Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Good morning, good afternoon, good evening wherever you are in the world. It’s Dr. Jan Fortman with Relationship Matters TV. I hope everyone is having a beautiful morning, afternoon, or evening. Well, today this is what I call “Let’s Just Talk.” In other words, anything that you feel you would like to talk about today. I did a Facebook live and for some reason, they could see my face and see my mouth moving, but they couldn’t hear what I was saying. This is what I was saying: that this is open forum night and if you have something on your mind that you want to talk about, we can. I also had said that if you wanted to go live, in other words, be on the screen, then you could do that and I would send you a link. So I did get it. I put that on Facebook, you know, without the Facebook live, so I just put it on as a post and I really didn’t get anyone to say they wanted to come online. So you can put what you would like to discuss in the chat and we can talk about it. I will answer your questions, comment, I will put your comment on the screen and then we can discuss it and we can just have a conversation back and forth through the chat. So if you have something inspirational, the same if you have something motivational, if you have just something you want to talk about like politics or whatever, if you have a joke that you think is really really funny, but of course, we want to make sure that it’s all clean, no x-rated stuff because I don’t want to be in Facebook jail. And what else did I say? Yeah, just anything that you feel like you want to talk about, you could just put it in the comments and we could talk about it. Otherwise, you’re gonna be listening to me this whole time because you are the guest. There is no specific guest, so you are the guest. Now unfortunately, I can’t see who’s on. I can see that there are people on, but I can’t see your names because guess what? If I could see your names, I would call on you and say whatever your name is, Patricia, what do you have to say? So, oh I see a comment. Thank you.

Maxine Walker
Why is Christmas coming too soon? All the commercials.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Maxine, I don’t know. Christmas now, like I was saying today on my Facebook live, that here in Chicago when I was out it was 73 degrees. So I got in my Mitsubishi Spider Eclipse Spider 2008. I had my top down and I went for a ride. So now it’s not Christmas. It’s too early to me because usually here in the Midwest in Chicago it’s snowing or it’s really really really cold. And to go in a store and see Christmas trees and what is that station that started now playing Christmas music? It’s not even Thanksgiving yet and I think it’s Hallmark that started its Christmas shows. It is coming, you’re right Maxine, it is too soon. And these commercials are like, oh. So right now I still have plants outside and I’m watering the plants and I have a wreath on the door and it’s all about the fall weather. So I don’t know, I don’t know why it’s too soon. But what is this Renita says here?

Renita
You’re right Renita, it’s never too early to stimulate the economy. However, let’s talk about the economy. Now you do get sticker shock when you go to the store and not only do you get sticker shock because things cost more, but the sizes are smaller. And just like I like Special K cereal, so I go in and I remember Special K cereal, a nice size box was 2.99. I went in the store the other day, 4.59. The box was smaller and then when I opened it up, it was like maybe three-fourths of the way full. Now people talk about the economy and they talk about the economy in the United States, but Renita, when they talk about stimulating the economy, they say that people are spending more money and that’s bad for the economy, which I kind of don’t understand because stimulating the economy to me would be that we would be, you know, going out and buying stuff and buying Christmas stuff. But they said that that’s not a good thing for some reason. So Renita, if you can explain that to me and the viewers, I would be very happy to hear that explanation. And our economy, we complain about our economy and of course we say that it’s the political party or the president that’s in now, but the economy, the inflation is worldwide. It’s not just us and I think a lot of people don’t understand that. It’s not just us and it’s not a political party. It doesn’t matter who’s in right now, Republicans, Democrats, whoever, the economy or inflation is horrible worldwide. I heard something today that I think it’s in Germany or something, their inflation rate is 20%. We are nowhere near that. So I think people should think about that. So Renita, if you can tell me or tell our audience how do we stimulate the economy, I would appreciate it.

Diggs
Hey, what’s up?

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Hey, what’s up Diggs? You got something to say, put it in the chat.

