Okay, well, welcome back to the All Things Croatia podcast, everyone.
Today we have a very special guest, Kristina Kuzmic.
And Kristina is an amazing author, comedian, social media personality, and public speaker
who was born in Croatia and immigrated to the United States.
In this episode, we're going to hear her story, get to know her a little bit better.
Kristina, thanks for coming on the podcast.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, of course.
So excited to have you on and just for context, we did meet last week, I believe, or a little
over a week ago at the Croatian Women's Luncheon here in Los Angeles.
So that was fun.
Yes.
There's something about being in a room with a bunch of Croatians that just fills my heart.
Bunch of Croatian women and me being the only guy there.
For some reason, they had me host, which I don't know why.
Well, you did a great job.
You did a great job.
Thank you.
So did you.
And that was awesome.
So we're going to take a few, I think, about 15 minutes of, you know, stand up slash performance,
telling some stories and some lessons from your book, which I do want to get into.
But before that, you know, I sort of want to ask about your, you know, usually I say
Croatian roots, but you're actually, you know, you're born in Croatia and you grew up there.
Can you tell us a little bit about that and growing up?
Yeah, so I was born in Zagreb, which most people who are listening to you probably know
is the capital of Croatia.
And then when I was around four years old, my family moved to Osijek.
So that's where I spent most of my childhood.
And then the war started and then sort of near that time, my dad got offered a job in
the U S to teach at a seminary.
And so basically the plan was always, okay, we're going to go there until things calm
down and then we're all going to move back and things calm down and they decide to move
back.
And I was already in college at that point.
So I stayed.
So that's the story.
But because they're all back there, I go back regularly and it's been, I'm so, I don't like
not having them nearby, but I also love that that has forced me to go back regularly because
I don't, you know, life's busy.
I don't know that I would go every year.
Sometimes multiple times a year if I didn't have family there.
So it's been a good way to really stay in touch with my roots.
Yeah.
Now you have to go back.
I know you were just there this summer as well.
Yeah, actually this next summer I'll be there for a while because I have to go for work
and family.
So I'm really excited.
That's going to be awesome.
Well, tell me how was growing up in OSEAC?
What memories do you have?
You were what 14 when you came here?
Yeah.
When I moved to the States.
I mean, you know, when you're growing up, your childhood seems normal to you.
So it's interesting now as a mother seeing how different my children have been growing
up than me, but you know, life was just simple and you'd go outside and you'd play with your
friends till dark and nobody, I feel like there was, it's weird because a lot of times
when people think of Croatia, they think of the war.
Like this is the first thing, especially for Americans, I think that comes to mind.
But life was so, seemed so safe and simple.
And I loved my childhood.
I mean, most of my childhood was just really great.
And you know, my grandmother actually lived in Serb, she's Croatian, but she lived in
Serbia, which was only an hour and a half.
Novi Sad was the city.
It was only an hour and a half from OSEAC.
And so I was there every weekend and you know, Croatia is so big on family sticking together.
And so that was probably one of the biggest culture shocks.
And I moved here and people are like, Oh, my grandma lives, you know, 20,000 miles away,
whatever.
Like everybody was so far away from me.
I was like 20,000, but you know, I mean, 2000 miles away.
But yeah, I had a really fun childhood.
When I look back now, I think, man, some of those things would be so weird to kids here.
Yeah.
Like I would go, like one of my regular things that I would do is my grandpa would send me
to go get him beer.
And I was like six years old because at the time there was no drinking age.
And I would just walk by myself down a few blocks, go to the store and get my grandpa
beer.
And I'm just picturing a six year old in America.
First of all, walking alone, that's not going to happen.
Like if you see a six year old walking by themselves, you're assuming they're like lost.
They're about to get kidnapped.
And then I'm walking back with a bunch of beer and that was just normal.
It was great.
Yeah.
That's classic Croatian, the older generation just telling the kids, Oh, go get me a beer.
Yeah.
Or even walking to school by myself.
So in Croatia, I'm guessing most of your audience are Croatian, right?
So they would notice.
But like at the time, I think it's still that way because I think my nephews and niece do
the same thing.
They had a music school that's a separate building and that's where you take your piano
lessons or whatever.
And it was on the other part of town.
I had to take a tram by one of those trams to go there.
And again, six years old is when I started taking piano lessons and I would go on the
tram all by myself and then go down, I don't know how long the tram ride was, like 10,
15 minutes.
And I mean, it's just when I look back and I'm like, that's crazy.
But also how lucky were my parents?
Like they're just like, see ya.
You know?
Yeah, that's true.
Yeah.
