You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Girl.
Welcome to I Choose Me, a podcast about the choices we make to redefine what it means to evolve, reinvent, and thrive. Few women epitomize these qualities better than Joan London, a trailblazing broadcast journalist who co hosted Good Morning America for seventeen years. Joan helped transform the show into the highest rated morning program in the country, and over the course of her career, has authored multiple best selling books and mothered seven children, including two sets of twins.
After turning fifty. She writes in her new.
Book Joan Life Beyond the Script that she's hardwired to go go go, clearly, but she is putting aside busyness as a badge of honor to be productive with much more. Pea want to know who you can become without the hustle. Take a listen to my wonderful friend John London. Hi, it's so great to see you again after all these years.
I remember, after all these years.
Remember when you came to visit the set of nine two and oh in nineteen ninety two.
As I get ready for every interview, I don't go into anything not prepared. So like, I'm looking to see all the things you're doing now, And I thought, when did I do that? When was I there? So I go onto YouTube and put good Morning America on the set of Beverly Hills nine two one, oho up pops the entire show.
It was so good.
I watched it hire show and I'm like seeing and I remember I was sitting next to Charlie and you were right next to me, and I said, so, I need to ask you, Jenny, your character, and Charlie's like, how are you gonna ask this diplomatically? I said, she just kind of keeps things juicy spicy.
Yeah.
We went off on the whole, like the whole talk of sex and teens. Yeah, yeah, but conversations that needed to be had.
Yep.
We felt so big time to be glad.
Were you? I mean, you look so young.
Ninety two, I must have been.
Nineteen nineteen. That's I kind of guessed you are probably nineteen.
Yes, Oh my gosh. I so enjoyed your new book, Joan Life Beyond the Script. I devoured every page and I learned about your life and I saw myself in so much of your journey.
It was wonderful.
Oh absolutely, I mean I see you in much of my journey, you know, starting at young I got Good Morning. I started at Good Morning America. I was what twenty four, twenty five, and then finally kind of you know, shows end and like for me, everybody expected me to jump into another And actually, I mean there was a talk show that was tried to be designed for me and I didn't really lean in, and I couldn't even stand what's wrong with you? And I was exhausted, just completely
heavily exhausted at the time. And you know it. You really can't appreciate what you did following something that's so big. And I don't think I could have written this book if I it like five or ten years, even five years before now, because now I had the ability to look at the whole arc and say, wait a minute, like you didn't like blow it. Your last twenty five years have allowed you to make your mark on this
earth in kind of a lot of more significant ways. Actually, yeah, and a lot of the same ways that you now are out talking about.
And yeah, I mean I so related to you said, you've come to realize that you've spent your entire life in a full sprint, always chasing, always pushing, always revving the engine to its highest gear.
But as you look.
Back now you find yourself asking did I even have time to.
Absorb it all?
I feel like that all women can relate to that.
I mean, I gotta tell you, Jenny, one of my early early assistants started an archived timeline, and that timeline starts at the very beginning GMA, and it has every major interview and a lot of just even smaller interviews every trip we took. Now I have an incredible They also started keeping videos. I don't even know how I have all the videos that I have. One of these days I'm going to have to put them in a big truck and send them back to ABC and say, don't you guys want these now?
Keep them forever.
But it like it allowed us to put dates and descriptions. Having this archived timeline. I don't know if I could have written this book without. Thank God for all these assistants who kept that. But also I googled my way all through this book, like when did I do this?
When was the Republican Convention? When was I was constantly BacT checking and then I would go to YouTube, and amazingly, so much of it was there on YouTube, and I don't even know how it all got there because I didn't put it all there.
I mean, that's why you.
Gave me the idea, Jenny. Don't you use the QR.
Codes, which I think is brilliant?
You really done? No, Like, my whole life is on video. I called my attorney. I said, can I put QR codes in the book so that people can read the story and then open it up to the actual story on video? He said, well, do you own all the rights? I said, they're all on YouTube. He said, if they're all on YouTube, have about it. You can use whatever
you want. So that's when. So then, of course I made my job even harder because I not only had to go through thousands of photographs, now I went through, you know, hours and hours and hours of video to what do I want to share.
