Beating the Odds w/ Francesco Clark

the Golden Globe. After all we've been through. We deserve an orgasm. Cis I deserve? Welcome to Go ask Allie. I'm Alli Wentworth. This season, I'm digging into everything I can get my hands on, peeling back the layers and getting dirty. I'm really excited about today's show because I think it's incredibly inspirational. But before we start talking, it's a go ask Ali moment. A listener has asked me a question that I'd love to answer. I won't use her name, but she asked me this, how do you

reconnect with friends after taking time off? It's a great question, you know. I had a falling out with a friend before COVID and I was so upset by it, and I have continually texted her and just said I'm thinking about you, I'm here if you need me. And by the way, it might be completely met by deaf ears,

but it's the gesture that counts. So I think if you want to reconnect with a friend, you should send a text or an email and basically just say I'm thinking about you and I hope you're well, and sort of send it out into the universe. But I think when you put that out there, don't expect a response. Put it out there with good intentions, and if you do hear back from them, that's how you start to reconnect. Thanks for writing, my friend. I hope that helps. Okay,

So today's episode is about beating the odds. I'm digging into that special something that some people have when they're faced with the most debilitating circumstances, and they thrive when others may crumble. I have a friend who years ago came to a premiere of mine. I had this show called Headcase, a comedy, and she was on the red

carpet and felt really dizzy and fainted. Now, of course I thought she was on some weird fad diet and hadn't eaten all day, And it turned out that my friend Nancy had a brain aneurysm, and she was rushed to the hospital. They literally cut out half her skull. She had months and months of physical therapy of retraining her brain, and today you would never know anything happened.

She's a thriving, energetic human being. But the incredible thing about it was when you visited Nancy in the hospital and at all points during her rehabilitation, she had a smile on her face and hutzpah and just the will to live and laugh and understand and befriend her doctors. And I've always been in all of that. I've always been in awe of people that can be going through the darkest and most difficult things in life and they do it with strength. And here is somebody who, when

I read his story, affected me the same way. Francesco Clark is the founder and CEO of Clark's Botanicals, a skincare company that has formulated a very special complex to help people with unique skin conditions. But when he was twenty four years old, he suddenly became a paraplegic, unable to move his body. It's his journey of how he built his company, and it's inner self that is so

incredibly inspiring, and he's with me to share it with you. So, Francesco, before we even go into the millions of questions I have for you, and I should say right off the bat, I'm so in awe of you. I think you're the most inspirational person. Thank you for having me. This is a huge honor. I want you to tell my listeners the story of what happened to you when you were twenty four years old, because that is really where the

interview kind of grows. From twenty four years old, I was living every length that a four year old has, where you feel like you're invincible and you're really just an idiot. Um you know, you think that you can do anything that you know there are no consequences to whatever you're doing. I'm and I had just graduated college two years earlier, thinking I was in adult and proving

myself to my family and my friends. And I was working in the fashion industry at Harper's Bazaar, and when I was promoted a year later, I was celebrating in the Engines in Long Island and drove into a pool, thinking that it was a deep end because of the metal ring ladder that they normally put in the deep

end was in the shallow end. And the second that I jove in, my chin hit the bottom of the pool and it snapped back with such worse that I shattered my C three C for vertebrae two inches above that bump in the back of your neck, and I was underwater. My arms flayed to my side, completely paralyzed, and I knew exactly what happened, and I don't know why, but for some reason I heard my mom's voice saying, do you realize how much physical therapy you're going to

have to do get better? So then I was brought over to sunny stern Brook Hospital and one of the best neurosurgeons said, you have a nine chance of not only surviving tonight, but the next two years of your life because my left landon collapsed completely um I left local board was now failing and I was going to be on life support for two weeks on event Leader, and they said You're never gonna be able to breathe

or talk or forget about your arms forever. So you know, my twenty four year old life went from feeling amazing to not being able to grab a glass of water in the middle of the night and you're thirsty. Changed very quickly. But there's something that happened in that hospital room with your parents that I think is foreshadowing of what kind of person you are. What happened in that room.