Renita
She was in a seminar yesterday given by her credit union. They advised against borrowing right now and strongly encourage deposits, i.e. saving. The speaker said they weren’t running out of money, but they need deposits in order to lend.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
So if they’re not running out of money, so they’re not running out of money, then how can they lend? I mean, that’s just me, I don’t know. Well, yeah, I know taking out a loan now is difficult because the interest rate has gone up so far. It’s not as high as it was some years ago when it was like 15 and 16. So people, you know, it’s down way, way, way, way, way down and now it’s inching up, but still it’s not as high as I can remember that 15 and 16. But yeah, if you can deposit some money, I guess you could deposit. So many people have the money to deposit. And so Renita, if you are making deposits in the credit union and people need to make a loan, then they’re making a loan to purchase something. But then they say we’re making all of these purchases and that’s affecting the economy in a negative way. I don’t know, I don’t know. All I know is I am not buying, as Maxine was saying, any Christmas anything right now. So I want to ask a question. What do you think about what’s going on politically? You don’t have to tell me if you were a Democrat or a Republican or an independent. They used to have the Green Party, I don’t know if they have that anymore. But what do you think? Do you think that it’s business as usual or do you think we’re going the wrong way? What do you think as far as voting right now? Do you have an opinion about what’s happening with people who are who want to vote or trying to vote and they’re being intimidated? Do you think that’s a good thing? Do you think like some of the politicians saying that our democracy is at stake? So what do you think about that? I can tell you what I think. I never thought I would see the day that people would be afraid like they used to be a long time ago, especially black people. But now it’s not just black people, it’s anybody that’s, I guess, opposed to whatever political party you were in, that they will be afraid to vote and that you would intimidate people. You don’t know what they’re voting for. You don’t know if you’re intimidating people at the ballot box or the mailbox where it is they put their votes in now or even, you know, on the day of. I don’t know. And you’re in a particular political party, you don’t know what they’re voting for when they go in there. So if you’re trying to keep some from someone from voting because you think they’re going to not vote for your beliefs or, you know, politics, you can be hurting your own self. So that’s something I don’t understand and that’s something that I do think that both sides should get together and really say, you know, like that is totally unacceptable. People, of course, black people died for the right to vote. But even if you go all the way back to the suffragettes, I remember my history, who when women couldn’t even vote. So when you think about this country and voting, no one should try to keep anyone from voting. That’s if you travel and you go to different countries, when you come back here, it’s almost like even with all our troubles, you almost want to kiss the ground when you land because you see how other people live and you come back here and it’s like OMG, you know, some of them are living very well, but some of them when you talk about poor, I mean, it’s amazing. It really is, it’s amazing. So does anyone have an inspirational thought or a clean joke you want to put in or something motivational to sing or if you’ve got a product or a service that you want me to promote, this is free advertising day. This is because normally I charge, so this is free promotion day, free advertising day. Now what I saw today, I am a Toastmaster here in Chicago and what I saw today on one of my, I would say networking organizations where this guy put out all about Toastmasters.