Can you imagine today in LA taking like the Metro as a six year old by yourself?
I mean, even because like even with the way I grew up, I would still be worried about
that child now because I've been so Americanized.
But yeah, that's all just normal.
How was how was your English when you came over here?
Did you already learn it growing up in school and stuff over there?
I mean, yeah, I studied in school, but you know how it is.
It's like my kids have taken Spanish here in school and they don't speak Spanish.
You don't learn that much in school.
My dad did travel to the US a few times when I was a kid and there were two different times
we got to go with him.
And so I picked up a little bit.
But I mean, I I moved at the worst time.
I was a freshman in high school.
It's like being a 14 year old.
No, I've never heard of him being, though.
I just wish I could go back to 14 again.
Like it is one of the worst ages.
And I I was bullied.
I had an accent.
I used the wrong words.
I mean, that whole I just I felt like the biggest, you know, unlikable nerd at the time.
So it's funny to me now that what I do for a living is talk and write in English because
that was not my strength back then.
Yeah, that's quite the change for you.
When did you?
Well, because I want to ask you about, you know, Oprah and being on her show and everything
like that.
But it was sort of what happened before that?
Where was your life, you know, headed before it sort of took that direction into where
it is now?
Yeah.
So like I said, when I was in college, my whole family moved back and then I ended up
getting married like right out of college, like graduated from college and three weeks
later I was married.
And I look back now, I did not think this at the time, but I look back now and I wonder
if subconsciously part of me was like, I don't have any family here.
I want to build my own family.
And that maybe that's why I sort of got into a marriage and want to be married so young.
And then five years had two kids pretty much right away.
And then five years later, left the marriage.
It was not a healthy situation for me and ended up broke.
I was on food stamps.
I couldn't afford an apartment just for me.
So I got a two bedroom apartment where I had a roommate in one room and the kids and I
shared the other room and I was sleeping on the floor for a while because I couldn't even
afford a bed.
I was just like, not only financially broke, but I just sunk into this deep, like I suck.
My kids deserve better than me.
And then too long of a story to share the full story.
But basically I started cooking for people sort of as a way to gain my self esteem and
worth back because I felt like even when I feel like I have nothing, even when I feel
completely worthless, the one thing I was confident in because I'm a Croatian woman
is that I could cook a great meal on like the tiniest, tiniest budget.
And that actually goes back to my mom and my grandma who taught me how to cook.
And I was cooking by myself by the time I was nine, 10 years old, I could cook a meal
by myself.
So that sort of gave me my self esteem back just being feeling like, Oh my gosh, even
when I feel like I have nothing, if I stop focusing on the long list of things I don't
have and can't do and just try to find out one little thing I actually can do right now,
even in the worst of the worst of times and focus on that, you know, that can take me
something great.
Give me something great.
So because of that, eventually I get remarried and my husband's in grad school at the time.
So I did not marry for money, we're both still broke.
So we didn't have, we didn't have money to take a honeymoon.
And he said, what do you want to do?
Like you have been just in survival mode with kids and trying to pay bills.
I'm here now.
I want to like support you in your dreams.
What do you want to do?
And the only thing I could think of is, you know what?
I feel like cooking for strangers saved my life.
I'm going to do something with cooking.
So I post these cooking videos online, totally as a hobby.
And I basically get discovered.
I send in a audition tape.
I find out that Oprah is doing this whole Oprah search for the next TV star competition.
So I send in a tape by the time I sent him audition tape, there were 10,000 submissions
and I'm thinking nothing of it.
Literally.
I don't have even a tiny bit of hopes up because again, I'm used to just living at the lowest
of lows.
And a week later, one of the producers calls me and then a few weeks later I'm having a
meeting with them.
And then funny enough, I was actually at the airport.
I just flew back from Croatia when I got the voicemail.
Hey, Oprah hand picked you as one of the 10 people to compete in this thing.
So anyway, I went to this reality competition, competed and ended up winning the whole thing,
which is just insane.
I mean, completely insane and had my own cooking show and hated every second of it, not Oprah's
fault, but they made me into somebody I wasn't.
And yeah, that's that.
I feel like it was like the Cinderella story, except instead of like a prince and a glass
slipper, it was Oprah and she gave me a car and a TV show, but that's literally how it
felt like little Christina that everybody pitted.
Literally my friends were like so worried about my wellbeing.
I was not somebody anybody ever looked up to is suddenly being like crowned by Oprah.
So it was crazy.
Wait, so were the was like the competition stage of that show like you were cooking against
other people or like you were cooking and they're doing their thing.
And how did that work?
Yeah.
So so it was called the search for next TV star and you could pick any category you wanted.