The surgeon told me this partnosis when I was wheeled into the emergency room, and the surgeon and the nurses were saying, you have to sign your right of life over because you have such a little probability of surviving that we have to call your next of kin. And I was kind of like, hell, no, you're not calling my parents. I don't want to tell them what happened.

I felt like the biggest idiot in the world. And they came back a second time, the third time, a fourth time, and the fifth time they said, so, you actually are going to die if you don't get you into surgery. We have to call your parents. I knew exactly where they were on vacation in Florida, and I remember the room number of the hotel, and so I got on the phone with my mother and she said, you know the surgeon just told me what happened. Now that I can hear your voice, I know you're gonna

be okay. We're gonna be by your side when you wake up. Then she put my dad on the phone and he said, just think about us being by your side tomorrow. And my sister got to the phone with me and she yelled at me because she's like the nurse said that you don't want to call us. That's bullshit, Like you should not act like this, to being so selfish. And then I realized that suddenly I had enough strength

to get through the next twelve hours. I wasn't alone anymore, even though I was about to be wheeled into this mint green operating room with all these machines kind of plugvering over your body. By the way, only only somebody in fashion would describe it as a mint green room. Yes, product green, it was a product Green. And the next morning I woke up and I was being wheeled out

of surgery. It took thirteen hours for the surgery, and I woke up from anesthesia to the surgeon speaking to my parents who were standing next to my bedside, and the surgeon was saying exactly what he had said to me, but to my father and to my mother, but he didn't realize that my father's a medical doctor, and so you know, you're saying he's not gonna be able to

speak or breathe or move anything. And my father looks at him and he said, I hope you don't speak to your other patients like this, because you could have said I don't know. And then my mother turns to me, and an Italian, she says, boss Calso, move something, and so I pitched my shoulder and then she looks back at the surgeon and she was like, you don't know, Francesco. And as soon as she said that, it clicked that,

of course I would get better. Of course, yes, that was my darkest moment in life, but of course it would get brighter from there, because if you have a bossy Italian mother and this like incredible for giving, amazing supportive father and family, you have the support of other people to bring you up when you have no idea what to do. And I started to think about how to get through each day with a sense of humor.

From that point on, Well, I agree with the parents, but I also believe that there are people who have a spark or something within them too. The strength comes from within. And strangely enough, I know to other people that dove into a swimming pool and are paraplegic, and one of them is, you know, working on rights for handicapped people. The other person just spiraled into a dark depression and I haven't heard from him in a long time. So there are choices to be made. But what is

it that made you metaphorically get out of bed? What I've noticed this is from my lens. From my point of view, people will always say, oh my god, I just had the shittiest year, but it would it's never as bad as yours could have been. But that's not really true. Everybody is allowed to have the shittiest year, and you don't have to think about comparing yourself to somebody else because what happened to me is very visible, to the point that it feels like the scarlett better.

Sometimes in the beginning, that was very difficult to deal with because strangers would come up to me and be like, what happened, But a lot of other people everybody has something happened that happens in their life. You could have breast cancer, you could have brain cancer, but nobody would know walking down the street. But people wouldn't come up and would be like, oh my god, what happened? Oh, you dove into a pool. You must be an idiot. Like a lot of people would say stuff and you

don't know how to react. People would really come up to you and just say what happened. They'd have the audacity to just be that bold. Yes, And it's fine, It's totally fine. I welcome that conversation now. But in the beginning, the first three years, I was very vulnerable and I was very depressed, to the point where if I was in a room with a lot of windows looking at my reflection, all I would notice was a

wheelchair and burst into tears. And So getting back to what you were asking, like, how did you get out of bed? I got out of bed because the people that I surrounded myself with don't treat me any differently. I mean, I'm very lucky to have the most supportive family that anybody could ask for, but even their friends, the people that I choose to be around, they never

treated me any differently. Afterwards, and you know, I would talk to my mother and she would just say like, well, what are you gonna do now, not like what are you gonna do now in a bad way, but like, well, what are you gonna work on next? What's next? And maybe also because of the fact by d n A I'm an optimist. By d n A, I've always been

a bit of a dreamer. Thank God, I've been a dreamer because before falling asleep, like in a hospital bed every night, I used to think about, oh my god, I feel pins and needles in my feet, of my legs and my chest in my arms, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. But it never goes away.