Renita
Yes, room Nita, I will tell you all about Toastmasters. Now Toastmasters, Toastmasters is a worldwide organization that helps people like me who were afraid to speak in public, gave me the tools, the techniques to learn to be able to speak in public without going brother. It also helps with leadership skills. So let’s say that you have a job, it helps you if you apply for a job and you’re afraid about interviewing, it helps you with interview skills. And let’s say you get the job and you get a promotion and they tell you, well, you have this promotion and but you’re going to have to give workshops or you’re going to have to get presentations. What are you going to say? A lot of people, you don’t want to turn down the promotion because more money especially. So you go to Toastmasters. Toastmasters gives you the skills, the tools and the techniques to be able to speak in public. Toastmasters, we talk about, I’m gonna look, eye contact, I hope I’m looking straight at you, body language, the way you use your voice, all kinds of things that have to do with communication. Toastmasters helps you to communicate better even in your personal life. I would not be here today on this TV show really if it wasn’t for Toastmasters. And how did I get into Toastmasters? Well, I had a colleague, her name is Dr. Sarah Crawley and we used to have to give presentations to teachers because we work for the Chicago Board of Education and we had to go out and do workshops. And Sarah was just getting so good at her workshops and I asked her one day, how do you, you know, you’re so good and you know, they’re on the edge of their seats and normally teachers are sitting back and look, you got to tell me that I don’t know. But they would be all, you know, sitting up and paying attention and not writing in their grade books and stuff. And she said Toastmasters. And so that’s why I joined Toastmasters. Another thing about Toastmasters is that that helps you when you speak not do a lot of ums and O’s and odds and souls, new nose. And so if you notice, I have not mastered the filler word of soap. What you’re supposed to do from one thought to another instead of using a filler word like uh, so, so, so, you’re just supposed to pause. I haven’t mastered that yet and I’ve been in Toastmasters but 15 years. But I did, I did master some other stuff. But it just, it just, if you are in the Chicagoland area, our Toastmasters Club is MJM Speakers Circle. You can go on the Toastmasters International site, look up MJM Speakers Circle and we would love to have you at our club. We are nurturing, it’s like a family. And we’ve had people who come in, we had one particular young lady who when she did her first speech, this is how she sounded. And that was what your first speech is, your Icebreaker. And when she finished, we stood up and we yay, oh that was so great. I think it was maybe three or four months later when she found out and we told her we didn’t hear a word too soon. And she said what? But we were encouraging her and now she is a trainer. She’s doing wonderfully. We’ve had someone whose name I won’t say, no I am going to say his name because I drug him to Toastmasters and that’s my husband. And he did his first speech and he developed a cough, never caught before. Every other word was a call. And then one of the members, his name, his past guy’s name is Errol Kellum, came up, put his arm around his shoulder, gave him some water and now we can’t shut him up. I can’t shut him up anyway. We’ve had people to come in and cry on the first speech, drop their notes, but we nurtured them and now a lot of them have become entrepreneurs, they’ve become authors. So if you see, there was my soap. If you want to be a better speaker in your personal or your professional life and if even if you’re not in the Chicagoland area, please find a Toastmasters Club. So that was my Jamie’s plug as far as my Toastmasters.