And again, even then, like I'm remarried at this point.
I'm not feeling like a complete worthless loser anymore because again, cooking for strangers
kind of helped me get my self-worth back.
But I'm still not like the most confident human being.
So I still felt like I mean, the only thing I know how to do is cook.
So I'll just do that.
So I was competing against people who wanted to have an entertainment show or a talk show
or whatever.
And each week we had a different expert like Vera Wang, work with us for fashion segment.
We had Dr. Phil and we had all kinds of different celebrities.
And each week one person got kicked off.
And I think of the 10 people, I was one of the only people that was 100% convinced I
was not going to win.
Like there was not even like a glimmer of hope.
So I didn't even bring enough clothes because they told us if you end up being the last
one, you need to bring enough clothes for eight weeks because we were living in a hotel.
We didn't get to see our family.
It was like this whole thing.
And we had to be completely sequestered.
And I brought enough clothes for like a week or two because I thought I was going home.
So it was really nuts.
It was nuts.
Wow.
When you won that, did you feel like, like, okay, my whole life has just changed or was
it just kind of like, oh, like, yeah, I won this.
I mean, I was in shock and the way it all happened to well, first of all, well, it's
this is such a long story.
I'm trying to like shorten it all.
But the day of the when we were shooting the last episode and Oprah is about to announce
who won, she surprised me by bringing my husband to the set.
So I am still in that shock.
Like he just walked in cameras are rolling.
Like this is all on TV.
Right.
And he walks in.
I'm still in shock from that because I haven't seen this man in eight weeks.
Right.
And poor guy, by the way, we get married.
And then a year later, almost to the day, a year later, I'm off to be gone for eight
weeks and he's suddenly a single dad and he's never had kids before.
So it was great because the kids and him really bonded during that time.
But so he walks in.
So I'm still in shock of that.
I don't even have time to get over that shock.
And then she announces it.
And I think my body, it was like completely dissociated.
Like it all just felt like a big dream.
But one thing I remember so clearly is she grabbed me by the shoulder.
This is like after they did the whole hoop, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And we're just kind of hanging out and she grabbed me by the shoulders and I'm trying
not to pee myself because Oprah is touching me, which by the way, this was 2010.
It was the last year of her talk show.
So anybody who's my age or older knows like she was the queen of TV.
She was the most famous celebrity at the time.
Like she was it, right?
Everybody knew who Oprah was.
And so I'm just like, you know, shocked that she's even touching my shoulders.
And she looked me in the eyes and so passionately said, Christina, stay authentic.
This is why I picked you.
Stay authentic.
You're goofy and you're silly and you don't care what people think and you embrace them
perfection.
Stay that way because this world and especially TV will try to change you.
I've been in this business for decades.
They're still trying to change me.
And that really stuck with me.
And it's what I credit to what I do now and the success I've had since.
But what happened was I end up with a TV show, right?
And I'm sitting in my first meeting with the producers that are going to produce my TV
show and Oprah is out filming a movie.
I think it was the Butler Cameron Brought movie, but she's not involved in the production
of my show at all, which I figured she wouldn't be.
She's a busy woman.
And I show up to this meeting and I'm like, okay, I know exactly what I want my cooking
show to be like.
This is going to be awesome.
I want to be making dinner while my little kids are throwing a tantrum in the background.
And I'm just trying to calm them down, stop them from bickering so I can finish this stupid
meal because it's been a long day and we got to eat.
And I had all these ideas that were just like real life.
And the producers, I remember they just looked at me like I was insane.
They were like, have you ever watched a cooking show?
That's not how cooking shows work.
You show up, you make a lovely meal.
Everything's perfect.
And I'm like, that's what it is.
I was like, I know, I know, I know.
But and so I explained to them, I said, listen, I used to sleep on the floor, sharing a room
with my kids.
I thought my kids deserve better than me.
If I turned on the TV and I saw another perfect cooking show, it just made me feel like crap.
It would just make me feel worse about my life.
I want to create a show where people turn it on.
And even if they've had the worst day with their kids or whatever, I want them to watch
it and go, oh my gosh, thank you.
I feel less alone.
And they're like, that's cute, but not on TV.
So they made me the perfect mom in the perfect kitchen.
I had a stylist who picked up the best outfits.
They rented this kitchen that was like a million dollar kitchen.
And every time I like made a little mistake or something, I would make a joke about it.
And they'd be like, no, cut, cut, cut, cut, cut.
You can't make any mistakes.
And I felt awful.
I mean, here was this moment after I went through this poverty and depression and stress.
