You're listening to I Choose Me with Jenny Girl. Welcome back to I Choose Me, where we talk about choices big and small that help us improve our lives. I wanted to spend days with Joan London, trailblazing journalist and author, soaking in her incredible stories and lessons. Here's some more of our conversation.
Oh, I love the title of this. I love I Choose Me. Obviously, I choose.
Me, Yeah, over and over on.
The entire journey, again and again and again. So of course when I heard the title of your podcast, I was like, I love that. Yes, you're like women, child do it?
No, and we're not taught to choose ourselves.
Men are taught at a very young age choose you go out on that football field, you show them whose boss you do this like? And you know it's getting better. But I just think almost inherently, women don't think that way. Maybe it's because certainly as life goes on, you have you have children and like A, I don't. I don't mean it's done a great men, but I mean men get up in the morning and they think what am I gonna wear to the I have a big meeting today?
What am I gonna have for breakfast? And then I got to get in the car and leave now because I don't want to be late for that meeting. Women get up and say, did I buy the ice skates? Do I have the hot right hockey stick? Oh my god, I've got this? Have a parent teacher meeting. You we juggle so much, shoes, your children over yourself. And it's a completely different mindset. And that's not to say that a lot of men are doing a lot more these days. And I have a great husband who's been, you know,
very hands on, not like a mother. He's not trying to remember if you bought the hockey stick or not, but he's been very hands on. But it's it's a real Oh, it's just such a I always felt like you're walking like this tightrope. And as you're walking this type rope as the working woman, every time you kind of fall over to one side and think, oh man, I should have been at the office. And then I'll run this say oh god, I should have been with the kids. Yeah, And it's just this emotional things. It's
like torture. We torture ourselves. Yeah, we torture ourselves.
I know, and I love spreading the message of how important it is to choose yourself, even to you know,
especially to younger girls. My daughters are you know, young women who they live their life by this now, and they they comprehend it on a level that I never did, and I'm sure you never did either, we as women, and I just get a little bit upset that we were, that we've had to work this hard for so long to come to this magical place where we allow ourselves to choose themselves, to love ourselves.
Only Mike in our fifties or sixties, right, But I mean I saw a picture of your daughters. You have such beautiful daughters.
Oh my god, gosh, thank you.
So how many daughters do you have? I only have three? You have three?
Four or five daughters?
Five daughters? Yes, and they're just awesome. And you know, the older ones, of course, lived through all those years with me on GMA. They came into the studio, although interestingly, as each one has finished the book, reading the final manuscript, they said, wow, I didn't know this or I didn't know that, and like I was there with you, but I didn't know this. And then there's my younger girls, because Jamie's forty five, Sarah's, Lindsay's forty two, and Sarah's
thirty eight. How do you remember all the ages? And then the twins Kate and Max are twenty three, and Kim and Jack are turning twenty one. They're twenty months apart, are turning twenty one. So those two young girls, they are going to be reading a book about a person that they don't know that much about. In a way, it's it's really weird to me. They're going to read it completely different than my older girls. And I'm so
cognizant of that that they don't. They were never around with me when I was riding around the limousines and you know, on red carpets every year other day. They didn't live that life and the older girls did. But to my younger girls, I'm just kind of a normal mom. So it's going to be really interesting to hear their take.
Yeah, what advice would you give to us to help us all believe in ourselves the way you have?
Oh? I think that, you know, I just saw this. It's ironic. I just saw this, not a meme, but this little video yesterday on my feed, one of my social media feeds that showed if you have an ant on a piece of paper and you draw a circle around it, the ant won't go out of the circle the drawing the drawn circle around it. Like I'm dying to like try this, Oh, I want to try this.
Give me the same with the same with like a spider, Like if you draw this line, but once if you keep drawing the lines, this guy showed if you draw the lines smaller and smaller so that pretty soon any movement lets them go across the line, then then they'll never be they'll never have a line hold them in again. So now just think about this in terms of us. We inherently draw lines around ourselves, like we all do.
