Choosing a career path that allows you to become closer to your family is everybody’s dream. Despite having achieved that balance, however, Paul and Peg Tan remind us that being a couple is all about being yourself and being independent as individuals while doing what you can to sit back and let each other chase what they want to do. It is apparent that they have had a lot of success in that setup. Paul runs a successful independent business as a financial advisor while Peg is a child mental health therapist. They live fruitful lives with their kids in picturesque Park City, Utah. Join them as they share their take on balancing relationships with Matt Kelly.

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Choosing A Career Path Based On Family With Paul And Peg Tan

I’ve been excited to interview you because you’re an incredible couple. You’ve been together for a long time. I have the pleasure of knowing you personally, which isn’t always the case with this. I know how much fun you have together and how well you’ve done with raising your two kids. This show is all about talking and working with couples that maybe are not understanding that there are challenges in relationships. There are ups and downs. There are all kinds of things you go through over the years.

There are ways to get through that, stay together, and keep a good, positive attitude about each other and your family. People stay together more so than the divorce rate, which is at 50% consistently across the board, and I’m hoping that we can possibly get a mindset going that can drop that down. If people stay together, that filters down to the children and they’ve got a happy mom and dad. There are many different ways to approach it and to have yourselves a wonderful life. You two are an incredible example.

We met in college. There’s no magic bullet like, “If we had this, life would be better.” There are challenges, not every day, there are times where things are good and flow, but you know there’s always a challenge right in front of you. It’s coming. There’s no question. I laugh when people think, “If we had this. If we did this amount of money. If we had this house or this car.” That’s not true. It’s something that you have to go through constantly, work through, and work at.

That’s where success is. It’s constantly doing it. It’s not a place you get to. It’s a place you exist in. Couples that are married a long time, there are long periods of time where you can have some issues. A three-month relationship is a long relationship and if they have trouble for a week, they’re like, “This is all falling apart.” You laugh when you’ve been together for many years. A week is like a blink of an eye and a miracle at our time frame, but there’s a lot of lessons to be learned from people that have been married a long time.

Can you introduce yourselves and what you do? If you want to promote something, let us know.

My name is Paul Tan. I’m originally from Ohio, and we met at Ohio State University. I’ve been a financial advisor essentially my entire career. It’s nice that I was able to go independent. Being a financial advisor is already high quality of life, freedom of time, and control of time type of job choice. To go independent has increased that even more and that’s an impart. I say that because it’s an important part of how I exist in this world, how we coexist, and how we raise kids. Our job choice, career choices, and pegs also are important in this discussion. In fact, it’s almost one of the linchpin, keystone aspects of how we’ve succeeded. That’s why I mentioned that.

We live in Park City, Utah. We’re avid outdoors people. Everything is outside the house like skiing, hiking, biking, running, and doing triathlons. The list goes on and on. Our kids are the same. I like to say we raised them through attraction by attracting them to things as opposed to, “No, you can’t do that.” It’s like, “We’re going to do this.” We’re constantly attracting them to our lifestyle. Our kids have been close with us our entire lives and continue to be. We coexist with them. A lot of it is based on activities, sports, trips, and adventures. That’s super cool to be able to have this second rebirth of kids that become your companions in all the adventures you want to do in life.

You rode your bike from Telluride to Moab. Did I see that?

That is correct. The seven-day trip that I did once and I won’t do again.

How many miles is that total?

It’s about 220 miles. More important than that, you can do 220 miles in a couple of days. It was 18,000-feet in climb elevation, 22,000 in descent through the Telluride mountains to the La Sal in the Moab. There was never a flat section. It was either up or down. When I say up, we’re talking 10 to 13-degree grades. In many cases, pushing your bike. It was an Ironman event. Six of us all survived. I’m better off from it. It’s an epic trip, but I’m not planning on doing that one again.

Congratulations. I’d put that one in the belt.

I’m Peg Tan. I am a child mental health therapist in Park City, Utah. I have done that for many years. I help kids with emotional behavioral disturbances. Mostly, all things trauma for kids. I’ve been trained in every modality out there and been a seeker of how we heal kids so that they can have healthy, happy lives. People look at my career sometimes and they say, “How do you hear these disturbing stories? How do you do that on a daily basis?” What I say about that is, it’s not about the tough stuff. It’s about the healing that can happen after and it’s the success stories.