Maxine Walker
And your favorite word is soap.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yes, it is. Yeah. So we’ve talked about the economy, we’ve talked about Christmas coming too soon. What other things would you all like to talk about? It’s not, this is Relationship Matters. Let’s talk about relationships. Let’s talk about your personal relationships. I won’t say your name if you have a question about something that’s happening in your personal relationship or your professional relationship. It could be a relationship with a loved one, it could be a romantic relationship, it could be your relationship with your mother, with your daughter, with your siblings. What’s going on out there? There are all kinds of relationships. Ladies, the relationship with your hair, the relationship you have with yourself, with your body image, the relationship you have with your clothes. Men, the relationship you have with that item, that old ratty sweater, that old chair, that’s your favorite chair that your wife wants you to get rid of and you don’t get rid of it. The relationship with the remote control, those are mostly men. The relationship you have with your phone, it’s on here. Someone gave this to me, oops, trying to make you see where it says, yes, you are beautiful. Any relationship matters questions? I’m going to take a quick break, a quick commercial, and when I come back, I want you all to think about or just put something in the comments about a relationship. It might not be yours, it could be a relationship that you’ve seen or just a question that you have. Okay, so don’t go away, come right back right after this brief pause. Let’s see, hold on a moment, let’s see, okay, I think I’ll do this.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
All those commercials were about relationships. Let’s see what we have here. How about the relationship you have with your… Oh wow, this is a good one. How about the relationship you have with your past that affects your future? That’s a deep one, Bonita. Let’s talk about that. Wait a minute, talk about that a bit later. So let’s talk about your past and how your past affects your future. Yes, yes, and they say, well, you know what, I’ll say the relationship you have with your past is your baggage. Now it can be a bag full of dreams and hopes and beautiful things or it can be a negative bag full of what happened in your past life. But what I have found out that’s really important is your past as far as the way that you were brought up and what was instilled in you and your experiences as you were growing up into an adult. So let’s say, let’s go to positive route. So the positive route would be you grew up in a loving family, you were always encouraged, you were always free as far as what you thought, who you wanted to be, how your life was going to, how you wanted your life to be and you were always encouraged. And so there is my soul. Therefore, as an adult, you are in, I would say, your lane. And when I say your lane, I mean that whatever your passions are, your passion, your goals, that you really felt that you could pursue those goals and that you can pursue your passion because of your past, your past experiences. Now on the negative end, you could have been not only brought up as a child, but just in your past in your life, you were discouraged, you were made to feel less than. So therefore, as far as your self-esteem is concerned, you have very low self-esteem and you end up, you don’t pursue your passions because you don’t think you’re good enough, you don’t think that you can, you have what they call the Imposter syndrome, which is you’re not, I’m not good enough, I’m not smart enough, I can’t do this. And so your past does affect your future. Let’s say as far as, as I would say, romance, let’s say when you started out, all of your, I hate to say all of you, but your romantic relationships were always positive and you, so your experiences were positive. And when it’s time, say, to choose your husband or choose your wife, you have, because you’ve had positive experiences, you really go for it, so to speak. But on the other hand, let’s say as you were coming up or it became an adult or something on that order and your relationships, your romantic relationships were negative. So what will that mean? That would mean that more than likely you got this negative baggage. Often in relationships, we do bring whatever baggage that we have to the next relationship. Relationship coaching, some people need relationship coaches because they have negative baggage, they don’t know how to get rid of it and it keeps them from going into a positive relationship because they have that negative baggage. I have a show and I am going to come to you, Maxine, and the name of my show is the Mother Daughter Relationship Show and I will put the link on it a little later for anyone who would like to watch the show. And in that show, I talk about past, I talk about how the relationships with our mothers, I focus on daughters, but the relationship with our mothers affect our personal and our professional lives because our moms are the first role models that we have. So if you think about it, and it might not necessarily be your biological mother because of course some people have been adopted and it’s their adopted mother and sometimes even if your grandmother, whoever raised you. However, what I did find also is that even when I talk about the relationship with your mother, I have run across people, daughters in my coaching clients that were adopted, didn’t know their mothers, found out, found out about their moms, who their biological moms were, but that biological mother affected them personally and professionally. Why? Because then they look back and the question they have is why did you not raise me? No matter what, why didn’t you keep me? So that’s, so I like to do that show because I give these tools and these techniques, but the show came from my past relationship with my mother. So I like to, God, I can’t help but do this though. I like to point out for people who are having difficulties with their mother-daughter relationship, I tell the daughters, do you know you can’t change your mom, but you can change the way you respond to challenging situations, number one. Number two, do you really know who your mother is? Meaning, what about her relationships and her past and is it affecting you and your relationship? So it’s a whole lot to it, but yes, your past affects your future, either negatively or positively. So if you have something to add to that, please add it to that. So that can be professional relationships, that could be your first job you had and your boss was horrible and told you, you know, you can’t do this, you can’t do that, you’re fired. And you go to another job and, oh, I can’t really do that because, you know, that first job that I had, they said that I really wasn’t capable. So it also has to do with the relationship with yourself. That’s the, the mother-daughter relationship is important because it affects all of us, men and women. And then the relationship with yourself. Okay, so I went off on a little tangent, but anyway, let’s see, there was something else here that I saw.