Here was this thing happening in my life that should have made me so happy and just like
it should have been the highest high of my life.
Right.
And instead I just felt like a fraud.
I felt like I was betraying that girl who was sleeping on the floor, feeling like crap,
you know?
And so after one season we parted ways, Oprah apologized.
She hated the way everything turned out.
So I don't, I have, I hold nothing against her.
I know that if she had been involved, it wouldn't have been that way, but that's basically what
eventually fueled what I do now.
Like after that, I had meetings with food network and all these different, you know,
TV networks and they all wanted me to be the perfect woman.
You know, whether it was cooking or something else, just I had to be the perfect woman.
And I was like, screw that.
I'm not doing that.
So took some years off and then eventually I was like, you know, a lot of fun with those
stupid little cooking shows I posted.
I'm going to start posting videos again, but they're not going to be about cooking.
Those will be about motherhood and I'll show off my stretch marks and I'll talk about exhausting
motherhood is and how messy it is.
And that's really when things blew up.
Like you would think that Oprah crowning me would have been the thing, but it was really
me just being authentic.
And that's what led to my success.
So yeah, I still think that cooking show is a great idea.
Would you ever, would you ever try and revive that?
I mean, I know you do a lot of similar stuff now, you know, not always cooking oriented,
like you said, or not.
I mean, not even usually cooking oriented, but I do see you do a lot of like cooking
things as well, recipes and stuff on your social media.
I mean, that'd be great as like a long form show.
I know.
I mean, seriously, if anybody called me and was like, you still want to do it?
I'd be like, yes, I'm in because that was the fact that that hasn't been done yet, by
the way, because since 2010 things have changed and things have become a lot.
It's become a lot more acceptable to show yourself as not perfect.
Even on social media, when I started posting, you know, the honesty about motherhood and
saying, listen, I love my children a hundred percent of the time, but I do not love motherhood
a hundred percent of the time.
People were shocked.
I remember I got called by people magazine.
I forget what other media outlets called me.
If CNN called me to interview me about this statement that I made and about the fact that
I'm admitting that motherhood is hard and it's exact.
What?
You're showing your sink full of dishes and how messy your house is and your dirty laundry
and like what?
So thankfully there's been progress on social media where I'm now not the only one doing
that, but on TV it's still pretty fake.
I mean, and social media is fake too, but I do think there's two sides, right?
There's the fake stuff and then there's people like me who are like, screw that.
Here's my crap.
That's true.
But I mean, you do have more freedom and creativity running your own social media and you know,
whatever you want to post.
No one tells me what to post.
No one tells me what to wear or I mean, it's great.
I love being my own boss.
Well talk to me about, about what you post on there.
Cause I know you've got what?
Over like 800,000 followers on Instagram.
I'm not really on Facebook anymore, but I'm sure you've got a lot of followers on there.
Yeah, on Facebook is actually where it first took off.
I didn't even have Instagram until later on.
So on Facebook it's close to 3 million now.
And what's interesting is the thing that whenever I saw a spike in numbers, it was always the
types of videos that most professionals quote unquote in the industry would be like, you
can't post that.
Nope.
Don't post that.
I remember I was, I first started posting just funny videos.
Like I said, the stretch marks for my first parenting video I ever made was for reasons
stretch marks are sexy.
And I just started showing off my stretch marks and talking about them and making funny
points about them.
And then by like the fourth video, my phone was buzzing one morning.
Like I was just like on and on and on.
I was like, what is how that someone die?
And I look at my phone and all these people that knew me were texting me, telling me that
Ashton Kutcher shared one of my videos and he had just become a father.
So I think I don't remember what video was, but it was obviously relatable to him.
And what I noticed is every time there's a spike in my following, it already said that
it was because mom brain, but it was because it was like really honest and, you know, just
really raw.
Like we're not pretending anything.
So I'm posting these funny, funny videos.
And then I start seeing comments from people that are saying, Oh my gosh, I needed this
laugh because I'm sharing a bedroom with my kid and I'm really embarrassed about it.
Or I'm on food stamps because I got a divorce and my ex won't pay child, whatever.
I'm going through a depression.
I start, these people are opening up to me on these funny videos.
And I thought, man, they don't even know.
Like they don't even know my story.
They don't even know what I've been through.
So I go in my car because my kids were being loud and it was the only place that was quiet.
And I shoot this video, no editing.
I just talk straight to the camera and I talk about that time in my life and a certain thing
that a therapist said to me that really, really helped me.
And I send this to a friend of mine who's a producer.
Cause by this point I was like friends with people in TV and all that.
Cause my Oprah experience.
So I sent it to a guy who had been a TV producer for years, very successful.