Success is not a place you get to. It’s a place you exist in. Share on X

A young lady called me who’s 24 to tell me she’s got her life completely on track and all of the stuff that happened to her when she was little. You get those calls because you live in this world where people appreciate you, know you, and love you. They’ll call you ten years later and say, “Peg, you made a difference in my life.” That’s why I do the work I do. I started out as a school teacher before we had children. When we had children, I said, “I don’t care if we live in a trailer park, Paul. I want to stay home and raise these babies and get them off to a good start.”

We went from 2 incomes to 1. Until our kids were in elementary school, the most glorious job I’ve ever done in my life was to raise these two incredible children and make the days be about them. There was nothing else on the agenda except learning, exploring, and having fun. When they were in school, I went back to school and got my Master’s degree. That time period in which I got that, it took about five years from start to finish before I became fully licensed.

Peg, how old were the kids when you said they went back into school, it’s when you went to school to get your Master’s degree?

First and third grade. Samantha started first grade and in that week, I started my Master’s degree. We would sit at the table when they would get home. I would do my Master’s degree work and they would do their first-grade math. On the day I graduated with my Master’s degree, we all graduated together. One of the funniest things that happened during my Master’s degree was that I was gone every Monday night for this program to work with other people.

Samantha started loving football then and Monday Night Football. It was like, “What have I done to this little girl?” She knew everything about football during that period of time. The balance of how we went from me being the handler of everything at home to Paul being a handler of everything at home is part of our magic and something that our kids got out after my degree was over, which was still flexible during that period of time.

After my degree was over and I became a full-time therapist, I was in that and I went into that tunnel each and every day where until 5:00 at night, there was no catching Peg Tan for anything. Our kids switched over like, “Dad, I forgot my lunch.” “Can you bring me my violin?” “I have an orthodontist appointment today.” We got to experience the kids on that level. I look back on that and think that’s magical that it happened because of our career and we were balancing each other and supporting each other. What a gift our kids got out of that to have both of us at that capacity?

We had a phrase, “The kids grew up faster when dad takes care of them.” Peg came home once and said, “What did they have for lunch?” I said, “They never asked.”

I said, “What did they have at breakfast?” He said, “We didn’t have breakfast either.” It’s 2:00, and they are 2 and 3 at this point. I’m like, “Paul, 2 and 3 are not going to ask to feed them. You have to feed them.” He’s like, “Oh. Okay.” We settled that and we moved on.

This story right here is such a great example for the readers because when you met, Peg, you didn’t have this career path in your mind, and Paul, you had no idea that this was going to be part of your life and part of the journey. When she brought it up here and she started going in that direction, “I want to get my Master’s, I want to counsel children and this kind of thing,” what was your reaction? Were you supportive right out of the gate? Was it something you had to digest? What happened there?

No question about people carrying equal weight in a sense. I don’t say that in a sexist way. I say it in the sense of what I see a lot of these young couples. They’re like, “What’s your secret? You’ve been together for many years.” I’m always like, “When two people form to become one, that’s a fallacy. You have to remain yourselves. If you lose yourself and become one, in a sense, that to me is wrong. You always need to be strong and independent.”

Things can happen any day. I could not have come back from this bike trip and Peg would have been 100% capable to continue with life. That individuality and having a purpose in life are important. We’re two strong individual people. We do many things separate from each other. For her to have that desire to finish teaching to meet the goal of essentially staying out of the workforce for say, 8 or 9 years, and then to go back was key for the entire family’s mental health. That was a great thing. It was absolutely nothing negative about that.

It was interesting, Matt because I didn’t stumble across it. As a little kid, I knew I was going to do this job. I was always going to be a therapist and I was going to help kids heal. I never let life get in the way of that directive. From the minute Paul met me, he knew that I was going to heal children in some capacity.