So that could drive you crazy because you start to think about you start to think about these little phrases that people would say when they would visit me and the I see you, and they used to say everything happens for a reason, and they say it in a very light, meaningful, optimistic way. But then they get to go home, they get to go out to like a movie with their friends, and then I'm stuck in bed and I'm waking up three in the morning because the

ventilator wroke me up, and I'm like, well, what's the reason? Like, what did I do wrong? They didn't mean it that way, but I mean I think that's everyone's way of of sort of here's the silver lining, although I've never subscribed to that particular phrase myself, because sometimes ship happens and there is no reason for it. I mean, I don't you know, I don't want to bring up the Holocaust, but like you know, no, there's no big white board with somebody figuring out, Okay, this has to happen for

a reason. I do want to add this. When you were talking about the support system around you, I love that you went and met with your boss, Glenda Bailey, who was the editor of Harper's Bazaar. You had lunch with her, right and you were sitting there and she goes, I don't see anything ever, it just looks like you but sitting Yeah, that was actually was. I couldn't afford

an aid at the time. So my sister was starting medical school and she was also caring for me at the same time along with my mother, and my sister was driving me around like to help me feel like myself, like to meet friends and for work stuff. And Glenda Bailey said, I'd love to meet for tea for tea. I mean, she's British, someone's very British and you know, we're going to meet with her, and she said, you look the same. You just look like you're about to stand.

And my sister was like, well, he's not always just about to stand. He's like making the stuff with our father in the kitchen. And it was this little like lab sample of something that I was working on. But the part that I didn't know about Glenda is that she actually left university when she was in the UK to become her father's career. And this person who works in the fashion industry you would assume would be shallow, frivolous, like everything that goes along with fashion or beauty. It

was the opposite. The people that we're working in this industry that you would assume wouldn't give a crop, were the most generous and stuck their necks out in ways that we're so surprising, um and I never would have expected. But that's why I love that story so much. That Glenda, you know, it's it's kind of a funny thing to say, but also she wasn't going to pity you. She wasn't, you know what I mean. And I think how she reacted to you was actually cool, just great in her

sarcastic British way. I think support comes in different forms, and it's time for a short break. Okay, let's get back to it. Tell me about how did you go from this point in your life to now being a CEO? How Francesco did you go from watching Oprah and eating hoggas ice cream to creating this unbelievable brand. This is the secret sauce I'm trying to get at. I had reached the lowest point in my life, and I had reached this point of shaving my head baled. Every week.

I wear the same paper hospital of pants every day. I wear the same T shirt every day from the hospital from Mount Sinai. And because you just didn't care, right, well, it wasn't that I didn't care. It was almost the opposite. It's so weird, and it's survivor's guilt and so and I don't I actually didn't understand this. And I don't know how you've spoken to other people about this, but survivor's guilt, I've realized, is this thing where you realize

the impact of what has happened to you. Um and from my perspective, the amount of trauma that my family had to go through was so great that all I wanted to do was to fix what happened to them because of me. And so because I thought that way, for me, it felt how do I become the opposite of a worry? And so the opposite of a worry for me was doing nine hours of physical therapy and occupational therapy every single day from home and then going to Kessler, New Jersey, and then back home to do more.

I never left the house of them to go to the hospital for three years. And it also meant dedicating under of like my energy towards moving my pinky toe, which I couldn't feel. And with that comes therefore I don't care about the way that I look. Therefore I'm going to think badly of myself if I think like, oh, it would be nice to have fun today, No, you're not allowed to you because look what you did. And then you start to think, well, why would I care

about the way that I dress? And then when you see a reflection of yourself, you're reminded of the amount of pain that you've caused these people that are like caring for you twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. It's not a healthy way of thinking, but it's a reactive way of coping with it. And I it took me three years to realize okay, that's not okay um. And the thing that snapped me out of it was the day the Christopher We've passed away and

Barbara Walters announcing it on the news. I felt like my Superman I just been taken away. He was the biggest advocate for people with spinal cord injuries. He flew to Australia, flew to China. Um he was an eventilator. I was like listening to the way that he would speak. He would be able to testify against Congress. You could meet with the smartest scientists medical doctors around the world and spar with them in the nicest, most charismatic way.