Maxine Walker
Our personal trainer, please tell everyone how he beats up on senior citizens. Okay, we call it senior abuse.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Yes, oh, is he listening to this? Is he looking, Maxine? That will mean that tomorrow morning when we go, you know what’s going to happen. He’s really going to beat up on that. But we do call it senior abuse because no matter what we say to him, I can’t do that, you know, he just looks at us and says, and can’t do this, this can’t do that, and oh, this is really really hurting. So we start telling him that we’re seniors and he’s abusing us. However, we do have a good relationship with him because we know that he is doing something that is really advantageous to us and that he keeps us moving and he keeps us looking good. But he’s wonderful and she says we’ll get coffee again. So one day, so you know, that’s the story with our relationship with him. One day we came in and Maxine and I had one of those bad nights that a lot of senior ladies have when they can’t sleep at night and you wake up and it’s like two o’clock in the morning and you can’t go back to sleep until of course it’s time to get up 5:30 in the morning. That’s when you get sleepy and we were dragging. We came in there and it was like, oh my god, oh, she gets on the treadmill, I get on the stationary bike whose name is Miss Molly and it’s my personal bike, nobody else wants it because it’s hard. But anyway, and we just said, oh, you know, you could just have some coffee. So he made us some coffee. Well, that’s been maybe, but maybe about three weeks ago. So now every time we come, we want coffee and he says it’s called, you always fall. And we said yes, because you never should have started that kind of relationship with us. So now we expect coffee. Now if he’s watching this, I don’t know if he is, but if he is, we’re not going to get coffee tomorrow. So Maxie, you probably shouldn’t have said anything because I’m just not gonna do it. So anyway, what other relationships can we talk about? Let’s talk about, ladies, now these are all ladies, what is this with the relationship with our hair? Every time I watch TV and I see one of the movie stars, gosh, sometimes you don’t recognize them because their hair is different. What is that about, huh? And since I don’t see anything in there about that, what about the relationship we have with our clothes? You know, when you think about it, and men too, one season the past is short, the next season the past is long. For men, one season the pants are really nice and loose, the next time you look, they’re skinny and short. What’s up with that? What about our relationship with our clothes? And ladies, sometimes we have clothes and we know we’ll never wear them again, but we can’t give them up. I have a black leather strapless dress and it laces up the side that when I bought that dress, the laces were together. So I tried to put it on the other day and the laces were like this, showing skin, I suppose. Now I’ll never get back in that dress, but I can’t give it up.

Sandy Barney Ennis
If it were not for my mother, I wouldn’t be Dr. Ennis. She didn’t see me graduate, but she told me I could and would. Mom, I completed our dream.

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
That is beautiful, Dr. Sandy Barney Ennis. Yes, as I said earlier, our mothers play the most important role in our lives. And now that you said that, Sandy, when I was in high school, I was in a singing group and I wanted to sing. And I don’t know if everybody knows who Jerry Butler is, but he was a really little singer. Now some of you who were in Chicago probably, Chicago, Atlanta, anyway, he became a politician, but it was Jerry Butler and The Impressions. But anyway, Jerry Butler was looking for background singers and he came to our high school and he heard us sing and he wanted us to, when we graduated, to come to California to Hollywood and train as his background singers. Well, you know what my mother said? Absolutely not. You are going to college. I’m like, what? And oh, I just cried. Are you keeping me for being a star? You know, but I went to college and then after I got my bachelor’s degree, she said, why don’t you get your masters? And I’m like, okay, well maybe. And she said, well, no, you could. Now in high school, I was a complete goofball. We had a very small class and in the class of 59, I think I was 57. That’s from what number one because I played around a lot, but she could see in me what I couldn’t see in me. So I got my Master’s Degree and then I went and got, then she said, how’d you get your doctorate degree? I got the doctorate. No, I wasn’t going to do it until my friend Dr. Sarah Crawley convinced him to do it and she was so proud and she said, I knew you could.

Gwendolyn Dunbar
What about the differences between relationships with men and the relationships between women?