Back to the like full sprint ahead and not really absorbing any of it. Tell us how you came to realize this and how you chose to course correct, you know.
I was just telling someone the other day that after I left GMA, I was still doing behind Closed Doors and my producer called me one day and said, can you meet me in Washington tomorrow, wear that navy blue suit with a really short skirt and fight meels, and we need to go to the Pentagon. We're going to ask them if we can get into whatever crazy thing
we were asking them to let us do. And I got up the next morning really really could take like a six o'clock flight to get there by seven, and I was walking across the parking lot and I said to my assistant, Oh my god, I'm so tired. She said, well, yeah, you woke up early. I said, no, no, No. What I'm saying is how i feel right now physically, now that I've had time away from the show. It just hit me that how I feel right now is how
I felt for twenty years. I was this sleep deprived and and I mean quite honestly, when I go back and look at some of the things when I was trying to recall, because that's what you have to do when you're writing a book like this, I'd have to go to YouTube or I'd have to go to my video archive to say, oh, yeah, I was in eight countries that year, like holy.
Crap, yeah, yours just full stop, like full time.
I mean, quite honestly, from a very young age, even as you now that you've read the book, I don't know. Maybe there's just my husband always says, not that I'm looking forward to it, but when I'd like to be at your autopsy because I want to see that little chip inside you that everybody else doesn't have just keeps you going like this all the time?
Oh my god? Is it ambition? Is it tenacity? Is it passion?
What is it?
All those things push of all. But it's such an interesting question because of the fact that it just it didn't just happen at like, you know, twenty three when I was going into the workplace. It happened when I was I don't know, a little girl. It certainly happened like in high school when I just decided I'm going about this at my pace, not the school's pace, and I'm going to graduate a year early. And I just started taking correspondence courses from UC Berkeley and going to
night school and going to summer school. My mom said, why don't you just take a sleeping bag over there and stay over there. But I was so determined to graduate and get out into the real world.
Get it over with, get in there.
Yeah. Yeah, like let me loose, like take the reins out and let me go and run.
Oh my god, you are the epitome of the Year of the Horse. Yeah that we're kinding tiny, You're thors, You're ready to run. You quote Audrey hepburn in saying nothing is impossible. The word itself says I'm possible. And yes, you have lived by that wordplay. You've taken so many risks in your career and your jobs and your roles that you've exceeded in the personal journey that you've been on. Just overall, your belief that you can do anything rings
so clearly. I mean it's going to compliment you. You are an unwavering visionary and I'm so happy to be talking with you. But where do you think that belief came from, that feeling that anything is possible.
I it came from positive affirmations from my parents, and I think that's a good thing to put out there into the universe other people who are raising kids. It's funny. I just interviewed Susan Lucci for her book, and as I when we first kind of met and got to know each other about a year ago, we couldn't figure out, like why is there feel this simpatico, like we have this connection, Like what could it be? She's this dramatic actress and I'm this pragmatic journalist. And when I started
reading her book, I'm like, oh my god. Her parents gave her the same positive affirmations and I mean the same words you can be anything you want to be, you can do and it hit my mom, hits your wag into a star, sweetie, like it came to me all the time. And that was I mean, I'm going to date myself here.
But that was in like the fifties and sixties, right, And that was not when young girls were being told go out and see the world and make your mark on this world.
They were kind of being told to go to college so you can get an mrs degree, you know, so you can find a mate. And yet, so I really hand it to my parents to have been telling me back then, like just think in night like my I lost my in nineteen sixty four. I was only thirteen, So I've been hearing that women didn't get the right to have a credit card or open a bank account until nineteen seventy two.
Insane and it's.
Kind of insane. And I always love young people. I hope that young women because I'm sure you have a lot of young women who also listen to your podcasts, and I want them to understand how different it was for young women not that long ago. Like here I am. That was when I was a kid. That was when I was in my twenties and you just weren't expecting. Look when I went to try to graduate a year early, the principle wasn't like applauding me. He was like, what
the hell are you doing? Because girls were supposed to just follow the rules and not try to be anything special. And I guess I had just started bucking the system.