Of course, you want somebody like that around you, and it's like it's the thing that lifts you up. And then to suddenly be gone and to not know why for like more than six months was for me a huge blow. Why was it a big blow to you? Was it your own fears of you know, is this going to happen to me? Why aren't they telling us? Or were you afraid to learn something that would kind

of pull down this heroic worship you had. Yeah, when you have something happen that is um for now incurable, there's this sense of unknown, there's this sense of unease about why did it happen? How do I fix it? How do I do deal with it? And then not knowing why he had passed right away, I said, well, why did it happen? Couldn't have been prevented and why has he gone? Right? But there were no answers to that. So it was that like, Okay, you're paralyzed. Now we

don't know how to fix you. There's no cure. And his mission with the Christopher Mea Foundation was all about finding a cure, helping to care. He was all about finding answers. And then suddenly when he passed, there were no answers, and so it kind of instigated this domino effected me where I didn't know what to think. And so I was doing physical therapy and New Jersey like two hours later, and I said, you know what, I'm sitting here waiting for somebody else to have an answer

for my own life. That doesn't make any sense. I need to take responsibility for what happened in my own life and I can't wait around for the next Superman. I had been asked to be part of an advocacy group for Westchester County for people with disability ease on the elderly, and I hadn't answered in like two or three months. The meeting was two days later. I came home that nine and I said, you know what, Mom,

I'm going to join that group. And then I said, but in order to join that group, I need to put on a real shirt and real pants. And she was like, oh, thank God, and she just like left the room to find shirts and pants that maybe could fit me. I did like pounds. I just didn't care.

But I looked in the mirror for the first time when I was getting ready for that meeting the next day, and I was terrified because suddenly I was going to be in a room with uh strangers and I had to have a conversation with people I've never met, and

it wasn't like a safe place anymore. Was there any point when and this sounds like a cliche, but was there any part of you that sort of felt like, Okay, now I have to be my own Superman who was gone, but now like I have to start advocating for myself and sort of take on in a small way some of the work he was doing in a way. But I wasn't comparing myself to him. It was more out of the sense of this is not living, This is not life, and I'm not going to live out of

desperation anymore. The day that he passed was my lowest point, and I said, like, fuck this, this is not living. I can't live like this, and I'm just gonna like be me. I don't care. I mean I do care, Like the point is I care a lot, Yes, Like I don't care about other people's reactions, and I'm just going to be myself and do whatever the hell I want to do. And I don't care if people ask about the wheelchair. I don't care if people criticize and say like, oh, what happened to you? Like, oh, just

go just be yourself and do it. There's no excuse anymore. And so I looked in the mirror and I didn't look like me. And when I didn't look like me, you know, maybe this was the fashion part of me from before that. By this point I had tried, you know, the fancy creams, the prescription and all that stuff, and I turned to my dad and I said, like, you have to help me. I look like crap. I want to look the way that I feel. You're talking about

your face at this point. Your skin, yes, wasn't a symptom of what you went through the fact that you can't sweat exactly. Yeah, I didn't know that until I started to really think about, like, why do I have constant dermatitis? Why is my skin oily and dry? And I looked ten years older than I actually am, And it was because my kids stopped sweating because of my injury. When you were talking to your father about helping you, you didn't know that this was an actual medical condition.