Dr. Janice Hooker Fortman
Oh Lord, Gwen, girls. Okay, what can I say? Men seem to have friendlier, more authentic relationships between each other. Is that right? Because my husband is sitting over here. Is that right? He said, yeah, yeah, he’s pretty sure about that. And depending on the women, we are so competitive with each other at times. You know what, it’s a blessing in your life if you can have, and I’m talking to women now, if you can have a friend, a good friend where you’re not competitive, where you’re not envious of each other, where you can share secrets, where you’re friends that you can trust. And sometimes it’s difficult with women. I don’t know if that’s biological as far as that’s concerned. I really don’t know, maybe it is. But men don’t, you know, I don’t know, I’m not a man, so I don’t know, but I don’t think they go through that. Their competition is probably during sports. You know, you see that competition there and when they finish, they’ll shake hands and pat each other on the back and the next thing you know, they’re out having drinks together. Men can have really real, real disagreements and when they finish, they are, they could be back at the bar, I’ll say the bar, and having drinks together. Women, we have a really, really bad disagreement, a real one, that’s it. That relationship is usually over. So there is a difference between relationships. Now this is just from my observation, relationships between men and men and then women and women. Now we talk about the relationship between men and women. It depends on the man, it depends on the woman. I do know one thing, whenever you begin a relationship, a romantic relationship especially, usually the man is on his best behavior and the woman is on her best behavior. We have a friend who is dating again after his wife passed and she’s been passed for a while and he’s dating and what we’ve said is, you know, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. She’s on her best behavior, you need to see her angry. Let’s see if you can take it. Nowadays, I was telling anyone who’s young, you know, you need to do a background check. You need to find out what’s going on in that family to make sure that, you know, there isn’t this generational baggage that that person might have. So I think, if that’s what you’re asking me about, the differences between relationships with men and the relationships with women, it’s a difference. It’s a difference, you know. I’m not going to give all our female secrets, but yeah, it’s different. Any other questions or comments or anything else that you wanted to talk about? This was today’s show was called “Let’s Just Talk” and that’s what we’re doing. For anyone who came in late, we have talked about the economy, we talked about inflation, you didn’t talk about, you didn’t talk about politics, you didn’t want to touch on it. We talked about the fact that Christmas is coming too soon. We talked about relationships with our moms. We talked about Maxine and I, our relationship with our personal trainer, who I was, she calls him my workout husband because I met him before I met my husband and my husband and I had known each other for 18, 19 years, 20 years, I’m not good. I’ve been, so I’ve had, so he is my personal trainer and Maxine calls him my workout husband and he’s tried to divorce me several times, but like I told him, I wasn’t signing the papers so he can’t divorce me. What else can we talk about? We have, oh, you know what, we don’t, we only have five minutes. So let me tell you about next week’s show. Next week’s show, we have a young lady and her name is Aurelia Acosta. Now this is who she is. She’s going to talk to all of us about losing weight, losing that belly fat without going on a diet. I really want to know that because no matter how many crunches I do and planks I do, I can’t get rid of this belly fat. So this is her link, so it’s nutrilicious.activehosted.com and she will be on next weekend. She has a free gift for everyone, so make sure that you tune in next week or you view next week. And if you would like to relationship coach show, mother-daughter relationship coach show, you can go to whenwomentv and just type in the mother-daughter relationship show and you can come to my show. I’ve done, it’s a half an hour show and I give tools and tips and techniques on how to have a wonderful, loving, harmonious relationship with your adult daughter and your mother or your mother. And if you would like to, let me get this on, if you would like to be on my show or you have a service or product that you would like to advertise, just go to janfortman125@gmail.com. I want to thank all of you who put your comments, your questions in. You know what, this was really great, just let’s talk. So have a beautiful, blessed rest of your morning, afternoon, or evening and I will see you again next week. It wants me to be on longer, so come on now, let me leave because they’re going to keep me up if I don’t. All right, I’ll say it again, bye.