Like I'm sure you've had a fitness trainer that says, do as many sit ups as you can, and you do twenty, and they say, why did you stop at twenty? I don't know, because I thought that's how many I
could do. I mean, we all make boundaries, and so I think what I was learning, just like that ant, or just like that spider that crossed over the line and then no line could hold them back, is I learned pretty early on that I crossed those lines and like Okay, I can do whatever whatever I want, and if you can kind of have that concept as a young person, or is anybody any age that feels like they just are limiting themselves? And I say that because
that's actually exactly what they're doing. They're limiting themselves by their own boundaries, and we almost can't help it. But to make those it's like kids. You say, oh, the kid needs boundaries, and it feels safe to have. It feels that circle. But you know, I always use the example of the show I did Behind Closed Doors where I jumped with the Golden Knights and on an aircraft carrier and an F eighteen and all these things, and people are like, oh my god, you just like you have,
you know, balls, You're not afraid? Do you think that? Every time I drove out of my driveway with yet another uniform packed in my suitcase to go off and go through training so I could do what my husband refers to as my stupid human tricks, No, I felt cautious and am I really going to be able to pull this off? Like I probably thought that before almost every one of those stories, But then I just said,
but I'm going to do it anyway. That's pretty much it, and that's you know, I just think that people hear opportunities all the time, Like somebody will be You'll be with a group and somebody will be talking about something, and people tend to think, oh, that's so great, Wow, that's gonna be a great opportunity for someone. Why not you? Why not yea? Why not you? And I've always kind of lived my life that way. So I've snatched onto
every one of them. And consequently, I have a memoir that was really hard to do because I had to figure out what things am I going to actually use because at first I wrote like one hundred and eighty thousand page memoile, Well, you can't go over one hundred thousand words. Nobody wants to read over one hundred thousand words. So I'm like, what am I going to let go of? And what am I going to leave in? And then I also decided I'm a voracious reader. I love reading books.
I love books, And what do I love about them? Well? I love reading novels and they take you into their world. They with adjectives. They they define what the what the area is like, and what the person is like, and what's happening. Don't you want to write a book like the books you like? And that's when I decided that it shouldn't be an autobiography, which was the first draft I wrote, and I decided it needs to be a memoir.
You can't just say and so then you know, the first time they offered me that job, I had to turn it down. Uh uh. I was writing up in the elevator that day. I knew I had to meet with the executives and tell them I wasn't gonna How am I going to tell them?
Oh?
There they are? Is I get off the elevator, They're already at the table. So now as the waiter is unfolding my napkin, like, get your get the words in your head, Joan, how are you gonna do this? That's what they want to hear. They want like a like all the novels that we all read and that we love.
They want to be inside your head. Yeah you did that. I did you did because I can feel myself and I'm sure everybody that reads this book can feel themselves in those scenarios that you found yourself.
In that moment that oh my god, yes, that terrifying moment.
Yeah, you really broke some major ground in your career, I mean left and right, but also as far as what women were allowed to do in the East in the workplace. You brought your newborn daughter to work at Good Morning America in the early eighties.
Which was the most cacamaming thing that I could.
Yeah, because I know what that's like. You get you wake that baby up at three am to get to the set. Yep, it's just a different, you know, a different.
I would do everything ahead of time, Jenny, and I'd have my bag that was my work bag, and then I would have the diaper bag. I'd have it already and i'd have like a little you know, I forget what those things bunting on top of the changing table. And at three point thirty, I would get up and I'd get myself ready, and then I'd go and i'd
scoop her out of the crib. She was seven weeks old, and I started as gently as I could and put her on the bunting and ant I always put her in one of those nightgowns that like open at the bottom so I could try to make her stay atsleep while I oh put on a fresh diaper. And get her into the bunting, get in the back of the car,
and this was before the car set days. I'd have her in my arms in the back of the limo, breastfeeding on one side, breastfeeding on the other side, reading the first eighty pages of the script, and then the second eighty pages, and then she'd be conped out and I'd go and put her in her little crib, which they gave me a little They gave me the dressing room next to mine. We'd put a crib in there and a rocking chair, and she would go to sleep.
I remember Barbara Walters came in one morning and she came into the makeup room and said high and then she turned around to go down the hall to get coffee to the coffee room, and she walked by the open door and she stopped and she turned around. She said, I don't even believe what I'm seeing, Like I really can't get over this, that your baby is sleeping there while you do hair and makeup, and you're going to
go down and do two hours of live television. Like I can't imagine what they would have said if I'd asked to bring my young daughter to work with me, and it was unprecedented. Isn't really a word? Is sufficient? Right? I got to hand a DABC. They let me, They said yes. But frankly, there had not been a lot of camaraderie on the show. How do I delicately say this between the co hosts that came before me and David Hartman?
