It’s so strong. It does its job great. But when we just use it once, it’s really hard on our environment because it just collects in landfill and that’s been breaking down and becoming microplastics that get into our water. The fish eat it, then we eat the fish, then we get it in our brains. It’s not good for us. And so there’s there’s a couple initiatives we feature in this season. There’s there’s a girl who’s figured out how to make plastic out of fish scales. Wow. It’s made up of calcium and collagen. And so she takes she separates it and once it’s just collagen, she melts that down into plastic and it’s eco-friendly. It gets absorbed within a month from from the earth. People out there, it’s incredible.

And and speaking of that, like maybe someone that sees this or is listening to this and they they have an amazing idea or doing something, how could they reach out to you? Well, that’s that’s my hope actually. And I’m trying to actually team up, pair up people that we’ve featured on the show that might be able to help each other. I want to become the resource for people to to come over and and write into we’ve got a research team that’s setting up already for season 3. We’re trying to just like because we’re we’re still we’re filming still through December, but we’re full at the moment, which is great. And um so we’re lining stuff up for the next season. And we do want people to to get involved and share with us. There’s a there’s a great organization we’ve tapped into which is Young Heroes of Today in America that the kids all around America who are just doing incredible things and kids watching this get inspired and so yeah I mean there’s there if they want to reach out to Bolo Foundation it’s boloofoundation.org that’s that’s a great place to start because we have to run everything through them anyway. I’d say even if they don’t make it to the show, it’d be so fantastic like even on your website or in some capacity that you’re sharing these incredible innovative ideas that especially young people are having. It is our young people and the ripple effect that it’s having, right? The youth seem to care the most, which is exciting. I think adults are starting to care more, but they’re really like why are why aren’t we fixing it? I mean, which is a fair question, and the truth is we’re all, you know, all the adults are like, well, it’s always been this way. Is there another way? We don’t know. And so, they’re like, well, let’s figure it out. And they’re fig There was a kid who who figured out how to absorb these microplastics from water and bond to biofoam. I mean, where there’s a will, there’s a way, you know? It’s incredible. It’s incredible. It’s just the evolution, right? It’s what we’ve known. I like no matter what generationally what we know is is what we know and that’s why the younger generation comes up and and starts making changes. I mean we see it all the time. This is what they know. They know that if they want to change they just make it and luckily we’re we live in a an amazing digitalformational time where they can share something which riles up a lot of people and they want movement. So then movement happens. It’s pure pressure which is great. Happens. Yeah. Fantastic.

Well, I love the work that you’re doing on this and I want to kind of shift gears a little bit to more of the personal side of your story. Yeah. Um, you’ve had a real traumatic event that has happened in your life and you lost your son and I just I’m I’m so very very sorry about that. But if you would, I’d love for you to to share more about that and how you not got through it, but how it changed your life and and how you now see life and and maybe even help somebody else out there doing the same. So my wife and I had a son named Oliver and he was our only child at the time and he caught H1N1 and it was a freak thing when he was three years old. seemed like just a flu, but nothing was curing it. And at the end of the week, he ended up passing, which was horrific, tragic. I mean, you always picture the evolution of life. It’s happened. It happens to people who’ve lived their lives, not somebody’s just starting there. So, it was really bizarre, unnatural. There’s a incredible emptiness going on. And my wife and I luckily stayed together because a lot of couples break up over this. We decided to try again. We thought, look, we have each other. We we’ve done it once before. Maybe we can try again. And luckily, we were blessed again. And Oliver’s favorite color was red. And so, he was just passionate about it was really unusual, but we always noticed that. And he would take his bath and his red crocs and just he always wanted red around him. And when when at his funeral, we all released a red balloon. And then each anniversary of his passing, we do the same thing. So, it’s a nice remembrance of him. And so when we had our daughter, she never really knew him obviously because she came after the fact, but she knows of him and feels like she knows him now. And we named her Scarlet Olivia in his honor. And she is just a blessing. And she’s brought us back to life. My wife especially was just beyond devastated. They say for women it’s like losing a limb. And it was hard for me. But I got to the point where I just want to keep moving forward. I don’t want to dwell on this in my entire life. It is good to do that for healing, but I mean, I don’t