What was neat, too, was when she taught for about ten years, the beginning of her teaching career was all about the kids. One day, she came home and I said, “More and more, you talk about the bureaucracy and the problems with the principals and the parents. It’s not about the kids anymore.” It dovetailed into having our own kids, and then we reassess and have these conversations. “How can you still help kids but not be in the bureaucracy that is not maybe ideal for other people, but maybe not ideal for you to still be able to help kids?” We formulated this pseudo plan of like, “Why not go into something where you run your own life and you help kids?” Child therapy or psychology was a great next fit for something that already came naturally and got us out of the trouble of the 9:00 to 5:00 bureaucracy of a structure of teaching. It was a great solution that didn’t just happen. We figured it out in a sense.

 

It started for me in high school when I sat at the table with my dad and we were talking about career choices. I said, “I want to be a child therapist. I was born to do this. I want to do it.” There’s a whole story as to how that came about as a little kid that we won’t go into. I remember him saying to me, “Do a degree that you can start right out of the gate as a bachelor’s degree and start with that.” Which is, if you want to help kids, be a teacher. If this thing never lets go of you and keep saying do it, then that’s going to be a Master’s degree anyway. You do it when you have to. I followed that plan. This little bug inside me that says, “Be a therapist,” never went away.

What’s cool about that story is you’ve had two generations of incredible support. I’ll read a quote from a woman that I’ve talked to and she typed me this email. I got two of them that I want to quote. Your father was supportive for saying, “Let your dreams go and do what you want to do with them.” You meet Paul. You’ve got a husband that’s totally supportive. He says, “Let me do what I want to do, be myself, and have my life. I want to support you to have your life.”

The two of you balance each other. The thing that I’m finding is that when you’re in a relationship and a partnership unless both sides are equally supporting the other one regardless of what they want. Missy has done a number of different things over our relationship. Each time, I supported her. It was my nature. I’m not somebody that will ever hold anybody back. I say to her, “This is not a dress rehearsal.” This is our one-time on the planet and yes, we’re doing our best to spend it together.

We want to spend it together, but at the same time, at the end of the day, when your time is up or my time is up, I don’t want you to have any regrets that you didn’t do something you wanted to do. I don’t want to have those either. As long as we support each other without holding each other back in any way, shape, or form, and figure out a way to make it work so we’re both happy, then my belief is that’s going to foster an incredible relationship.

Here’s this quote that this girl said to me, “Many men may say they want their partner to succeed in their purpose and passion, yet deep down, they may worry about being diminished in some way. Why? Does he fear that if he is not the sole or main breadwinner, his successful partner may no longer need him? Is he justified in that fear?” Peg, I should ask, when you’re counseling the children, do you have the parents in there sometimes also?

Yes. It has to be. It’s a family. Many times, the thing that caused it was the dynamic of the family. Without that family dynamic part of it, you can fix a problem and then send it back into a sick environment or whatever that is. Families are a big part of all children’s healing.

Is there a consistency in the relationship between the parents that you pick up on that there’s not that support for one or the other and one is left not totally fulfilled in life and that’s unbalanced within the relationship? Could I be going down the right path with this for people?

Yes, for sure. My caseload a lot is helping kids with the transition of mom and dad are divorcing. Many times, it’s gone bad. The kids then have to deal with it. Not always bad. I still marvel at some families that divorced and it’s just not about them. It’s about their kids and they do it all right. I have this similar thing. I’d love to do a podcast on the families that have been able to support each other even through divorce. That’s impressive. When you don’t even like this person and you’re not staying married to them, but you’re going to support them because you know that’s what’s in the best interest of your kids.

That’s a whole different thing to think about, but it does come down to insecurity. There are times he’s been in a Disney movie and he’s at the beginning of it. We’re still chasing that down as a couple and on his own. There’s always a part of you as a wife that’s like, “What happens if my husband becomes the next Tom Cruise? What’s that going to do for us?” Wouldn’t it be great? How do you handle that together? Are you a couple like Tom Hanks where they figured it out and stayed together? Are you the other couple that when one person becomes famous, it kills the relationship for whatever reason?