I kind of knew that. I mean, when you have a spinal cord injury, bed sores and her sores and sitting all the time can be a huge factor to health issues, which is one of the things that led to Christopher Reeve passing. But I didn't think that it would lead to this other aspect of my life and the way that others could perceive me. You know. By this point, obviously I started to breathe on my own and talk and move my arms more, and so I

felt strong. I felt happy and confident. By this point, I didn't look strong, I didn't look happy, I didn't look confident, And now I wanted to connect with you know, talking to a stranger walking along the street in Manhattan. Before that, it would have been like my biggest nightmare to speak to a stranger. And so suddenly I was open to you know what you and I are doing now. And so the way that you look and the way that you present yourself almost becomes this site the logical

aspect of the way that you are emotionally. And when you think about one of the first signs of what it means to be in a depressive state, you don't care about the way that you look. You shut yourself off from the world. You almost want to look unaccepting or inhospitable because you don't want other people to talk to you. But when you're in a healthy state of mind, it's the opposite. You're like, I don't know, they seem approachable,

I don't know, they seem happy. And it doesn't have to be always a shallow point of view or a shallow theory where we think like, oh, just because you care about the way that you dressed, in the way that you look you have to be an idiot. For me, it was about kind of unleashing that inner strength, of that inner power that had to have grown from trauma

and kind of came through from this life event. And it was eye opening because then, you know, when I met with Glenda, she didn't know that my father and my mother and I were mixing things in our kitchen in my childhood home. I had no intention of making products to sell them. I was just making products to kind of deal with the psychological schism in my life where I wanted to feel like a human being again

and feel stronger and look stronger. And so then when it started to work, my sister started stealing some of the little vases I had in my desk, that's what sisters do. And then my mom started stealing some, and then my mom started giving them away to a lot of my dad's antients who are undergoing chemotherapy and conditions like that where they really care about ingredients and toxicity

but having it be immuno stimulating. And so we were literally just making in the kitchen, Saint, We're making products. But then when Glendam said, you look like you're about to stand my sister took out one of the little blast phases that she had stolen and she said, Francesco is not just sitting around doing nothing. And I'm like, oh my god, shut up. Darling was like, he's making this stuff in the kitchen and I'm looking like, could you like I was bright red, and Glenna said, well,

if you're using it, I have to use it. And she put it on her face and whatever, you know. We go home. We get a call six seven weeks later and she said we're gonna shoot it in the September issue and I said thanks, but no thanks, and she said, well, don't hang up. I'm transferring you to the beauty director. And the beauty director said, whether you

like it or not, it's happening. And so she's like, we're giving you six months find a factory packaging and make it look chic, but it's gonna be in there if you say yes or no. So then I said okay. And suddenly the weird thing is it felt the same as my mother in the hospital saying move something you don't know our son. Was the same thing as Blenda saying it's happening. Whether you like it or not. You

have this unconditional support from an outside source. Thing you're like, I mean, I don't know if they believe in me or in somebody so much. Then I guess a part of that has to be true. And then you start to realize that you have a family that can be more than just your d n A. But also your mother said move something, and you did, and Glenda said, you know, give me these products, and you did, so

you know the support system is there. But I'm also giving you credit that you mustered up the strength to move a piece of your body in the hospital and you went and created this great product. So I think it's the marriage of both those things, of the support system and the ability to go all right. I never thought about I actually never thought about that. Thank you. That's of course, I mean, it's it's true. It also felt like, Okay, there's a product in a jar that's

gonna be in a magazine like Big Whoop. But then I thought about, like, how do I connect my former life in fashion and my injury, And that was the hardest question to answer until I thought about Christopher Reef, and then I said, like, I'm just gonna email the CEO of the Christopher ree Foundation and try to have a portion of proceeds from the products get back to

finding a cure. And this goes back to like the reason why this all changed was saying like I don't give a fuck, Like I don't care, Just to be yourself, do whatever you need to do. So I started emailing people this is what I want to do. I don't know how to do it. I'm kind of an idiot, like,

but I'm happy to learn. Can we talk? And so the first person that I emailed was Peter Wilderader, who was the CEO of the Christopher Ree Foundation, And it came to my house and we met for two and a half hours, and I'm I was talking to him and I felt like I was like auditioning because like he didn't really talk that much, but it was just me.

