Episode 2 - Jenny: Part 1

SPEAKER_02 0:14

Hello, and welcome to the Quiet Women Podcast. I'm your host, Stephanie Sumner. In this episode, I'll introduce you to Jenny Lang. Jenny and I have been friends for, well, a long time. I had a front row seat to watching her set a goal of sailing around the world with her family, and then doing everything necessary for over a decade to achieve it. I'm honored to have Jenny as my first guest. You'll hear her definition of what it means to be a quiet woman, along with her story of commitment to make her dream come true. Hello, Jenny Lang, and welcome to the Quiet Women Podcast. Hi, Stephanie, and thank you very much for having me. But of course, so you are absolutely one of my closest and I think my longest friend, and definitely one of my inspirations for doing this. I know I have not been shy in telling you how much I have admired you for being able to commit to your dream and achieve your goal of taking your family cruising around the world for how many years was it? Six, seven years? Yeah, six years of total travel time. Yeah. Yeah. And so just, I mean, that in and of itself is a is an amazing adventure and story that I want to hear more about. But I think for the purposes of this interview, I'd really just like to talk about how do you make a dream come true? And the fact that it was a dream of cruising with your family shouldn't really come as a surprise to me because that's the life you were leading when we met way back when.

SPEAKER_01 2:07

That's right. Yeah. Being at Mason Borough Boatyard all those years ago, it was the beginning of when we were first getting to know each other. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:16

You're right. So that was it's embedded in my brain, 1976. We were seven years old, and you lived aboard a sailboat called Cotton Jenny.

SPEAKER_01 2:29

Yes. We had moved when I was five, we had moved from Ohio down to North Carolina to finish building the boat, or my dad was building the boat. So yeah, we were there at the boat yard when one day I remember seeing you and your mom and oh the dog, Berg Burga, right? Burga. And we had the German Shepherd as well, I believe, at that point. But then she went and stayed with somebody when we took off cruising. But was that Heidi? Yeah, Heidi, yes. Yeah, I remember all the times we spent together in the yard, and I was thinking how fast we grew very close to each other, and how I will never forget being on the deck of the sailboat when we pulled away from the dock, and I was just sobbing because I thought I'd never see you again. I know I was the same way too.

SPEAKER_02 3:15

I was devastated. Think back. Now this was the 70s, right? Right. It was a time of I want to say free love somewhat. Um, I don't know that we saw the love part so much, but we saw the free part. Yeah. Yeah, free love. I remember thinking everyone was passing around cigarettes at the parties on the porch, and then becoming a little wiser the older I got, realizing, oh no, those were joints.

SPEAKER_01 3:43

Yep, exactly. And I didn't I remember not learning that till years later as well. And and then I'd hear stories from my parents of things that they had experienced, and it's like, wow, yeah, we had no idea, did we?

SPEAKER_02 3:55

No, you know, the the docks were our neighborhood. Yeah, it was it was a a different kind of lifestyle, you know, the communal bathrooms and tree frogs in the showers. Do you remember that?

SPEAKER_01 4:09

Oh, yes, I do. Yep. So yeah, it was definitely quite an experience.

SPEAKER_02 4:19

You know, we are similar in so many ways, and one of those ways is I think we are both quiet women. Does that term ring true to you?

SPEAKER_01 4:31

It's funny, like when you first say it, my first thought is I don't feel like a quiet woman. And then I was thinking that there's another version of quiet woman, which is someone who can quietly suffer on her own as she struggles to achieve whatever it is, whether it's just to get through a temporary phase or surviving or reaching a goal. So maybe I am a quiet woman. I'm probably more the quiet sufferer, whether it's good or bad, but most of the time it's it's good because I'm I'm doing it towards something. And you know, I've set a goal and I'm I'm struggling really hard to get there or succeed at something.

SPEAKER_02 5:08

Why do you think you prefer the quiet struggle instead of the loud struggle and let everyone know that you are struggling?

SPEAKER_01 5:16

I'm not sure. I mean, I was taught at a very early age to be independent, and I was taught how to survive on my own. And it wasn't really out of necessity. My mom and my dad wanted to make sure that my sister and I were capable women. So to me, it's just a part of doing what we have to do to get where we want to go. And being independent and capable has definitely taken me far in life.

SPEAKER_02 5:41

That's a good point. That idea of independence. I mean, that's something my mother instilled in me too. And I think that's part of the reason why I don't feel the need to speak up or that I should speak up because I'm supposed to be independent and do it myself.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Yeah. The same here. We joke around um how my mom has told me to toughen up at times back way back when when I was young and I complained about something, and it was like, oh, toughen up. What does toughen up mean to you? Oh my gosh. I guess just do it and don't complain.

SPEAKER_02 6:18

You get what you get and you don't throw a fit.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

That's right.