Right?
And so she'd been she had left, and they wanted to get my tush in that seat and put the team back together as the fall lineup. And that was August twenty seventh, and they said September they announced all the shows in the fall lineup. I think they just felt like, just say yes to her, like, you know, whatever it takes, well, keep it to be the best
kept secret. I don't think they had any clue at all how the audience was going to react and how it would have a ripple effect across industries, across other corporations. I don't think that they had any idea that it all. Did you?
Did you realize at the time how radical that moment was or were you just doing what you had to do as a mother, what you felt I.
Was taking a young woman who got a great job and got pregnant at the same time, and I was putting one foot in front of the other, and I mean, I asked my Remember this was nineteen seventy nine, you couldn't say the word breastfeeding on television. Unbelievable. That was one of the words that you could not say on television. And so I asked my agent, will you go ahead and ask them that if I can take my baby to work because I'm breastfeeding. He was like silent for
thirty seconds. I said, I'm really serious, like, just go ask them. And I would love to have been a flying on that wall, right and uh, you know, everybody thought, well, we'll just you know, we'll just keep it mum. But that didn't happen. You know, I talk about in the book how they staged this beautiful, big press conference after my first day and invited all the press and we had this amazing turnout, like more than they expected, and
little did we know why. And you know, David Hartman welcomed everybody there and introduced me, and I opened it up to questions. First question Time magazine we heard you're bringing your baby to work. How did you work that out with ABC? And like you, I remember, my eyes darted to the back of the room where all the executives were and all the pr people who had pulled me aside like moments before, I walked out and said, what have you do? Do not say you have baby upstairs.
These are critics. They will chew you up and they will spit you out and everything you can do your job. I was like, okay, I didn't really plan on bringing it up. And second question, Newsweek, the show travels, how are you going to deal with that? And I said, well, actually, ABC contractually has given me the right to take the baby with me as long as i'm bricet feeding. You print that.
Oh my gosh, that was out.
Of the bag. But that became the story of the morning, and you know, that's why they had all heard it and they were all there. It wasn't because ABC was announcing the new star on GMA. It was because a major media corporation had given a woman the right to bring her newborn baby to work. That was the breaking news story of the day.
Well as it should have been. It changed the times, It changed the trajectory of everyone's you know, experience being a mom and having to work.
So that's what I was not a flag waving feminist. Remember I my mom didn't want me on a college campus in America because I was so young, so she sent me on world campus Afloat. Now it's called Semester at See. Best thing ever because we went around the world, visiting fifteen countries. That probably went a long way to
me getting my first job in broadcasting. And then one of the shipmates said, what are you going to do when you get back, and I said, well, I've applied to you know, I was accepted at UCLA and U SEE Berkeley, and now I'm going dating a guy that goes to University of Texas, so I'm also applying there. She said, well, I'm going to go to Mexico City because there's this university down there and I'd love to have I want someone to go with me, we go
with me. I was like, okay, and so I went, but I got My mom actually flew down from Sacramento, California, to La so we could meet her in LA and fly on to Mexico City. And when I called her to tell her I'm here, I'm ready for the flight tomorrow, she said, oh, I'm really sorry. I've decided not to go. Ah, and my mom is like, so what are you going to do. I said, I'm going to Mexico tomorrow morning by myself. That's my gosh. So I didn't know. It's so wonderful. I went for three months and I stayed
three years. And again that all played into why this news director. Why I walked in off the street at a time when no women were coming in and applying for a job at a TV station and sat down and said, you know, one of your salespeople here told me that you're going to be hiring more women because the women's movement is going to force you to do that. So tell me about this job. Tell me you know what's the future for women, you know, how's things going
to change. And he looked at me and he said that salesperson told me I'd be impressed with you, but he did know how to write an interview, because you're interviewing me. Yeah. He took me into the studio and sat me at that news set. I mean, it was just something I used to see every night on that on my television at home, and I read copy and he said, you've got something like I think that you've really got what it takes me in this business. But I don't have a job, but I'll keep you in mind.