I sent him this and I go, what do you think about me posting this?
I mean, I've only posted funny things.
And he said, absolutely not Christina.
You are known as a funny mom.
You have now started to build a following as a funny mom.
Do not go there.
Like you gotta stand your lane, staying what you know works.
And I was like, okay.
And a few days, it took only a few days.
And I was like, screw that.
That doesn't feel right to me.
I just, I'm going to follow my instinct.
It doesn't feel right to me.
I posted that.
And from then on, it was crazy.
Everything blew up.
I mean, I was getting like outside job offers and interview offers and brand deals and everything.
And it made me realize that's, that's what every human being wants.
Every human being wants to know that they're not the only one, whatever they're going through.
They're not the only one.
Someone else has been through it and someone else has gotten through it.
You know, someone else has cried it, screamed it, fought it.
And someone else has made it.
That's all that.
That's all we want.
We all want to know that all the crazy thoughts we have in our head, all the insecurities,
all the fears that somebody else has them that were normal.
And yeah, I mean, this is why I encourage everybody.
Like I get it.
I get that you want to show your perfect marriage and your perfect pretty kitchen.
I get it.
But being perfect is not what's going to make you lovable.
And that's really why people are posting their perfect stuff because they want to be liked.
They want the love.
That's not what's going to make you lovable.
It's not what's going to make you lovable is being a flawed human and being really honest
about it.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, it sounds like you've had a lot of these moments, these like big moments in
your life that have showed you that you need to be true to yourself and be authentic.
Yeah.
I think that's great.
Every time I have quote unquote failed at something career wise, it was because I wasn't
authentic.
It was because I listened to those outside voices that were trying to make me quote unquote
professional, you know, and every time I've had like the greatest successes, the things
that really worked out for me, it was because I was a hundred percent me and a hundred percent
me is the furthest things from perfection.
So yeah, just like, and there's also such a freedom in it because if you're authentic,
if you're not worrying what other people think, then you're not hiding anything because think
about it every time we post that perfect picture or we present ourselves in a perfect way,
we can't be confident.
You cannot be a hundred percent confident if you're not a hundred percent authentic,
because if you're not a hundred percent authentic, you are carrying in yourself, you're carrying
a secret, right?
What if people knew their truth?
What if people knew what my house really looked like?
What do people knew what motherhood was really like?
What if they knew what my kid was really struggling with if they only knew?
And if you are living with that hiding yourself, then you can't be confident and you're never
going to feel free.
You are trapped.
Yeah, that makes sense.
I mean, I want to ask and sort of it intertwines with this because talking about being your
true self and, you know, putting that out there for people to see how do you deal with
hate online and like trolls and things like that?
Because I mean, I get my fair share of it.
Most of my stuff is not too controversial anyway, so I don't get a lot, but I have been
doing it for a while, so I get, you know, stuff and I deal with that fine.
But I have a lot of friends who some of them just like blew up overnight on, you know,
TikTok or whatever.
And so they're not, you know, they haven't been in the game a long time, I guess.
And they really don't know how to deal with the like the hate.
And I could see that they're really struggling with that.
And so you've been doing this for forever and have so many followers on all these outlets.
So I'm sure just inevitably, you know, there's trolls everywhere.
How do you deal with that personally?
I mean, one thing I wish I don't think I started doing this till I was in my 40s.
I wish I'd start earlier.
But I literally every morning, I don't even have to do it because now it comes naturally.
But at first, when I decided I would, I would make myself ask myself this question every
single morning when I woke up.
Do I want to be genuinely happy today or do I want to live for other people's approval?
Because you can't have both.
I tested it out.
You're welcome.
You cannot have both.
You have to choose one.
And I may have even shared this analogy that I came up with when I spoke on when we saw
each other last.
I can't remember.
But I live for analogies.
I need analogies in order to like fix myself and or fix my insecurities or trauma or whatever.
So this is how I started picturing it.
It's kind of like we're all carrying around suitcases right in life.
And we got our to do list suitcase and we got our marriage suitcase and we got our financial
stress suitcase, our parenting suitcase, our career stuff.
We got all these suitcases.
And when someone is judging you, whether it's in person or whether they're leaving a nasty
comment online, what they're basically saying is here's my suitcase.
Take it.
Because most of the time it's not actually about you.
It's about them.
They are miserable about their own stuff and they don't know how to deal with it.
They think that pain is like dodgeball.
They're going to take that ball of pain.
They're going to throw it at somebody else and who?
Okay.
Now it's out of my hands.
But that's not how it works.