SPEAKER_02 6:23

Has being a quiet woman ever been a detriment to you?

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Like I feel very confident when I'm on my own. But the moment I'm around other people, that is when I do get quiet. And if someone shows initiative to go ahead and do something, I just let them do it. Whether they can do a better job or not, I let everyone else take over and I step back in the background. I guess in a way, it sometimes it sort of makes me fade away, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 6:56

Yeah, it does. How do you react when you see them solving a problem when you have a a different and probably better solution?

SPEAKER_01 7:07

Sometimes I think, well, maybe their solution is better, and maybe they do know better than I do. But over the years, I guess I have become more confident. And um, especially after having done the traveling on the sailboat, I've realized that I do more do know more than I really realized, and that I just have to be confident and step up and speak up. So that's actually I'm trying to make changes there to be more confident in the fact that I do know a lot of these things.

SPEAKER_02 7:38

That's definitely one of my issues. I have I have a lot of confidence in my head, but when it comes to like actually acting that way, it's a little more difficult.

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Well, I think that's interesting that you say that because you are very good at coming across as a very uh strong and independent woman. Until you make it, right.

SPEAKER_02 8:02

Oh, well, thank you for that.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

Sure, but it's true. Yeah, you do. You always have seemed very confident to me. So doing this Quiet Woman podcast has also in and listening to your podcast on yourself has made me realize that yeah, we kind of do share some of the same feelings.

SPEAKER_02 8:22

When did this idea of giving your children the same experience that you had as a child, when did that come about? Wow.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

I guess the actual cruising and sailing part came even before I met Will, my husband, because I always knew I wanted to go cruising and sailing and traveling the world. But again, at that point in my life, I didn't have the confidence and never thought I would ever do it without my parents. Then I met Will, and of course, he didn't even like sailing to begin with, but he went with my parents and then fell in love with it. And so then he came back telling me, of course, we're gonna go sailing. This was before kids, and it was while we went on our first cruise, which was just basically about eight months or so. We knew we wanted to keep going, but we knew we needed more money. We knew we wanted to have a family, and so we knew it would be possible. Like we went back and laid out a plan to, you know, save the money, start a family, and then buy another boat and do it as a family. And then we knew that we would get our chance to travel the world, but be together as a family and raise the kids together in that environment.

SPEAKER_02 9:41

Walk me through what does a plan look like? I mean, okay, year year one, we're going to start trying to have a baby by year three, we're gonna have two kids. By year four, we're going to have this much money and sell everything. Like, how does that look?

SPEAKER_01 10:02

Almost was like that. The spring of '99, when we first got back, we said, okay, we're going to do this again, but we're going to do this in 10 years. So 2010, we set that goal to give ourselves 10 years to make the money and buy another boat and in and have the kids in the meantime. So then trying to figure out, well, how old do we want the kids to be? Because we didn't want them to be too young. So basically, uh, start having kids right away and hoping to space them two years apart. And well, we nailed that with 22 months apart. I stayed home raising the kids while Will worked, and of course, we penny pinched the entire time. But yes, we laid out how much money we needed to buy the boat, how much money we needed to live on per year, what we would get from the sale of the house, how could we invest and get more? We wanted to purchase the boat by 2009 and then get it ready to go sailing for departure in 2010. Everything was going like clockwork until the economy crashed in 2008. And the investment, which was a beach house investment, didn't sell for as much as it would have. And we didn't have as much money as we thought we would. So we delayed our trip until 2012. And at that point, we said 2012, no matter what. If we had to buy a teeny tiny little sail like 30-foot sailboat, that's what we were gonna go on.

SPEAKER_02 11:36

Was that because the kids, you have a limited window of time to go with the kids?

SPEAKER_01 11:42

No, because I think you get to a point where if you don't go, there's always a reason not to go. There's always a reason that will come up not to make it happen. You just have to put your foot down and said, That's say that's it. It we're just going to accept the way it's gonna be if we want to do this. So there were certain sacrifices, yeah, things that we didn't have on our boat just because it was gonna cost us extra money and that would mean less time cruising, uh, just all kinds of things. Yeah, we ended up ditching our health insurance even, and we made sure to pay off the boat so that we wouldn't have to carry boat insurance. So we were really, really risking a lot, but it was all in the name of being able to go and do this. Did you have help in making this plan? I think it was just between Will and I. We laid it out and we basically told everyone else what we were doing. I might even be able to thank an old family neighbor who was a UN a professor at UNCW in time management. And right around high school graduation, he, as a gift to me, gave me a short course on time management. And I swear I think to that day, because of that, I'm really good at packing it all in and really managing it all the time very well. So when it came time to actually setting a goal like this, I remember I had my big, you know, desktop calendar. And yeah, you you put down all the due dates for every single thing. And I would have, you know, month after month of, you know, for years, all the due dates of when or goals for when each little step needed to be achieved. And then I'd have my daily list, my weekly list, my monthly list, you know, checking it off. And sometimes I would have to move it to the next month. It was very, very calculated in the planning, that is for sure.