And after two and a half hours, he set up a bunch of other meetings at their headquarters in Short Hills, New Jersey, and I meet with all the directors and a couple of months later they asked if I could become one of their ambassadors and it was like a huge honor. I said, that's great, but that's not why

I wanted to meet. I wanted to connect the skincare line to helping to find a cure and to give a voice to people that feel like they're not represented in an industry that speaks to other causes, but sometimes it feels more like marketing speak as opposed to an authentic, strong voice. So I wanted to connect with them on

that level. And the next thing I know, I'm meeting with Alexander Reeve Givens, his daughter, and then I meet with Matthew Reef, his son, and then I meet Will Reeve and I'm like, said, only meeting these people, but they had no idea who I was. But now I was like, oh my god, I can't believe this is happening. It's almost like make a wish and work towards it, and then when you start to see it come through, I was like, wait, now I actually have to make

it work. You have You've made it work. I mean, you have this whole line of incredible botanical skin creams. And I want to say this, because you know the podcast is audio, so people can't see. I want to say now, I want to explain that I'm looking at a very handsome man with perfect skin, but really like modelly handsome with a crisp white shirt and you're moving your arms and you're smiling, and you're moving your neck and shut out my vocal work. No, we'd like you

to talk on podcasts. But my point is that not in as two official way, I'm saying, I am looking at somebody who has worked so hard, yes on his outer stuff, but on his inner stuff to be where he is right now, which is an incredibly accomplished businessman, and somebody who looks incredibly approachable and handsome. And you know, I should say, right now, Francesco, I'm married, So I'm off the table. So whatever you were thinking, that's not going to happen. But I think it's important that people

could see what I'm seeing. Basically, we could do weekends, Oh god, weekends. Weekends are my worst weekends. Weekends I'm in my my lands and night eating ice cream. We talked about and we'll be right back. Great, let's get back to it. So, Francesco, I'm trying to paint this picture. You're twenty four years old. You've been working in the fashion industry, which is you know, can be seen as somewhat superficial and elitist. I mean, did your feelings about

beauty change after the accident. I mean, I don't know. I think that like when I was in the I c U, I started to realize, wow, there are certain people that come to visit me every single day when it smells really bad. And then I see you and you start to realize what it means to have a real human connection someone. Would you really want to be

remembered just by the way that you look? You know, I had a near death experience when I was based down in the pool and my eyes were open, and you think about your entire life and you never ever think about, like, wow, you were so pretty? Who cares? Look at me? Obviously I don't care, but no. But but what I find so amazing is that you went through what you went through and you are a fuller person for it. Listen, you could have ended up being just the biggest asshole in the world, you know what

I mean? Like, like, sometimes it is these things in life where we have a choice on which road we're going to take and the lessons we're going to learn. And the reason you're on my podcast is because I'm eating up the lessons that you've learned and I'm inspired by them. The internal stuff, Thank you, And I love your skincare, Thank you, Alia. I don't know there's there was one other thing, and you also did just kind of touch upon it where you say you could have

been a huge asshole. I mean, and we're all one decision away from a completely different life every day. And so what my good friends pointed out to me in those moments where I needed support, they were kind of like, you're exactly the same as we've worked before. But the one thing that might have changed is the prison in which I look at appreciating life has s banded a little bit more. And the reason why I say that is that I still say stupid things, I still think

stupid things. I still I still get sad. Well, you're human exactly, but I think there is a part of us that also thinks, if you've survived this horrible disease and you've got better, or if you've survived this horrible accident and you've got better, it doesn't necessarily mean that you're a saint. It just kind of means that you've mature quicker. But it doesn't always mean that you know, all the answers are that, like, we're all people anyway.

That's kind of what I'm trying to say, absolutely agree with you. And I have, you know, many friends who have faced great difficulties. One of them Michael J. Fox, who has Parkinson's, and you know, I equate you with him in that he gets angry, he gets sad, he gets pissed. He you know, but he's a person who has integrity and outlook and has worked hard to fund research to destroy this disease, Parkinson's. And that is a choice,

you know what I mean. I'm probably not going to have that experience that you had, but you know, thank you for at least telling your story and for showing me the stuff that you've learned, because I can get a tiny percentage of that inspiration just from you. And that's you know, that's a gift, and thank you, thank you, and you know what, like thank god, Michael J. Fox gets really angry about things. Oh God, the mouth on

that man. I need. I also needed that anger to say this is not my life, like, this is not who I am. If I had been complacent and blase about everything, which is what depression does, you don't do anything like you need that anger, you know. When I'm Italian, so part of it is just family dinner is like that. I'm married to Greek, so it's somewhat similar. I get it. So, you know, there's that that hot bloodedness about what do you stand for? What do you give a crap about?