And so I literally start picturing whenever I got a negative comment, I've gotten, I've
gotten the, you wouldn't even believe the comments I've gotten.
I literally picture someone handing me their suitcase of everything they're miserable about
their choices, their circumstances, whatever, and going here, carry it.
And I decided, no, no, thank you.
It's not my suitcase.
And we've all picked up suitcases.
You know, some of us have suitcases for my childhood.
Maybe some of us have suitcases that our parent handed us and we're carrying these suitcases
full of lies about who we are and what we're worth.
And I'm done.
So I, sometimes people will leave a negative comment and I'll literally reply with no,
thank you as a no, thank you.
I don't want your suitcase.
They get completely confused.
They're like, I just called you a bleep and bleep and told you to go kill yourself.
What do you mean?
No, thank you.
But, but it's just my way of going, I'm not picking that up.
And I remember it was recently somebody commented and said, I really don't like you.
And a lot of times I ignore the haters, but I replied, well, what made you think I needed
you to like me?
And I guess that's the bottom line, right?
Like you have to decide that at the end of the day, you are going to make yourself proud
because otherwise, and sometimes you're going to have to disappoint other people in order
not to disappoint yourself.
Otherwise, what's going to happen is you are going to live for everybody else's approval.
And the problem is where it gets complicated is that different people will need you to
be a different person, right?
This person is going to need to be funnier.
And this person is going to need to have this opinion.
This person is going to think you're boring, but this person is going to think you're too
crazy.
And you're going to need a spreadsheet to keep track of who am I supposed to be in front
of who and it, and it's just not worth it.
I don't know if it's like the Eastern European thing or what, but like, I tend to be a really
morbid person.
Not in like a, not in like a scary creepy way, but like I think about death a lot.
And again, not in a fear filled way, but more in a way of I get this one life.
I get this one life.
Why in the world would I waste it worrying about what so-and-so thinks when bottom line,
if I actually sat down and talked to so-and-so, I probably don't even like them.
I probably don't even respect them.
I probably don't even want to be friends with them.
I don't want to raise my kids the way they raise their kids.
I don't look up to why, why would I care?
So I think you have to adopt that attitude.
A of it's my life and I'm going to post and I'm going to believe what I believe.
And I'm going to, you know, I, at the end of the day, I want to know that I made myself
proud and two, this is their baggage because anybody who's going to take the time to write
hateful comments on your social media, that is not a happy human being.
There's, there's zero chance that they are genuinely happy human being.
There are plenty of things I've seen on social media.
There are plenty of politicians that I can't stand and I've seen posts and I've never actually
gone, you know what?
I could be pursuing a dream right now or spending time with my family, but instead I'm going
to spend these next few minutes telling them how much I hate them.
No, I got better things to focus on in life.
So I mean, it's, I don't think it's something that happens overnight.
It took me a long time, but I can tell you, honestly, I'm at a point in my life right
now, you could write the worst possible thing to me and it just doesn't get to me.
I aspire to be like you, Christina.
Yeah, that's, you definitely easier said than done.
I mean, at least for my, in my, for me, maybe for some people it's easier to do that than
others.
Can I give you another analogy though?
Yeah, go for it.
Just because different analogies work for different people.
Okay.
So a few years back, my daughter, she's in college now, but she was in high school and
she had Matea, like the most popular girl named in Croatia, by the way, she was working
in a restaurant and every night she would come back from her work shift.
I go, how was it?
And she goes awful.
This customer was really annoying to me or, you know, my fellow coworker did this about,
it was just always negative.
So one day I sat her down.
I said, okay, listen, Matea, I'm worried that you're picking up every little annoyance,
every little thing people say or do, whatever, every little annoyance is a brick.
And here's the problem.
Life will already hand you a bunch of bricks that are out of your control.
Like you're going to be forced to carry these heavy things in life.
That's part of being a human.
You're not going to have a choice.
Okay.
You're going to have to carry them.
So if you decide to pick up every little negative comment or a plan, you made that failed or
a new stress as a brick, man, life will be so heavy.
You're just going to be carrying a bunch of bricks every single day.
No wonder you're going to feel exhausted and inadequate and stressed out and miserable.
So this is what I need you to do.
Try this next time you're at work and somebody says something annoying, some customers root
to whatever it is.
Why don't you think of it as a feather, acknowledge it, see it, and then literally just watch it,
you know, fly off.
And she was a teenager at the time.
Something and she's just like annoyed with me and whatever, mom, you're being cheesy.
Next day she comes back from work and I go, how was it?
And she's like, good.
I said, good.
What do you mean?
Good.
You never say good.
And she just kind of smiles and he goes feathers and runs off to her.