SPEAKER_02 13:35

What were some of those big milestones? I know you mentioned the beach house. What were some other things that had to happen? And the kids.

SPEAKER_01 13:43

Right. You know, selling each house and some of the things that we had to do in order to, again, save the most money that we could. Um, so selling the house by, you know, for sale by owner. And then we actually moved into a single wide mobile home. Very I remember that. Yeah, chickens. Oh my gosh. Yeah, single wide mobile home on a farm with guineas running around all over the place and the donkeys. And yeah, oh my gosh, and the dead mice we would find. Yeah. You can tell me about that.

SPEAKER_02 14:16

I probably would have come over if I knew about that.

unknown 14:19

I know.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

Like a dead mouse in the heat system or something where it cooked for who knows how many days. It was 25 degrees out, and we had to open the windows. Oh you know, so oh my gosh, a huge milestone for that was actually getting to move out of that place. But it would actually the kids reminisce that they love it because they love that farm life. So going back to milestones, that I guess there were so many different transitions in the whole thing, from the house to the trailer. Then actually, Will stayed in the trailer, and the kids and I moved to the beach house where we really suffered at the beach. Um so we lived separately for two years, and it was tough on all of us. Only seeing uh Will on the weekends. Yeah, there were struggles. But once we were all back together, which actually when we were back together, we ended up because we sold the beach house, and then we were that's when the economy crashed, and we all ended up back in the trailer again. So poor Will was four years in that trailer. So then, of course, the next big milestone, the biggest one, was moving out of the trailer and onto the boat. There was one person that said to me being on the boat would be like being on in the Taj Mahal after having been in the trailer. It was the big boat. Yeah, it was.

SPEAKER_02 15:39

The milestones, as you explain them, seem to be a lot with your living situation and making smart investments and downsizing, I guess, along the way.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Yes. I mean, you start realizing what you are able to live without. And yeah, I mean, we sold most everything except for you know, a few pieces of furniture that Will had made himself, and then you know, keeping like family memory items and stuff like that. And now that I've we've done this, I realize how little we really need to be happy, definitely.

SPEAKER_02 16:19

How old were the kids when you started going down this path? And how did you enroll them in the same dream?

SPEAKER_01 16:30

It's funny because to to this day they kid around about how they were brainwashed from the beginning. Um even before they knew it. There are photographs of them, like you know, when you go and you get your family photo at JCPenney or whatever. And um we always had a tropical scene or a beach scene or they're holding a shell, or so they say they've been brainwashed from the beginning. So yeah, it was definitely from even before they were born, of course. But everything they knew that we were doing was for the boat, although they had never really been on a boat. They did not know how to sail in the beginning. But again, I guess as part of the prep work ahead of time, making sure they had the swim lessons, give you know, and they spent summer camps doing uh sailing camp, learning to sail and learning to be comfortable on the water. We were always prepping them the entire time. It was just a part of their life and they knew nothing different.

SPEAKER_02 17:29

What were some of the challenges that you faced and overcame? I know that you mentioned that the whole economy falling apart was a big one and delayed your trip by a couple years. What else happened?

SPEAKER_01 17:45

I guess one um bit of an emotional one right before we left. We had already sold everything. I in fact I'd even sold my car, and we had just moved aboard the boat, but we are still out of the water in the boatyard, and my dad had a heart attack. So I had to rent a car and drive to the North Carolina Mountains to be with my mom, and and my sister came as well. He was on the uh stretcher right before going to surgery, and he was apologizing to me, saying, Please don't let this stop me from going. It was actually in that moment, even though I knew it was hard, knowing I'd be leaving family and friends, that anything could happen to them at any time. I knew I needed to do it, that we as a family needed to do it right then and there. Because as time goes on, it was only going to get more difficult to be able to leave if anything happened with family. And even for ourselves, that as we got older, anything could happen to us too.

SPEAKER_02 18:54

Now, do I recall correctly? Didn't you start homeschooling for a period of time before you left?

SPEAKER_01 19:01

Yes. That was actually one of the hardest things to do, trying to homeschool two different learning-style children. We actually were homeschooling for three years before we set sail. And it's just the way the dice fell and the way it all worked out. And now I'm glad we did because adjusting to homeschooling is difficult. I guess Colin was uh second grade and Justine was fourth grade when we started. It took about three years, and then we finally got a routine and the kids knew what to expect. And I figured out their learning styles. That way we had already adjusted to homeschooling, and then they were able to adjust to the cruising life instead of having to adjust to both homeschooling and cruising life all at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 19:48

But that was not a conscious decision to start three years before you left?