The quote that that woman said is interesting. It may be germane to her life. I am confident to say it’s not germane in our lives. We shine in different ways. I get calls from people asking to get on Peg’s schedule in a sense. I’m like, “This can be 8 to 9 months out at best.” She’s a rock star in that area. I always say, “The more troubled the kid, the more that it’s this magnetic attraction to her.” The kids were fine and raised well and all that. For lack of a better term, let’s say normal, which isn’t a good term but doesn’t have issues maybe is a better term.

They’re just kids. We get along great. We have a lot of friends that have kids. This is an interesting town, too, where people’s success or how they get here can be untraditional. We’re not traditional thinkers. Our kids sometimes think we had a traditional life and that we came out of college, had a career, waited five years, and had kids. That was our choice to do that but we didn’t do it necessarily traditionally. They’ve learned as they’ve become adults that we don’t have traditional values in a sense of like, “Dad comes home at 5:00 and dinner’s on the table at 6:00. Mom has a smile and an apron on.” We do not live like that at all. That’s a big part of our success, too.

Going back to how we’re each individual’s striving for our own thing and to your point about the support from the partner, that’s absolutely key. You have to be able to sit back and let the other either/or do and chase what they want to do. You as a person are different if you chase something. You’re expanding yourself. You’re still you. We’re the same people from the day we met. We’ve gone down 100 different paths, but deep down on who we are, we’re still the same people. We’ve gone around a lot of different turns, bends, and places in the world. That never changed. We’ve just enhanced and become bigger and better versions of ourselves.

About five years into our marriage, we probably have Cole. We were new parents. Paul asked me, “What do you want for Christmas?” I said, “I want a love letter from you.”

“We're successful because you're successful and I'm successful.” Share on X

You’re talking about pressure. Let me buy a Rolex.

You can’t Google it back then.

I still probably read it weekly for 30 years. It’s important to me, but one of the pieces in it is, “We’re successful because you’re successful because I’m successful.” That’s a hallmark. It’s not, “I’m successful because you have to stick around.” It’s about building off of, “We’re successful because you’re successful because I’m successful.” The word successful has things, of course, for our years together.

To get down to brass tacks too, we’ve had countless conversations about, “If we’re not happy where we’re at, we’re better off somewhere else.” We say that we have this conversation about not being together. It’s not in tough times necessarily, but it’s like, “If we’re not doing what we want to do, we’re better off doing it alone or somewhere else.” When I talk about challenges and things, we look at both sides all the time. We talk about like you said, “This is not a dress rehearsal. If you’re not happy where you’re at, get somewhere else. If that means you’re not together after 30 years, then you’re not together after 30 years and you’re better off separate and move along.” We have that conversation a lot. It’s a reality.

Missy and I talked about that, probably not as deep as you two do. We keep going back to, “We feel like we’re better people together. We’re living a better life doing it together than apart.” We go in that direction with that conversation. That’s a big old can of worms to figure out and make the final decision and all that.

I say to some of my friends sometimes, “Paul Tan can’t be Paul Tan without Peg Tan. This is the reality of it.”

We talk theoretically and in a simplistic way, and you’re right there is a massive amount of logistics if you were to go down the road. I don’t want us to make that sound simplistic, but it’s a theoretical conversation that implants this mindset that’s important to live by. That is the impetus of how you then make decisions is based on the theoretical mindset you have. It’s like starting a business. It sounds great to start a business. You need a massive amount of logistics to do that. A lot of people don’t realize that. It’s the same idea. More importantly, what is your mindset and how you look at the world? Yes, we both need to be happy, to be happy as one. The mindset is key there. Not to simplify it, but the mindset is important.

Peg, when you were saying about how you wanted to think about doing a podcast and wanted to talk with couples about having a divorce well. My whole premise is a strong career of a woman with a supportive partner. I’m focused on the women that do want a career, want to work, and want to do something outside of the house. The men that are there saying, “Go for it. Let me figure out how to balance everything with our kids, our life, and everything else. You can do that and be fully fulfilled.”

I always say we’re not going to stop divorce. It’s going to happen. Unfortunately, on a larger scale than I would like, but it will continue. When the woman is working in a career that she chooses and enjoys and she has all that going on, then I’m thinking that when that divorce does happen, that makes it a heck of a lot simpler for the two of them to separate. You hear the old adage from the males when they’re out having a conversation about divorce, “You end up buying somebody you hate a house.”