Okay.
And then finally here later, I'm flying to Croatia and again, love being in Croatia.
Love, love, love, love.
Actually cry every time I have to leave Croatia, even though I've lived here for so long now.
And I'm flying to Croatia and I'm thinking about how I love being there, but there's
this one person and I'm sure we all have this one person in our life who always just says
something like just pushes my button, just literally ruins it for me.
And then what I do, they say something and then I think about it all day and I'm miserable
and I replay it.
And I, as we all, we get in the shower and what do we do?
We play all the things we're going to say back next time.
And we wish we had said, or we're going to tell them off.
Are we going to, I mean, literally like every trip had like this little dark cloud on it
because this one person.
So I'm on my flight and I remember this analogy that I'd made up for my daughter.
And I was like, okay, you know what?
For this whole summer when I'm in Croatia, I'm going to picture everything annoying.
They say as a feather.
And I'm not kidding you.
I'm having a family dinner and this person says something directed at me.
And I literally just go, I picture a feather in my head and I'm moving my head, watching
this feather fly off.
And everybody's just looking at me like, what drugs is she on?
My mother afterwards actually, she actually like took me.
I thought she's like, are you okay?
And I was like, never better, never better, but it worked.
So I don't know.
Sometimes maybe when you see a negative comment or something, be like, this is a feather and
I'm literally going to picture myself.
If flying away, I am not picking it up as a brick.
You don't have to every time literally imagine it in real time.
It's kind of fun because then people just stare at you and think you're a weirdo.
And I'm all about that.
Yeah.
They may get off your back just from that alone.
Yeah.
I don't want to keep you too long, Christina.
We've got about five minutes left here, but I want to, you know, I want you to talk about
your books a little bit.
You're an author.
You became an author.
You wrote, is it two books now?
You just came out with another one recently.
Where did the inspiration for the first one come from?
And then, you know, tell us about the new one as well.
So the first one came from the following that I had built on social media.
And a lot of times I'd share a little thing about my past, whether it was a funny motherhood
story, whether it was, you know, something really hard I'd been through and people, the
comment I saw was tell me more.
I want to know more.
You know, what led to that or what happened after?
And so it's basically me sharing about everything from my divorce to, you know, dating again
and how do you trust again after a divorce and getting married.
And I share about the Oprah experience.
I share about immigrating from Croatia.
And then there's a lot of funny motherhood stuff in there.
And it's called Hold On, But Don't Hold Still.
I thought that would be my only book.
Croatians, by the way, translated it.
It was awesome.
I did a book tour there a few years ago.
And then my son, my oldest son had been struggling with serious mental health struggles.
And I have a rule with my kids where I won't share anything about them publicly without
their full permission.
So I thought we would never talk about it.
And then he decided to talk about it publicly because he wanted to end the stigma and the
shame on mental health.
So we ended up writing a book about that.
And that's the new book.
I can fix this and otherwise I told myself.
And I wrote the first 10 chapters and then actually my son wrote the last one.
So you hear from a mom and then you hear directly from a teenager who, you know, what depression,
anxiety, ADHD, what it all felt like for him having suicidal ideations.
I mean, he goes there.
He did not hold back.
And what I did that helped as a parent and what I did that did not help as a parent,
we put it all out there.
And I'm actually really excited because Croatians are translating it.
It should be out in the spring.
And it's a really big deal because if we're in Croatia, because mental health is not talked
about openly there, there's still so much stigma and shame.
And so I'll be going there in May for a book tour.
And I think I'm going to shock a lot of people because I'm not going to hold back.
But you know what?
Hopefully we can save some lives.
Yeah, it's definitely different over there.
The sort of perception of on mental health and dealing with that, especially publicly.
So yeah, I can imagine that that's going to create some waves over there.
And that's why I think you had told me this summer, this coming summer, next summer, however
you want to say it.
You'll be there and you'll be doing the book tour.
It's going to be translated and everything.
Yeah.
So it's a profile, which is one of the publishing houses there.
Translated my first one.
They're translated this one.
And I think they're a little nervous because again, this topic is not talked about openly,
but it's the whole what will people think?
Right.
I mean, it's big in America, but shtacj ljudi misliti was probably the most common phrase
I heard as a child.
And my goal is to eliminate that phrase from our lovely Croatian culture.
I like it.
Yeah.
That'll definitely be an experience, not only for you, but for everyone else as well over
there.
Looking forward to it.
You're going to be like, oh, good part she's talking about.
Or people will just start walking out of my book events.
I'll be banned from the country.
Yeah, maybe I'll have to, I'll probably be over there at some point during the time,
because you're going to be spending a few months there.