Yeah, I mean, what an incredible mom you had, yes to be giving you. I mean I had the same thing with my parents. They told me there's nothing you can't do, and I believed them because that's what you do when your parents tell you something over and over.
And it makes you think that you can actually be able to show At nineteen years old, it became like this, Oh man, that hit you, know, but then your parents let you.
I think it was I can survive anything, and that was the message I was going with then, as it turned out, your career basically came from believing in yourself at every step of the way. You thought initially that you wanted to be you follow in your father's footsteps and become a doctor, but then you soon realized that you felt differently about that.
So I wanted to talk about three months working in a hospital. Yeah, I'm sure that now, real quick, scalpels and stay, which is uh No.
I've watched The pet I've been watching The Pit and I love that show. So you're just watching it and then all of a sudden you see something you've never want to see.
They don't give you a warning. They just got to like the insides of someone's body.
Yeah, but I wanted to ask you, how does one come to know that a dream is not right for them? And then what steps should they take to let it go and figure out what is the dream?
Well, it became very apparent to me. I mean I was young. I remember I was sixteen when I went into college, but said that summer before I was so anxious to dip my toe into the medical world. And so my dad had founded that hospital, and he had been chief of staff at the time that he crashed
and we lost him. But so I got a job I probably shouldn't have, probably wasn't old enough to be working there, but they let me, and it just became very apparent to me that that was not going to be my path, very apparent, And it was a dilemma because letting go of that dream kind of in this weird little way, I mean, my thoughts disconnected me a little bit from my dad, who I was so young that I hadn't really gotten a chance to really really know him. And so then, how then what am I
going to do? So I went into college and I said, I'll get a psychology degree. That's as close as I can get to the medical field, which by the way, probably has served me very well in my life as a journalist, definitely. But I think there was always this little nigglaly thing in the back of my head that said, you didn't live up to that legacy. You wanted to carry on your dad's legacy, this cancer surgeon back at a time when there was no chemo, there was no radiation, there was only surgery.
And.
All of that spurred me forward. Because he was born in Australia, raised in China, came to the US, so like he wanted me to go out and see the world. But I really think that the circle became connected when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, and that it was not until then. Meanwhile, I stole all the health spots on GMA, and I did like ten health shows after GMA, but they weren't on every day, so people don't even
realize that I did another ten shows after GMA. But it was that breast cancer diagnosis that like within twenty four hours, I said, Wow, I just got I had a gift dropped in my lap, and this is going to be my opportunity to take that torch from my dad and run with it. And I just in that moment, I said, I'm not going to go through this journey as a victim as a patient. I'm going to go through this journey as an advocate, and I'm going to learn everything I can. I'm going to take that camera
into every single appointment. I'm going to share it so I can try to make a mark in this world. Of all the things I could make my mark in, it would be cancer because that was how my dad saved lives. And you know how I always wanted to go out and save lives like him. And I've had a lot of feedback from women that I probably did help save lives. You know, when I was constantly saying, have you had your mammogram? Have you had your mammogram?
And if you did, do you know if you have dense breast, because if you do, then a mammogram won't necessarily show your cancer. And all these women have written back to me on you know, my social media and said, like, you made me go get that and oh my god, I found out I have stage two cancer. So you know, I've said that if on my tombstone that that's the only thing I'm remembered for, that would be okay, because that's what gave me my opportunity to carry that torch of my dad's right.
And that became your new dream.
And advocacy, and you know, and by the way, that's probably what spurred when I started to understand the impact one can have when they have a platform like you do and like I do, and I started seeing all the feedback, I think that's what then set me off on just becoming so involved in all the other health campaigns that I did. Subsequently, going to Congress and testifying before Congress to you know, include senior care in the
in the Family and Medical Leave Act. It's not just at the beginning when a baby is born that you need to leave work and have some time off and not lose your job. It's at the end of life where we have to take care of parents or spouses and we again need the time off and we don't want to lose our job or be you know, punished
for that. And you know, I was at the FDA testifying to get mandatory mammogram reporting, and only, as I said, can I now kind of look at the whole thing and say, the next twenty five years were not the same. It wasn't topping, you know, the GMA years, but it was equal to And like, I'm happy and proud of the direction I took. But I don't know if I ever let myself say that's all until I sat down and decided to Because I sat down eleven years ago
and started writing this book. And then I got breast cancer. I said, okay, I got to write a book about breast cancer. And I got so involved, as I say, on all these health campaigns. Oh, I got to write a book about women and aging and I wrote, why did I come into this room? And then I took this back up and I'm kind of glad that it happened that way because you know, my publisher who's written a few books with me, she said, you couldn't have written this book and made yourself go that deep even
five years ago. Right.