It’s that animosity because child support alimony is great on their bank account because it’s 100% going to her whereas if they would have supported their wife, if that wife wanted to work and she’s got a career going well, then it’s not going to be as big of a hit for the man when they get divorced. She already has your own income. She just has to start from zero and figure out what she’s going to do. “Now I got to figure out how to make some money myself. She’s already got that all rolling, the whole system or network, career path, industry, and money.”

If you’re supporting each other, and you’re allowing her to do the work she wants to do, if that divorce happens, it’s not going to be as traumatic on either side because he’s not going to be paying as much over here. He doesn’t feel as hurt and she already has enough money. She’s not totally dependent on him. The fight’s not as big in the beginning and that trickles down to the kids. It’s important for those children to still see a mom and dad that can coexist and communicate. Am I going down the right path without one?

In those terms, a tricky time for us was when Peg dropped out of the workforce and became just a mom. Now you have dependency issues. You have issues with, “What is my value? I bring in money, but you raise the kids.” For me to realize that raising the kids was as important as bringing in money evens that score, but it’s a tricky part because now you’re uneven. What if something would have happened in the eighth year with us and she hadn’t been working? Mind you, males can’t have kids. The female has to have the kid. They have to be the one in a traditional societal norm to drop out of the workforce for a while if they want to.

Certainly, she could have gone back to work and I stayed home. That would have been fine, but we were in a groove there, so that was a tricky time. Kids were back at full-day school and essentially, “I still want to be part of the workforce.” That worked well. Go for it. What would be the best way to do this? Get a Master’s. A lot of times, that’s where a breakdown starts to happen in these families where things become uneven.

 

For whatever reason, it’s the feeling that you’re not pulling your weight or you’re pulling too much. There are a million reasons why people then start to have animosity as growing problems arise. It’s not easy. Raising kids doesn’t come with a manual. You just got to go at it and you’ve got to do it somehow. We’re both middle children, and that helps. We both come from strong families. We both looked at our priorities. Were aligned up when we had kids.

One time, our kids said it 1,000 times and they would ask each one of us separately a question, “What do you think I should do whatever?” The answer always came back. Whether it was Cole or Sam, whether they asked Paul first or me first, that’s exactly what dad just said. We weren’t like, “The kids couldn’t come to ask you about this. Say this.” Never. One time, Sam said something. She’s like, “Dad said that to me yesterday,” or vice versa.

We also picked careers that allowed us a massive amount of flexibility, which in my estimation, the single most important aspect of what I did was flexibility and quality of time. I have not punched a clock in many years. You could say it’s luck or you could say it was built that way, but both of our professions except for one Peg taught have been our own business, own our own life, our time, and everything. When she would go and need to have time, I was able from the flexibility of career choice.

Don’t get me wrong, I turned down a lot of potential like, “Manage these five states or do this.” I never wanted to do it. I said, “No, I’m not getting these eighteen years back and I’m not giving any of them away. Not a minute.” We almost never missed a soccer game, a volleyball game, a lacrosse game, or a baseball game. We were super parents in that sense because it was a priority of ours. I’m not judging someone that chooses to go and travel three weeks of the month. I don’t know how they face their kids’ graduation in high school and go, “I was gone 60% of the time.”

Me, personally, I question whether I was a good father when my kids graduated from high school, and I was there 100% of the time. As far as feedback, we are good parents and have good kids. I was questioning those moments of like, “Did I do my job as a parent?” No judging. I don’t know how it is with people who travel a ton, so that’s unfathomable to me. A part of our success is that flexibility, able to do things, and react. A key part of our lives is our career choices.

That’s good information to have out there. For the younger set that is coming out of college, just getting their life going, looking around on what kind of jobs, and start thinking about, “What’s going to give me the ability to satisfy myself in that career, but also be present for my family?”