think Oliver would have wanted that. And I got mad at God. You know, I’m a churchgoer. I went to church and I was like, why? Why? But you can’t ask why. You You just have to trust that there’s a bigger picture. And the priest said, “Well, if you’re mad at God, that means you’re acknowledging God. That’s and he wants that.” So, he’s happy with that. I said, “Well, that’s great, but what about me?” And he said, “Well, just trust that there’s a bigger picture.” And oddly enough, it brought me closer to God, accepting that. And I started seeing little signs of Oliver everywhere, little red. And for some reason, you know, him being three, I kept seeing all of a sudden started seeing 33 everywhere. Even today at the time was 33. I look up and it’s boom. And he is still with me and with us. So in that sense that there is still the sense of loss and it’s upsetting. There’s not a day that goes by you don’t think about it. But if you recognize that they’re still with us and actually my wife Laura heard her father passed right before we moved to England. We’re on a visa here for five years and this is something my wife always wanted to do. She said I love the culture. Grew up watching period pieces and I just love it. I want to be in it. So we had always visited here. My brother lives here. married a Canadian and so they have Commonwealth and he’s got kids here. So I thought, well, we’ll have family there. Let’s let’s try it. It’s been really good, but her father ended up passing right before and one of his last, you know, conversations with Ora was, “Do you really want to go to England?” And she said, “Yes.” And he said, “Then you will.” And then he passed away in room 222, we started seeing 222 everywhere. So I kept seeing 333 and 22 and only those numbers. And it’s just like, “All right, they’re with us and they’re making it happen.” And so we do feel that momentum with them. And then everything that’s happening with visioners, it’s like I I really have never been so fulfilled as being able to do all this knowing they’re behind it. Everything is happening and and I could never do this on my own. So there is a higher power that’s happening. And so for me, this is God’s way of saying, “Thank you for trusting. We’re still behind you. There’s a bigger picture. You went through this. You’ll be together again, you know, eventually.” But right now, let’s let’s go do some good in the world. Yeah. Wow.

Well, I thank you for sharing how you got through it and also, you know, being angry with God. I think that’s very natural and why would you take him away so early and at all, right? You know, it’s just not the natural sequence of events, you know, normally. So it is so hard when someone goes through such a difficult time and they they want to blame somebody, right? So it’s it’s easy to blame God and why would you do this? And I prayed for you not to take him and or her and and you did. Why would you do that to me? And I appreciate what you said and and to to be able to have that perspective by the priest that you’re at least you’re acknowledging God right now. Yeah, that was that was really interesting and and looking back on it, you know, the perfect thing to hear. Yeah. Because then I still felt God’s presence and not such an emptiness, you know, when you got over Listen, there’s so many stages of grief, right? You never get over it. You just learn to live with it in a different way. But when you started kind of letting go that anger, is that when you started seeing him show up more for you? Yeah, I wonder. Probably probably it was about that time. Yeah. I mean, I I didn’t really break it down like that. I I was aware that I was going through a very angry time right afterward, but yeah, that that definitely helped me be be less angry. But also something uh I was going to say my brother said to me, he’s two years, no, sorry, four years older than me. I’ve got two older brothers and a younger sister. And my oldest brother, John, he’s the one out here in England. He said, he had lived in China for a while. And he said, you know, there’s a proverb out there, when somebody dies, they have a remedy. Go to a neighbor who has never lost anyone. Get something from the garden, plant it in your garden. And so, as the story goes, this guy goes around to everyone’s neighbor, all his neighbors, trying to figure out who hasn’t lost anybody so he can get something from the garden. Turns out everybody’s experiencing loss of some sort on some level. So that’s comforting as well. I know it’s not like the brightest news, but it is important, you know, to see people for what is is really going on, not just who they appear to be, but everybody’s got an underlying, you know, issue going on some level. So, we all have something and and it it feels good to know that you’re you’re not alone, that you’re not going through this alone. And uh that’s really important. You can feel alone whenever anything is going not your way, but trust that it might not be it’s it’s usually a blessing in disguise. You need to be open to that. Yeah. If it didn’t happen the way you thought, then it’s going to happen in a better way. I I agree 100%. And I mean, I can’t tell you how many times things haven’t happened the way that I thought that they should or I wanted them to. Yeah. And I realized that it it was just kind of trying to detour me so that I would go in the right direction. Right. Or that maybe something that I wanted didn’t pan out. And the reality is like maybe the date it was going to happen my my child ended up being sick or I had another obligation that was that came up you know like I can’t we cannot foresee what is out there or what our future is and our higher power is is n trying to navigate it for us if you you recognize it eventually looking back on it and and just being grateful if I heard a cool thing the other day and gratitude is a magnet for miracles. Was that was that Oh, yes. So, Rhonda Burns that she she’s the author of The Secret and many more. Oh, that’s what it was. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my god. It’s so true. The universe loves a person that’s grateful because a grateful person attracts magic. And it’s so true. Yeah. It it goes right along with something else that I I heard uh and that is that you put out thoughts but your feelings are what draw in your reality. The feelings believing it the energy that you put out negative or positive that’s what you’re getting getting back. And I Yeah. And you can’t be angry and grateful at the same time. So if you just focus on what you’re grateful for, you’re going to constantly be feeling better and drawing in better things your way. You literally cannot think of two things at one time. So So focus on the good because what you focus on is what you feel. So focus on good stuff. I mean it’s a choice, you know, and and that’s that’s a lot of the visioners, too. We we focus on the positive things that people are doing. This is a very dismal subject matter that that’s going on with our with our planet right now. And it can be if that’s all you focus on, all the natural disasters that are going. There’s a lot more rain coming down whenever it does rain. And that’s I’ve been to Antarctica and watched the walls of ice just calving down and melting and and that’s going to raise the the sea level, which is going to also bring the temperature hotter. I’ve I’ve been to all these islands where fishermen are are worried because the warmer temperatures are killing the fish as well. But there are also things we can focus on that are amazing. And if we bring all our attention to those, then we can keep doing great things. I always find it so fascinating that people around the world that have less than us or go through difficult times are actually more thankful and grateful than we are. Yeah. Yeah. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying, but anytime we find ourselves focusing on something trivial, we say first world problems. First world. They they’ve got real survival issues in a lot of these places around the world and they’re just trying to get by. They’re doing their best and they really can’t understand how we have everything and we’re not. I gotta tell you, I helped two orphanages in Uganda and directly and so I’m always getting videos and and pictures and they’re always sending me, you know, little through WhatsApp. They’re always sending me little videos. They’re just always Yeah. But they’re just always it’s always about God and what they’re grateful for and and they’re so thankful for what they do have. And I Yeah. Yeah. I love to see that. And it just they’re fulfilled because of that. Yeah. And you can see it in the videos, I’m sure. Even with what we think is they have nothing, but they really do have a full heart. I mean, just to have a pair of shoes is a blessing for them. I mean, how they have to walk to school with no shoes and and so on. But anyway, let’s talk about being vulnerable. That’s one of the things that I like to talk about a lot on the show. And I like that. Yeah. Yeah. Because a lot of people think being vulnerable is being weak. But how would you say that vulnerability has helped you through what you’ve had to overcome in your life? Well, it’s interesting because that word triggers a memory of being in in college and I studied theater and acting and that was one of the things that our professor said makes the best actor. The best actors are the most vulnerable ones. So, you’ve got to lose your ego. Yeah. And figure out what is required of that character. like what is there’s there’s a role written that you need if you want to take on that role, you’ve got to accept that it’s not you necessarily, but you’ve got to tap into real feelings. And so for me, being vulnerable is being real and not not just keeping the the smile on all the time or the machoess of it, but really allowing ourselves to just let in that whatever feelings are happening and being real because I think that we can, you know, online the social media thing, it’s great for bragging, but I think people that just post their good stuff, which I mean I I have a friend who puts everything and I think he’s so vulnerable but he ends up getting a lot of followers and people write into him and he’s been able to use that as a support base but when you’re just putting the positive it’s it’s a false sense of reality and it’s a great facade and and those things are real not it’s not that they’re not it’s just there is always more to it than just that and if you want to be vulnerable and put those stuff up too you’ll connect more with people and like why I’m willing to talk about you know my loss you know it’s there are others out there and like you say, if it helps them, that’s that’s worth it. And it’s it’s part of life, unfortunately. But we’re all part of this life right now. So, we we’ve got to learn to accept things and and be vulnerable. So, you know, losing my son made me realize that we are all vulnerable. None of us are going to live forever. Let’s make the most of the time we have here. And that’s I I get really upset when we’re working so hard to to help, you know, do right and then you get these wars that are just so wasteful. I know that’s a whole another story. Let’s leave that one alone. