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Celebrating the power of possibility.

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I'm Brittany Tarrwater and I believe anything is possible.

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This is Anything is Possible. I'm Halloran Hilton Hill, part two of my interview with Brittany Tarrwater, who in full disclosure, we work at the same station.

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She's a great friend, but I just am a fan of you.

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I'm really proud of you and your husband and your family and the way you're doing life and growing through life.

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And thank you for the willingness to be transparent about your journey, especially as you've been telling us your story about your mom.

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And just to catch you up on the story, middle school, high school, you have a difficult relationship with your mother.

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The way you described it was, you said you were too immature to understand her struggles and her contributions.

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And the best way you found to deal with that, the tension between the two of you, was to wall yourself off from it.

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To move away, to lock yourself into your career as a swimmer and then your aspirations as a journalist and anchor.

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And if you don't have to deal with it, it's not there. But then we reach these inflection points in life and your mother is literally on her death bed.

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You've been called in and you're spending more time with her and maybe it's the obligation of a daughter to a mother, but there's still that distance and that tension.

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She's an atheist. Your faith is essential to you and your faith is calling you to be something that your flesh is resisting.

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Is that a spot on?

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So you go to see your mother, she asks you about your faith, she has a devotional, as an atheist is doing with a devotional, and she said, oh, things have changed.

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So maybe pick it up from there.

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Yeah, sure. So this was not long in my last visit to her when we had that conversation. And then maybe two weeks later, maybe a week later, she had lost her ability to speak.

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So we knew time was coming. And I got a phone call and it said, Mom, on my phone.

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I thought, well, surely it's my sister or someone just calling from her phone. And I picked up the phone and it was her.

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She said, Hi, sweetie pie.

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I just want you to know that I'm going to die today. And I love you.

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And I just told her I knew where she was going. And I'd see her again.

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That was it. And she was right.

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She was right because she was going to die that day. Did you feel resolved or unresolved?

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I felt very much resolved. It was all the heaviness of being angry with someone was gone.

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You know, I don't know the name of my show is anything is possible. I've spent a lot of time talking to people about success and ambition and people frame success in terms of...

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Sure.

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Yeah.

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Hardware.

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But the older I get, the more I do this work.

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For me, the richness is in the possibility of new beginnings.

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That you can go through and you can grow through things in your life that seem insurmountable.

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It seems like the most insurmountable things are the things on the inside.

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Right? And for you to climb that mountain, for you to...for God to give you the grace to deal with that and to resolve that.

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And to...can you imagine all the years, the stuff you were holding, the stuff she was feeling, the way that energy gets in and on the people around you?

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So have you thought about that as well?

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No, I haven't. But my husband has really taught me how to offer grace.

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And the power of redemption, and that's real.

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And how to be vulnerable with people.

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Because I think part of that is just to protect yourself from really the fear of people finding out who you really are.

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Yeah.

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So a lot of that I've seen through my husband and through Doug Bannister, who is just...

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Oh, God. Phenomenal.

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Wonderful person, very influential and impactful person in my life. He married us.

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Married all of us in our family.

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And he's just a...really was one of the first people to tell me that I needed to go repair the relationship with my mom.

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Davis and Doug and my father-in-law Dwight and people around me who encouraged that.

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Possibility powered by Covenant Health, Home Federal, and the Knoxville News Sentinel.

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Coming up...

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My veil was always, if you came back here, you would see that it's empty.

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That I'm not a good enough reporter.

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I'm not very...

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I'm not the fastest swimmer.

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I'm not really even very smart.

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You know, and this is for anybody watching that is harboring any type of unforgiveness.

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You don't get away clean

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It's doing something to you

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It'll it's gonna show up it's gonna show up in the way it affects all of the relationships around you and

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if you can find your way to

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Forgiveness, it's a beautiful thing. It's a wonderful thing. It's a God thing

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But then there's another there's another part of this that I wanted to speak to

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That's that's coming up for me here and that is this

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You said all of us have this this primal fear that if you really knew me you wouldn't you wouldn't like me

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right, oh yes, and

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It's just a it's just a so we we create our avatars we present them to the world

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The problem with that is

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people fall in love with the avatar

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They they they fall in love with this

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The synthetic placeholder we've created for people to love and

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They fall in love with that

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Our self-awareness knows you like that image

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You have no idea who I am

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You have no idea who I am and you notice the distance between and that distance has a feeling

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the beautiful thing about

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taking the risk to be known is

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That

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You find out number one

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It is a great

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It's a great way to change the oil

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It's a great way to

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To clean the oven because all of the people who don't really care about you are going to be removed, right?

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but then what happens is

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the people who really love you show up and

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You get to know

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for sure finally

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That someone would choose to love that you and

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That quality of love is way better than having somebody be in love with an image of you

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And I don't think we can know that until we cross that transom of forgiveness

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Because that's what you had to choose to do with your mother

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Not the mother I wish you were not who what I I just love you

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I forgive you I see you I see it makes sense to me how you could be broken and and

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Have all of this other complexity in your life because you're a human being just like does it does any of this make sense to you?

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Yes, what does that bring up?