It’s not all or none. I’ve talked to a few kids and they want to travel a lot. Many of them think they have to work, save up money, and then travel and go essentially to be gone for a year or two. They have to do this back and forth. I saved them, too, a lot. In today’s world and the way things can work, you can do both at the same time. Looking backward, that kind of choice is more important than you think. It drove our entire lives and that’s no small statement. I would not have been happy if I’m like, “I’ve got to go to work. I got to punch the clock. I got to be there for a certain amount of time.”

Wake up in the morning, look in the mirror, and say, “What do you want to do?” Wake up in the morning, look at your partner, and say, “What do you want to do? How do we get there?” Success is getting there. We succeed because we are at a certain point. No, the certain point is immediately gone and it’s always in front of you. You have to look at life as this flow, in a sense. I can’t stress enough how important those choices are and looking and asking yourself all the time, “What do I want to do?” Life is short. My parents both died young and it affected me greatly. Live life every single day. Live it with the partner. Ask them the same questions, “How do you want to live life better every single day?” It’s key to reassess and look inward all the time.

Peg, do you see what the parents that do struggle out of the gate that is not eye-to-eye at all in having trouble? Does that wear down? Do they eventually come around and become more harmonious to get that hate out of their head, be able to move, don’t share those kids, and communicate a little bit better? Does it stick longer or is it totally individual?

That’s the magic key of all of this. I try to journey with each family separately and try to figure out where we can get the movements on it. At some point, it usually happens, where they let go of that eight or that whatever that is. There’s a lot of reasons why it’s bad for different families but a rule of thumb is when both people become happy and satisfied in their life on their own, then it doesn’t have to be about blaming anyone else or anything else.

I often see when I go to two people that are having a hard time sharing kids, they both end up with supportive spouses down the road. It’s almost like the supportive spouses can figure it out. They leave the other two out. They’re like, “We’ll figure out where Johnny’s going to stay this weekend.” They usually get there in some way. Sometimes, it’s brutal and sometimes, it comes easily. One of my favorite families where they figured out early on that they host the other one on Christmas Eve at their house. This kid is surrounded by both mom and dad on that special day. They’re like, “I can’t stand the person but we set up the guest room for him. I know that’s important for our kid.”

I’m like you, Matt, where I like to talk to the people that do it right. I’m more solution-focused in how I help families solve problems. Just because it works for one family doesn’t mean it works for another, but to talk about, “What are the ways that we might be able to fix this?” Staying miserable is not an option. It’s like, “How are we going to fix it? Are we going to change the way we think about it? Are we going to change it?” Staying miserable is just awful.

Some people want to be miserable, though, too. I believe that. Our family is interesting. The four of us don’t coddle each other in a sense. If you want something, it is up to you to get it and ask for it. We’ve had many conversations where they’re like, “I want to do this.” Nobody came up to me. Ask your partner, “What do you want to do?” A little more exacting on that phrase is you have to wake up one day and say, “I want to do this.”

Career choices are a key part of our lives. Choose wisely. Share on X

Nobody’s going to give you much in this world. Your parents give you things until you’re 14, 15, 16. That’s different. We raise our kids as, “If you want them, you better either ask, earn it, find it, and get it.” Our whole family is like that. We all go out and have this attitude of like, “If you want a part of life, then go out and get it. No one’s going to come up sit on your lap and hand it to you.” That’s the same in our partner relationship. You can try and do that now and then, but I can’t read her mind. She can’t read mine.

There might be some truth to that after you’ve been together for so long. Missy and I will be on a hike or wherever and one of us will say something. The other one will be like, “That’s exactly what I was saying.” It’s like this random starting a new conversation, but the other one would be like, “That was what’s in my mind right now, too.”

I’m 99% sure he read my mind.

It’s more scary than funny, but it’s true.

This is flown by and I thought it would. It’s been an incredible conversation and extremely enlightening. I’m sure it’s going to help many people out there to know your perspective and the positivity that you share between each other and with your kids. The other thing before we move on to my final question is, I’m such a strong believer that when a couple is happy and they can figure out themselves how to be happy by supporting each other, it helps their children, of course. Also, everybody around them feels that energy.