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. being vulnerable. Like I remember when I got sober and my life was changing and I said that, you know, I was I’d gone through a hardship and I wanted to help others. But it was really when I started getting very vulnerable, authentic, sharing my story out loud and letting go of the fear of that judgment that it all started changing for me. And now I have two books. most all of my stuff out there. No, that’s great. Good for you. Congratulations on that. What a way to heal as well. I gotta tell you, when I wrote my first book, it’s called Chaos to Clarity, um, seeing the signs, which is about seeing the signs from the other side because that so much what I did and then breaking generational cycles. But having to go back and relive the trauma I went through. I when I started the book it was like I mean just the tears and you you literally that guttural feeling you were back there right I mean I know you know what I’m talking about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But those emotions again. Yeah. But by the end of it it was like I had removed myself from that. Like yes that happened to me but I no longer have to live in that anymore. That doesn’t define who I am anymore. Yeah, that’s powerful. Yeah. Yeah. So, it was almost it was like I I healed that child that went through that, you know, that time I went through that and and believe me, it’s still hard times, but I was able to just like kind of just extract myself from that old story and pain. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, and if you want to know that that you are helping others, I was browsing through your first chapter of that and uh it it struck home with me because as a father, you know, sometimes you don’t know how to let your daughter know what she’s doing and it’s like you get so frustrated and you know, I won’t be physical with her, but I do get to the point where I’m like, why don’t you understand? I I don’t know what to do. She’s so tough. She’s got a tough head and she reminds me of myself when I was little talking back to my dad and you know I just have to remind myself she’s a child. She is vulnerable. She is but she’s still very scared. Yeah. And we and listen I was there with my my daughter and she she was strong. Still is. Still is. But she’s 19 now so we can talk it out a lot differently. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. There’s a lot more understanding. My daughter’s only eight years old right now. So like she really just I remember right before her teen years like maybe she was 12 so maybe you know she was venturing in 12 13 you hear about the teen years being hard and she goes well I know I’m going to be hard teen and I said well the first thing is acknowledgement so maybe you could change that. Yeah. Well, that’s good good thing to to put out there. Exactly. But she’s, you know, very self-aware, but you know, that’s strength and I always heard it gonna help you in the long run, right? Help our young girls in the long run. Yeah. You want them to be strong. That’s that’s your goal as a parent to make sure they’re strong. But you know, I I do believe like listen, I you know, one in three girls are sexually abused and about one in five boys, you know, I believe is shocking statistics. Yeah. But, you know, and it and it’s always somebody close to us and um that’s most times, right? I mean, it’s not like the big scary guy coming and and getting your kid. So, just kind of being aware, I think, you know, if somebody is being overly kind, giving too many gifts, wanting to spend too much alone time, keeping, you know, come sit on my lap, you know, just Oh, yeah. where to look at things and to speak up because I I freeze and I I didn’t say anything and I didn’t know how to speak up for myself. So, but I wasn’t I wasn’t raised in an environment that I could have a voice. So, that was probably part of it also. So, just encourage that strength. Um yeah, absolutely. But one of the things you talked about and and we were kind of starting to approach is the fear of that judgment, right? and and looking for other people’s validation. I kind of felt that a lot more so when I got in front of the camera. Did that feed into that for you? If you post anything a video, I mean, you’re going to be berated um by anybody who’s not aware of the full story or or they’re people just are judgmental. You know, they’ll they’ll do you said acting, right? So did when you used to go and audition and go through that roller coaster of it. Did you go you went through all that? Right. Yeah. Yeah. And and Hollywood’s a very dirty place. You know, you get a lot of powerful people that want to take advantage of their of their position. And I I had a lot of producers, casting directors who, you know, they’ll they’ll be really sweet to me and then as soon as they start trying to come on to