What are you gonna do about it? Well, what I really liked about what what you do is that you went from what I would perceive as a place where you think of like, oh, I just want to make people feel comfortable or happy or laugh, but I don't want to instigate anything too. Now, when I as an outsider, look at what you've done. You stand for things, and you talk about things that matter, and you get angry about certain things that you talk about it in a

way that's productive. And that's what I really like about the people that do something in the world is the way that a react. I completely agree. And we're only going to play this last clip on my podcast about what you like about me? So Ally, I have a question for you. Can't wait. What was the first big lie that you remember telling your parents? Oh gosh, what an interesting question, francesco Um. The first big lie, I mean,

there were thousands of little ones. The first big lie was I told my parents that I was spending the night at my friend Cecilia's house, and instead I took the car. We had a Volkswagen Rabbit and I didn't have a driver's license, and I drove it to the beach two enough hours away to meet this boy that I had a crush on, and we walked on the beach all night until sunrise, and then I came back.

It turns out my parents found out what I did, and there was a big poster on our front door, and it was a dog with a chain and it said you are in the doghouse. That was a big life. But you know what, because of the way I grew up. I have two teenage daughters, and I can smell a lie from a thousand feet away if they even try. Do you have a look? Do they know? So? I parent a lot with humor, so if they're lying, I

find a funny way to crack it open. Do you wait like you know that they're lying before dinner is served with you and your family? Do you wait until like mad course entree or do you say it like as soon as you see them? It depends on what I perceive is a lie. And I always give them

the opportunity to be honest. So, for example, if I said to one of my daughters, um, like I'd heard that one had a boyfriend, and I said, so, do you have a boyfriend, And if she lied and said no, no, I don't I'll go huh oh, I just said don't know. I thought maybe you had a boyfriend as consens it.

And then in the middle of dinner a little bit later, I'll say, um, why are their bridal magazines coming to you know, I'll make some funny joke that then we'll make her laugh, and then I'll go, come on, you have a boy And you know, I'll get it out of it in a different way because I find that parenting it doesn't work to be like you tell me the truth right now, or you're grounded like that stuff doesn't work. So I find a way to crack it open. Alright, alright,

read their journal. There you go. That's a good question. I've taken so much time from you, so I just want to thank you Francesco so much. I really really appreciate it. And again I do love your stuff. I really love your stuff. Thank you, Francesco. His accident happened nineteen years ago, and he seems to be in such a great physical place right now, and he gets better and better every year. He's an amazing person and I'm

fascinated by his company, his entrepreneurship. He wrote a memoir ten years ago, and Francesco, let me tell you something. You have another book in you, trust me, do with it what you will. How ironic that his doctor first told him that he would never be able to move anything and would probably die. So there you have it.

There you have the incredible Francesco Clark. I do want to say too that there's a reason that we posted this episode on Thanksgiving, and the reason is that I think francesco story has showed us how important and how amazing the love and connection of family and friends are. That they were an integral part of Francesco's recovery and

his continuing growth. And so I say on this Thanksgiving Day to reach out to all your family and friends and be grateful for them and thank them because they are the scaffolding around us, and then you can over eat your turkey. Thank you for listening to Go ask Alli.

Be sure to subscribe, rate and review the podcast, and follow me on social media on Twitter at Ali e Wentworth It on Instagram at the Real Ali Wentworth and if you have questions or guest suggestions, I'd love to hear from you call it text me at three to three four six three five six, or email Go Ask Aali podcast at gmail dot com. Go Ask Ali is a production of Shonda land Audio and partnership with I

Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.