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I

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my

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My veil was always if you came back here you would see that there's that it's that it's empty that I I'm

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not a

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good enough

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Reporter I'm not very

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Swimmer I'm not really even very smart like I don't know enough about the Bible

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I don't know like all of my vulnerabilities and and that I just believe is is

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just the enemy

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Trying to isolate you from from God from community from family from being the best friend the best

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parent the best spouse the best

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That you can be

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and

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It helps me to see that so I can say well wait a minute

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Talk about the freedom on the other side of that. How do you feel now? Well? I mean, I'm not sure that I've nailed it

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I'm not sure that I

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I'm you know, I'm still a little bit progress, but they're certainly feel certainly

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Certainly and it helps you to understand other people I think

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Here's another here's another thing that I've discovered

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You got me talking. Yeah, go on man. I like to listen

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Well same cuz we're doing

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Your story teller

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your story teller and I was I was I

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Was watching this master class with Michael Lewis

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who wrote money ball and

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All these other great books the big short

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And what he said was you really do need to live some life

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To get to to get in touch with humanity because as a storyteller

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It's hard to even see or sense somebody's story if you don't know

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Pain

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If you don't know, you know, he was talking about this

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He was working on this one book the premonition or whatever and he was working with this this lady

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Who was a infectious disease specialist and he asked her if he could spend a day in her house

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if she would leave the house and if he could just go through her house and

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Under protest she tells him yes, and he's and he noticed

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in her bathroom she had all these affirmations

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and

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and those affirmations showed him that

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She really was unsure that anybody would like her or

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Right and he told that

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Part of her story in the book and she was mad at first for this very same reason if people ever discovered

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Who I really was

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But that's exactly what she needed and what got him there though was the death of his one of his children

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and

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Knowing the pain of loss

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helped him recognize pain and

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You know, I think of all the years that I've been telling stories and doing this work

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It is the pain in my own experience

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That allows me to see you today as you are

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Otherwise I'd be talking about that

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Yeah, you and I both know that doesn't matter right when the real important thing is

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You are good enough

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Because God says so right you are worthy enough you are

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Exactly who he created you to be I

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Wouldn't know it without my own brokenness does that make

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And so I thank you for willing to be being willing to be that vulnerable because

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If it connects me it's probably connecting

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Whoever's on the other side of that land

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So

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Think you and I have had a lot of hard conversations and have

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Shared a lot of details. We've been friends for a long time and we've shared a lot of details about our lives and

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Some stuff I haven't shared with very many other people

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You have a way of listening about you have a way of hearing people

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I think that lets people be willing to be vulnerable and to share more of who they are

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But I think about too like if God made me perfectly in exactly the way that he intended to make me

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It's got to be good enough for me right

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And I hope you see that too. Yeah, you will see but my thing is I

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Knew we were gonna have a great conversation. I didn't know it would be this conversation. I did this was not part of the same

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I'm like, I don't know what direction this could go

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But I will say this one of the I love story I love storytelling and I

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Mentioned this a number of times

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Robert McKee is there's a guy that I

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studied storytelling under and

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One of the things he said was write the truth first of all is that the truth will always cut through it just does

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but he said

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To have a story you have to have a main character you have a

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setting

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But you have to have crisis

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and then resolution and you don't have a story I

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Remember when you were in this screenwriting

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workshop and he said when you want to introduce

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character

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The first thing you do is

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You bring another person or an event into a person's life

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That is a moment of crisis because it will reveal

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Character it'll show you what they're made of put them in a tough situation

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but it also

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Not only will it reveal who they are but it will refine who they are

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those

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those moments that we have in our lives that challenge us change us and

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You know just in the telling of your story

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Just seeing the arc of your career

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I can see how all of that is conspiring to make you an even better version of yourself. I appreciate you saying that I think

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When I approach storytelling I I try not to write the story before I

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Get to the story before I hear the story or learn the story because often it's easy to create the narration that you want, right?

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So I try really hard not to

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Write the story before I know the story

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And you got to write the truth, but also in this case for me you got to tell the truth

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So

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Like I said coming to Knoxville I had the chance to be who I wanted to be

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But I think it's also important to be who you are and share those truths

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That's it. You know, that's an interesting thing is

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Being who you want to be and being who you are and getting to that point in your life

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We're who you want to be is who you are

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That's good

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Right. I remember Miles Davis was trying to sound like all these different trumpet players

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And he said it took me a long time to sound like myself

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What are your ambitions going forward? I've going forward

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Well, I I

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Teach at the University of Tennessee

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I recently accepted a bigger role there, so I

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So I really enjoy working with young people and I just hope that I can share some of what I've learned along the way and continue in my journey

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What are you sharing with young people when you when you are pouring into young people when you are like if you had

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16 year old Brittany sitting here with

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This Brittany

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What do you say to her now knowing what you know now it gets good

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It gets good. I'm glad I didn't know

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Just for having to go through it

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But I would want to say to her that it it gets good

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Gets hard first, but it gets good

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But in the classroom, I don't know what I'm telling her

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I don't know what I'm talking about

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Brittany Tarwater, thank you for taking the time to talk to us. I wish you much success

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I think we got the title of your book now

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It gets good

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I think that's gonna be a great thing and and thank you for being so transparent with your story

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We love seeing you on television. We love all the work you do in our community

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We love the way you're gonna bless students at the university and who knows what's next, but I know it's it gets good

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Thank you for joining us. Thank you