That's the beauty of writing a memoir is really looking big picture at everything, what got you to where you are, what you survived, how you handled crisis. Look, it just makes you appreciate your journey so much more. And then yes, to share that because it's so inspiring.
You know. It's funny because my husband always says, I've got this home office and I've got all these pictures on the wall, and he said, you know, only now as you're doing this memoir of yours, he said, you've lived such an extraordinary life. He said, but to you, it was ordinary.
It just was.
Yeah, it just was, and it was it like a thousand miles an hour ordinary. And he said, this is really wonderful that you're doing this because it's allowing you to see that it wasn't an ordinary life my stretch of the imagination, and it probably even lets you look at these pictures of you with presidents, and you with garls, and you with every star imaginable with different eyes, and He's right. I mean I have a new appreciation.
Yeah, because when you're in it, you're surviving it.
Yeah.
Oh yeah, you know, you're figuring out how to manage all this craziness. And then when you step back and you look at it, you're like, wow, look what I've done.
Yeah, and they've all kind of come Jenny. I think with the chapters, which were kind of defined by age, you know, because as you get older, you want to talk to women about whatever it is it's happening to you. I wrote a book after leaving GMA called The End of the Road is Not the Bend. A bend in the road is not the end of the road. And I was dealing with this huge change. I mean, the only difference with me is that everybody in the country
knew I was dealing with it. But everybody goes through change, and they lose a job, lose a relationship or whatever. They had these shifts in their life and they come upon us, especially when you don't expect them, is very scary and very vulnerable. And I definitely wanted to write not just about all the wonderful things I got to do in my life, but about how vulnerable I felt when some of these transitions happened and how I worked
through it. Because one thing I've learned in the last twenty five years out speaking all over the country because it's different. I mean, GMA just kept me busy with GMA for twenty five years, and I've learned one thing. It's really important that we share our stories. When you share your story, your impact acting people in a room,
you're impacting people on a podcast. There are people out there that are going to say, wow, she went through that, right, and she felt vulnerable and then somehow in around up and down, somehow got through it and kept her kept her mind open to maybe doing something else. And those are like important little lessons that we learn that if we're willing to that when we share them, that other people can kind of grab onto those and have hope or be motivated.
Right right, Yeah, it's so powerful the power to inspire other people. Throughout the book, I felt that you grappled with negative voices, that imposter syndrome that we all sometimes feel, yeah, you know, and how you manage those unhelpful messages can really be the difference between getting a job and going in a totally different direction. And there were several steps along the way where you thought, I can't do that, but you did it anyway.
But I have to do it right. I mean, like the day I got the call, I was at Eyewitness News in New York. I was a reporter, and I was in my news cubby.
This one this day and ariage, Yes, yes, that's a learning.
Picture of you so much.
This is the back cover when you're four years old.
There you said that this was the picture you took on your first day of.
Yeah, like right when I went there, and I didn't
know what I was doing. To be very honest, I'd never been a reporter back in Sacramento because I started in the industry at a time when there weren't very many women, and so I started as a weather girl because that's how you started back then, and then kind of became a consumer reporter and went right to anchoring all on a very short span of time, and then went to New York and they they wanted me to be a street reporter, and I was like, okay, so do you tell them that you don't know how to
do this or do you go ahead and go?
And also the streets of New York City and.