But fortunately the weatherman was back behind the set and he saw the audition and he followed me out into the parking lot and he said, there are a few stations around the country that are hiring weather girls, and I'd like to make you Sacramento's first weather girl.
And you were getting paid what, thirty dollars a week?
You said, thirty dollars a week. No, it was like a supposedly like a paid internship. I mean it was. It was nothing. And thank god my mom taught me to recognize an opportunity. When I heard it, I said, okay, oh my gosh, be at the station at five o'clock on Monday. I was like, five am. Yes, I start drive time radio at five am. I want you there. That was kind of like the beginning of my early morning life.
For the rest of your life, for the rest of my life. I want to talk about one little thing before we before we go. In your book, you reflect on a time in your forties where you were faced where you face the crossroads of midlife, and you didn't recognize yourself or your body. And I can definitely relate to that. We both grew up in front of the cameras. I recently saw TikTok actually from a woman named Susie
Trigg Tucker, who resonated with me so much. She said that sometime in her mid forties, she started looking in the mirror and feeling ugly, like the beauty that she had always seen and been rewarded for was melting away in fine lines and gray hair. In your experience, what did it feel like to look in the mirror at that time of your life, in your forties.
It happened to me at the age of thirty nine, actually, and I picked up a magazine at the time, Charlie's Angels was on television, and it was like the three Charlie's Angels and is said fit forty and fabulous, And I was like, I want to be fit forty and fabulous, but I'm not. And I literally made a decision that I had to do something about it. I was turning forty, I had had three children, continued on the fast pace.
I was probably forty five fifty pounds more than I should be, and thank God for you know, big shoulder pads and big hair back in those days. But I knew I had to do something about it. And I also knew that twenty years from then, I still wanted to be able to run in a race and not just like watch from the sidelines. I knew that I had to change my life because I looked in the mirror and I was like, you're not that attractive anymore.
Like you know, you can't you can't wear the clothes that would look really good on you because you've got so much extra weight on you. You're lethargic, you're tired all the time. I wonder why you got to do But I mean, but I took that on, Jenny. It's like a second job, because when you take it on as a second job, that means that the appointment with the trainer or the appointment with the nutritionists is just as important as the interview with the president or the interview
with the major star. I tried to make them be equal that they couldn't be. I couldn't not show up. I couldn't they they had. I had to make them omni important like they that I had to do them and I worked really, really really hard for a year. I mean, it didn't happen anything overnight, but but when I turned forty, I had dropped forty five pounds. And
it's not just a matter of dropping the weight. Come this effusive, energetic person that had started playing tennis again and started, you know, doing things with girlfriends and that I hadn't been doing because all of a sudden, I mean it literally like transform me quite frankly into a different person, to the point that I think it completely changed my life trajectory for the next ten years, because when I was forty five, like five. So now I'm
like forty five, I've had like five Oh. I also knew I had to leave a bad marriage, right Admittedly this all was also part of that, knowing that I was going to come out on the other end and have to be attractive, its vibrant, and have to be able to start a new life. And by the time I was forty five, I met my who was thirty five. I don't know if that would have happened that way if I hadn't changed the course of my life. In fact, you probably can pretty data proof say that wouldn't have happened.
But it sounds like it was. It was all because you started choosing yourself.
Yes, yes, and that was probably the first time in a long time, because you know, when I was growing up, we weren't told to choose ourselfs. Then you have children and you really don't choose yourself and then so that really it was at that fortieth birthday they're like, wow, look what you can do. Look what happened to you when you choose yourself. It literally transformed my life. And women out there you can do this at any point in time, any point in time, and it's never, never,
never too late to do it. And you're so it's just not a matter of like, oh god, now I fit into a size eight instead of fourteen. It's that you are energyche and you have an exuberance for the day and.
You get that zest for life, but zest.
For life and that and if you're out there and you're divorced and you haven't been married, am I ever going to meet someone again? Or have you never married? And am I ever going to meet someone? Do this for yourself because that inner effusiveness, that zest in your eyes and you're a smile, that's what attracts a man.
You got it, the right kind of guy, the right one. Oh incredible, Thank you, Joan 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, and 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 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.