me and I’m not interested, they’re like they shut me out and they go out of their way to make it difficult for me to advance, you know, with my profession. I did go through that quite a bit. I would say, you know, I I could have been a lot further if I was willing to go further, but I wasn’t. You know, you got to if it doesn’t feel right, your feelings are valid. You have to remember if you’re feeling something is uncomfortable, the most powerful thing you can do is just tell the person, “This makes me feel uncomfortable.” Because who wants to hear that? Nobody wants to hear that. They’ll stop what they’re doing. It’s like, “Oh, oh, I didn’t realize that was having that effect on you.” Because they’re so focused on how good they’re feeling. So, setting those boundaries. I talk about that a lot, right? And it’s hard to set those boundaries and speak up for yourself, especially as a woman. Z, I don’t know about for men so much. I mean, it’s it’s as important for men to do the same thing. I mean, like I say, I’ve get a lot of people guys are interested in, you know, spending time with me, too, and they overstep that boundary. It’s like, whoa, whoa. Hey, look, I don’t want to be rude, but I also don’t want to put myself in a compromising position. This makes me feel uncomfortable. And I would say 100% of the time I’ve ever said that people take it and they’ll respect me, you know, because you’re you’re not saying you’re making me feel. You’re saying this makes me feel uncomfortable. The words matter. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. How you say them. I learned early on not to say you when you’re when you’re addressing something. You say I. Just own it. No one can tell you you’re not feeling that way. But they can tell you that they didn’t do something that you’re accusing them. As soon as you say the word you, it’s like it puts people on the defense. God, I know. And that I tell you, it changes things, but it’s hard to change. You know, you make me feel this way. You don’t do this for me. Blah blah blah blah blah. Right. You don’t me it. And then immediately the the walls go up. They’re not hearing the thing you’re saying. Yeah. Yeah. It’s learning to communicate where you own things and say, “I I feel this whenever this happens to me.” Who can argue with that? Exactly. 100%. And it actually makes them want to reach out and help you more instead of being on the defense and defending themselves, they want to actually help you, right? Yeah.

So how for someone out there that is looking to find what what is important to them that that selfdiscovery right understanding who they are beyond what everybody else is telling them to do or you know and and that can be all age groups right because whether it’s your parents your teachers or maybe it’s your husband and still your parents when you get older like how can you start that self-discovery process and like for you, you know, now finding what really means something for you and you get excited about. Yeah, I think that’s it’s a journey. It’s a great question to always be asking yourself. For some reason with me, it keeps coming back to when I was a kid and people asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” You know, and I said, “Well, I want to be an entertainer.” And I just loved the attention. I liked making people smile. I would do anything to make them smile. And eventually I wanted to travel. And so I realized I can do both. I can entertain and travel if I mix this and become a host, a travel host. And now I’m still doing it, but I’m doing it with more purpose. So you’re constantly asking yourself, what do I want to be when I grow up? Because now I’m at the point where I should be doing what I wanted to do when I was a kid because I am growing up. But I I almost took a vow that when I was a kid that I I want to be like Peter Pan and never grow up. So there’s a big part of me that will always be a kid and I carry that into whatever I do because I think it’s so important to have fun and not take yourself too seriously. I think it’s important to stay connected to that that younger self because that’s what keeps you vibrant and having fun and creative, right? because I think that’s that’s so brilliant to think that way and encourage others and yeah it’s it’s really the best place to start if you’re not sure what you want to do or what what you should be doing go back to that and say what did I used to say when I was a kid when I what do I want to be when I grow up or if you’re a kid now to ask yourself what you want to be when you grow up because you can do it you can do anything we forget we get very distracted we take on adult problems adult issues that really bog us down if we focus too much on them or or we get a lot of people telling us you’ll never do that. Let them kill their own dreams. Don’t don’t let them kill yours. They don’t know what you’re going through. They don’t know how strong you are, how much you want that. So, you do you and let them do them. Yeah. And also, if you’re young and you are trying to figure this out, right, like because my I have kids in college, they don’t know what they want to do. I always say that you don’t have to know what you want to do right now, but the more experiences you have in life, it will tap into you and and intrigue you in some way, and you will find that path, right? Yeah, that’s true. Yeah.