The streets in New York City no less, and during that time that if someone's going to take a page out of the John Lennon playbook, it's this. Whenever anyone asks if you can do something, just say yes and then go figure out how to do it. I love that, and that is how I've lived my life all the way along the way. And like the day that I got the call from my agent to tell me that I got the job at Good Morning America, I was like half an hour before the six o'clock news with
startings I'm trying to finish my story. I was like, oh my god, that's awesome. I'll call you up to the show. And like twenty minutes later, the phone rang again. I figured it was him calling back with something, and it was my kind of collegist congratulations, you're pregnant with your first baby. Oh my gosh, and like delight, dilemma, like yes about this. And I don't even know if I ever really had the thought, to be honest with you, that I really don't think I ever had the thought
of man, bad timing. This would have been so great, But now you know, I found out I'm pregnant. Never occurred to me. I just immediately said, Okay, I'll figure out how to do it. I'll just figure it out.
Oh my gosh, showing the same thing happened to me when I got my first opportunity to do comedy on a show called What I Like About You. I got the job, the we did the pilot, it got picked up, and that same day I found out I was pregnant. It is so crazy, the parallels. Yeah, so many women's lives. I just said, and you went ahead and did it, said, you know what, I'm going to go forward with this because I want both things.
And that's okay, because I want both things. They're both so amazing that you do that. You deserve it to yourself to go ahead and do both. Yep. And that's not to say that it's not hard.
No, logistically very difficult, Yeah with it, you know. And I'll just physically and emotionally very difficult.
Yeah, to be worth the down to the bone trying to do both, but so worth it. Yep.
I love this quote from your book. You say I took a deep breath and told myself.
Come on, you can do this.
If you've believed in Santa Claus for five years, you can believe in yourself for five minutes. Yeah, that's a perfect mantra.
I love quotes.
I know.
I love the love quotes. And this is my eleventh book, and I've used quotes in every book I've ever written, and I keep a collection of him. Whenever I find another one I really like, I put it in my collection. So when it comes time, I spend so much time just on and chapter titles. I love chapter titles. And once I get a chapter title and then I think, okay, so what is the quote that is going to set the person up in the right framework, their right mindset
to have this chapter delivered to them. And I spend so much time. And then once you come up with a quote, the editors, the publishing editors, they make you crazy. No it actually wasn't so, and so who said that? Go back farther with someone else because they're so afraid of not giving the proper attribution. And sometimes I'd say, oh man, this isn't even worth it to keep trying to dig back. No, it actually is worth it. I want this quote.
No, quotes are so inspiring.
Yes, they're like succinct messages that you can wrap your head around and live your life according.
To Yeah, short, sweet little things that stay in the back of your mind and you remember them forever, and they serve as inspiration.
It's a pretty good matra for all of us as we learn to choose ourselves. Oh my gosh, there's so much we could talk about. I mean literally, I could talk to you all day. Your book is a generous four hundred pages of stories about reinvention and success and challenge and bursting free from imposter syndrome. Joan Life Beyond the Script is available now wherever books are sold, and of course you can hear her read the audio book
as well, which I love so much. But before I let you go, Joan London, what was your last I Choose me moment?
My last I choose me moment? My last I choose me moment was probably well, it was probably yesterday when I chose to go out in the sun and get a little bit of a tan, even though I don't I didn't really do that to my dermatologists.
Yeah, don't tell that.
I tell you. I'm at that stage of life where the last I choose me moment was when I decided I was going to work on a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle and not feel guilty. Oh wait, I love that so much because I always thought and being lazy. Uh uh. It's it's almost like a meditation. I don't and I shouldn't feel guilty.
No, that is genius. Also, it's very good for your brain.
Oh absolutely. So I take a hip hop class at my gym and this all women, and we all say the same thing. We are not here because we are good dancers. We are here so that when he does okay, now let's add the third, five, six, seven, eight, that we can think, oh my god, what was the first eight count? What was the second eight count? We're all there for a brain.
I love that.
That's so good.
I want that. I want to go to your hip hop class. Joan.
Oh my gosh, thank you so much for spending time with me. You are a legend and such an inspiration to me and so many women. I really appreciate your time today.
Good luck with the book.
It's amazing. Everybody you have to read it.
Thanks so much, Jenny.
You guys, I'm very excited to share that my book I Choose Me Chasing Joy, Finding Purpose and Embracing Reinvention is coming April fourteenth, and it would mean the world to me if you would pre order a copy or the audiobook wherever you get your books. And yes, I am definitely narrating the audiobook, so it's going to be so fun.