I'm sure we'll cross eventually over there.
I'll have to make it out to one of the signings.
I promise I won't walk out.
I was going to say, don't walk out, dude.
Stick around.
I'll stick around.
No, that should be great.
I'm excited for you for that.
I've got a few more minutes here.
I want to get to a couple other, I got a couple of fun questions at the end, but sort of last
thing, I know you're just coming off of your tour, your standup performance.
Can you talk a little bit quickly about that and sort of the themes that you talk about
on stage and where you're headed next?
I know you're kind of taking a break, but do you have other plans for another tour or
what?
Yeah.
So I've got two different tours.
And the first one was, again, a lot about motherhood and all that.
And then the second one was about mental health, but I still add a lot of humor because in
my opinion, going through life without humor is like eating soup with a fork.
You're going to miss out on so much deliciousness in life.
If you can't find the funny, you have to be able to find the funny.
So it's really an extension of my videos and I never planned on touring.
I don't consider myself a standup comedian, but suddenly I have been to, I think over
80 cities doing standup comedy.
So it's very weird.
I am taking a break now because I just, I need to be home.
So I'll be doing a lot of speaking engagements, but I won't be touring for a while.
And then if I do write another show, you can't relate to this, but you should still go because
all men should go to the show.
I think it's going to be about menopause.
And I think I want to call it cougar puberty because that's basically what menopause is.
So haven't written it yet.
This is just an idea in my head, but if I reach for another one, that's going to be
it.
Yeah.
I cannot relate, but that would be interesting to hear.
Yeah.
I'm going to force you to go.
I think men need to see, need to know what women go through.
That's fair.
All right.
Real quick questions here, Christina.
What do you eat when you're in Croatia?
It's a toss up between budak, sasirom and cebapi.
Okay, fair.
But it has to be cebapi with the lepina that's soft and the onions and ivy and kind of like
the whole thing.
I like when they grill the lepina in like the juice of the, Ooh, that's so good.
Yes.
It's got to be greasy.
It all has to be greasy.
Yeah.
It's got to feel like a cheat meal, you know, as they say, like fast food.
It's not, it's not supposed to be fancy.
Christina, last question for you here.
What makes Croatia or Croatia special?
Oh, the people.
I mean, really, I know that sounds cheesy, but the people, one of the first times I brought
my husband to Croatia, we're walking down the street in Osijek and there's this beautiful
like old wooden sort of door slash gate to this house.
And we just stopped and we were just admiring it.
It was like, Oh my gosh, you never see stuff like this in America.
And the man walks out and he's like, hi.
And my husband's like, Oh shoot.
He's going mad at us.
And instead the guy's like, we're, we're just getting dinner ready.
You guys want to come in?
And my husband was like, is he going to murder us?
Like in America, they would murder you if they invite you in like super strangers.
We went in there and his wife was cooking in the kitchen and he had this beautiful yard
and he showed us plums from his tree.
And then he took a bag and gave us a bunch of plums.
And we ended up sitting down and having dinner with these strangers.
And my husband to this day, like it's the one story always tells people.
I mean, that might be a little bit on extreme, like not everybody in Croatia is going to
invite you over immediately, but there's the people there.
And it's the thing I hear the most from Americans who have gone to visit Croatia vacation.
There's just such a warmth and hospitality and you know, your neighbors, your friends,
they are all family.
They are family and you will show up for them.
And to me, that's just one of the most beautiful things.
And one thing I recently realized is Croatia is not a hustle culture.
And I think in America, everybody's just hustling for more and better and you know, moving up
in their career.
And that stuff gets really distracting, right?
It distracts you from focusing on what ultimately really matters.
Like again, not to be morbid again, but when you're on your deathbed, you're not going
to give a crap what position you held or how much money you made.
It's who is going to be there holding your hand saying goodbye.
So I just, I love the way Croatian people love.
That's a great answer.
Yeah.
I think that's one of my favorite things about it as well.
Just yeah, everyone's so warm.
That's such a classic story.
Yeah.
Just randomly getting invited in.
And we stayed in touch.
Like it was crazy.
Yeah.
That's awesome.
Well, Christina, I want to thank you so much for coming on to all things Croatia podcasts
here.
How many people find you if they want to find information, you know, when you're going on
tour next or where to buy your book or, you know, find you on social media.
What's the best way to do that?
So just my first and last name Christina with a K, which is the correct way to spell Christina.
Obviously Americans know that and last name K U Z M I C and I'm on Instagram, Facebook,
YouTube everywhere.
Awesome.
Christina, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
Thank you so much for having me.
I really appreciate it.