All your friends around, your family members, and everybody around, that makes everybody happy that you associate with. Paul, you touched on supporting each other. Supporting no matter what direction you’re going and all the different things, like you like to do with outdoors and that kind of stuff. That’s the way to bring new and exciting conversations and experiences into a relationship. Whereas, if you hold somebody down and you don’t let them go and try something they’ve never done before and try something new, the two people could get stagnant.

Missy got into a holistic kind of stuff, mind type of stuff, and that kind of thing. She talks to these different people and she talks to the other side of the world. That was totally wild and new for me. I embrace it and I have fun with it. She’s put me on calls with some different professionals and I’ve taken the calls. It’s interesting, but I call it entertaining. I put it in the entertaining category, watching what she does, and listening to her to tell me her conversations. She spoke to a dead end and she’s good. She said hi to you and those kinds of things.

She goes out there and does that. I’m like, “This is her life, too, and it’s bringing new and exciting stuff into our relationship.” It’s cool. You two do that on an incredible level all the time it seems to me. It’s a pleasure to speak to you. My final question, which I wrap up each interview with, and do some homework on gender bias and this and that, which I want to equal that up for everybody, is for the benefit of both the man and the woman. Gender bias is not helping any gender at all. From the Smithsonian, the numbers I saw is that within our country, there are about 5,000 statues memorializing men around the nation and 400 women. That’s a huge discrepancy. I thought at the end of each episode, I would ask the couple if each of you could please throw out a name for a woman for any time period in history that you believe deserves a statue and why.

I know the statistics on the importance of the father with a daughter, and it’s massive. It’s an unfair world. We try to raise our daughter like there’s nothing you can’t do. Just because somebody says that’s a man’s job or whatever doesn’t ring well with me. I don’t want to disadvantage her at all. I always raised her as though she could do anything. I tend to lean towards the women that are more pioneering and do things that go against the grain. The one that comes up for me is Amelia Earhart. That’s unheard of to do things like that. The level of bravery, I respect that, whether it be a man or a woman.

I’m often not the bravest person on things. The first woman, for example, to climb Mount Everest or to run a marathon that was never allowed to. That’s a big name that everybody recognizes that fits that idea of, “Don’t prejudge that you can’t do something.” A lot of things that happened in this world never happened until somebody did them, man or woman, but in this case, someone like that, that’s pioneering and incredibly breaks ceilings and does things that wake up the entire world.

She’s fearless.

Our daughter pursued and got a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Utah. About halfway through, I got her this necklace that represented the shattering of the glass ceiling. Going out there and getting what you want regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, or anything. She would often be in a male-oriented and awful situation. She said she would rub that necklace and know that the purpose right now is not listening to this guy who’s demeaning her because she’s a girl. She crushes him on the math test. She gets 105 and this little jerk of a guy got an 82 or a 55. She’s like, “Whatever.”

The shattering of the glass ceiling is a big, important thing for not only our daughter but our son as well. For me, personally, the woman that sticks out to me the most is Mother Teresa. You could probably imagine it within my profession or whatever. It wasn’t just that she went out and said, “I am going to work with the poorest of the poor and help the most destitute.” It was when she had a sense of who she was the world knew. There were a thousand other women that would have gone and done her work. She was not going to give up the baton. She was like, “No, I’m here. I’m still here in Kolkata. My work is not done at this level.”

 

They pleaded with her to go sit in an office and administrate and help other people, and she’s like, “No, I’m here and I’m doing this.” For me, someone like that as my guidepost in this. There’s difficult work that needs to be done in this world. I see people like that and I’m going to be that person. I will be helping little kids that have had traumatized situations when I’m 80 years old. I know this about myself. I will never stop doing that. I’ll be on the floor playing Candyland with a kid that had something bad happen to them the day before I go into the grave. Mother Teresa is a rock star in my world. Not just because of what she did but how she did it and how she stuck with that.

Both of you, those are fantastic. What a wonderful, beautiful life’s journey you have, Peg. There’s not much more that can be more rewarding than that. Thank you both. I appreciate your time. Peace. I love you both.

Thanks for doing good in the world. We’ll talk to you soon.

Have a great day.

You, too. Bye.

 Important Links:

• Peg Tan