So, Z, I just want to thank you so much for sharing so openly on the show and I’m so excited for you for Visionaeers. Can you tell us again where we can see it, what’s going on, and how we can find you? Yes, absolutely. At the moment, it’s on CBS every Saturday morning, and it will be for the near future. So, tune in every week and just enjoy it because hopefully we inspire you. We’ve also got Visionaire TV on Instagram or you can follow me. We collaborate, Zay Harding One. And there will be another streaming platform. We were on Pluto. We may be back up on Pluto eventually. It’ll be Paramount Plus, but right now it’s and actually at at the moment through October, it’s not going to be up, but starting in November, early November, we will have on demand. So, you can be watching on CBS.com as well. Yeah, I love it. I love it. It’s so fantastic. CBS is on YouTube TV. Yes, we’re starting we’re starting to explore that as well. You know, this was a new thing. We we put our team together right when the show started and we focused only on Instagram at first, but then YouTube uh we’re starting to do that as well and I I think that is in collaboration with CBS. Yeah. Well, fantastic. And yeah, thank you so much for inspiring us all today. Oh my gosh, you too. Thank you for doing this and waking up the world to acknowledge your feelings, your vulnerability, your past are not who you have to be. you know they are always going to be a part of you which is that’s only good that that offers strength and look how you overcame that and how you’re you’re helping shared 100% I totally agree God we go through some hard stuff we all do but it’s how we get through it and giving back is actually it’s so much better for for the person than it is for the person receiving it right the person connect like like this is digital so it’s ironic I’m saying this online but but but it’s a live thing like we’re actually taking turns and beyond text because you can’t tell tone in text and so many times people get in fights over text and it’s misinterpreted unintentional but just just be there for people connect when you’re when you’re out at dinner put your phone down look up connect I see so many couples that just sit there at dinner time on their phone or families and or or even parents where their kids are on the phone just disengaged like some of my best lessons were from conversations we had at the dinner table. So, learn from your parents. I try to tell my daughter that all the time. It’s like, if you’re bored, you’re boring and you need to ask us something about ourselves. We have so much to share with you. If you’re interested, just ask us. We’re happy to share. So, really share. And I I always we always with the kids, we always brought a deck of cards. We still do it. And they’re 19 and 22. We love it. Fun one, too. Just any anything to connect. Yeah. We’re we’re people and and we need each other. We’re all we’re all human. We have pain. We go through pain. We have hurt. We have happiness. And I tell my daughter this all the time. I’m like, “Look, we can either have the best birthday ever or we can be miserable. It’s going to be up to us. Like, what do you want to do? You want to fight or do you want to have the best time? Let’s Let’s make a choice now.” Exactly. And it all starts with love. All right. Yeah. It’s because we care. We we get angry because we care. We love them so much. We we’re hurt. We want to show them how much we love them. But yeah, we need to love each other.

Yeah. Thank you all also for tuning in today, watching, listening, however you are taking in this episode. And if this episode has moved you, please follow Wake Up with Marcy. Share with someone, please share with us. We want to get out. Get it out. Talking’s therapy. Get it out. Let’s start with that. And then you might even get a support out of that because we’re we’re all here for each other. We’re all in every culture across the world. Even if you’re in a gang, family matters. Yeah. You know, exactly. And I also want to say that you don’t need a catastrophe to choose a better life. Right. Right. Yeah. You just need to say, “I want more.” Yeah. And start creating that shift. And uh you could be at the top of your world and still do better. I’m I’m constantly trying to do better and better. I always try to do better. Always try to learn. Always try to evolve because that actually fulfills me. And and I and I still will fail, but I’m going to be failing trying better. It’s a good thing to fail because that’s where we learn more. And I wasted so much time just trying to figure out when I was going to have my next glass of wine. So I am taking advantage of life now. So yeah, look how much more time you have not worrying about that. To take up the mind of time, girl. All right, Marcy, thank you so much for having me on the show. This has been a real pleasure connecting with you and I love what you’re doing as well. So thank you. Absolutely. And everyone out there, it’s time to wake up to your worth. I will see you next week with a new episode and I hope you have a great one. Bye bye. Thank you.