SPEAKER_01 19:53

No, it just happened based on our living situation and especially living separate from Will. Will was living in one place. Uh the kids and I were in a different location, and when we got the boat, that was in another location. So we were in this little triangle, and every weekend we'd go and drive to where the boat was and to have the flexibility of being gone for an entire week, but the kids could still work on their school. Or if we wanted to go see Will, they could bring their school with them. So that's kind of how it started, and now I'm glad it worked out that way.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

When did you know you'd made it? Like, when did you know that this that this dream was really gonna come true?

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Probably the moment we sailed out that inlet and into the ocean. Not until then. Right? Because like anything can happen. I mean, boats, things just go wrong with boats all the time. Anything can break down, you can get hit by a ship, you can or you know, so even going out the inlet, something can happen. So it wasn't until we were actually out and away from land that we're like, this is real, this is happening, and we're on our way.

SPEAKER_02 21:04

So you were gone six and a half years. Everything you did and sacrificed and did to achieve this dream was most definitely worth it. And I know you have many stories to tell that made it all worth it, but what's one? Or experiences that you had?

SPEAKER_01 21:23

Experiences, yeah. I guess every time we'd arrive in a new port or anchorage and just seeing the new landscape or the new culture, that was worth it. But I guess even more incredible the experiences we'd have, um, you know, when we're out on the ocean completely by ourselves, and the whales that would come past, or the dolphins that would swim in our wake, or the different birds. I mean, seeing albatross and penguins and snorkeling together and exploring together. So every moment, everything that we were doing, we just all knew, you know, yeah, we may have been seasick on a passage and then we Get to the location and it's just absolutely gorgeous and it totally paid off. And and then also I was gonna say, well, watching our family grow together as a family unit, like we became a team. For me, I would go speechless every time I saw a whale. The kids always knew, or you know, I'm standing there pointing, but my mouth is like dropped open and I'm not saying a word. And the kids will go, Dad, mom sees a whale. Well, how many times did it happen? Oh, lots. It wasn't early on so much. I mean, we did see some whales when we went um to the northeast on a bit of a shakedown cruise in the beginning. So we went up to Maine and back and then fixed everything that broke on that trip before we took off to go south and through Panama. But yeah, so like our first whales that we saw near Cape Cod, and we'd see dolphins quite quite frequently. So we were, you know, having grown up with dolphins, we were used to seeing them, but still it's fun to look them in the eye when you're standing on the bow of the boat. Then to Galapagos, we saw whales, and then definitely French Polynesia and Tonga, lots of whales, humpbacks. Many times we'd be in places where it was calving season and you'd see the moms and the babies. Like we were out in the dinghy, we'd been at anchor and we went snorkeling, and we were coming back from snorkeling, and we were that we were three dinghies with a bunch of parents and kids in them. But this big mama whale um brought her baby right next to the dinghies, and everybody jumped in the water, getting to see this massive animal right next to you and share her baby with you. Yeah, it's a it's an experience of a lifetime.

SPEAKER_02 23:40

That gave me chills. So you mean people jumped in the water to be with the whales?

SPEAKER_01 23:45

Yes. Because you got the feel the sense that I mean the mother brought her baby to us. It wasn't like she was defending her baby at all. She was sharing.

SPEAKER_02 23:54

That is definitely an experience that not many people have had. No. There's there's the sea world experience, and then there's real life trust that you have with, you know, the largest creature on the planet.

SPEAKER_01 24:08

Yeah, exactly. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

I know it's kind of off topic, but it is so incredible. Well, it's I mean, I don't think it's off topic. You're we're you're talking about when one of the things, experiences you had that made you made all of these sacrifices every 10 years worth it. That's true. How how can you put put a price or a value on what what you experienced in that moment, much less all the other moments that you had?

SPEAKER_01 24:40

Very true. Yeah. I mean, then there are countless ones. I mean, if we were to do a yearly family vacation, like it's kind of more than norm, there's no way we could have made enough money to to have done and seen all that we've done.

SPEAKER_02 24:59

So that's one dream down with the page turned on that chapter. What is the next dream for Jenny?

SPEAKER_01 25:07

Oh my goodness. We definitely want to continue to travel and go back and revisit some of the places we've been. The draw from Hawaii is really strong for both of us. We were there for oh gosh, I guess it was 18 months that we were in Hawaii and really got to know the culture and the people and have made friends, and it's beautiful. And it would still give us the opportunity, I guess, to be in the US, but somewhat live some of the lifestyle that we experienced from before. So maybe one day. So Hawaii. I believe you can do it. And I know we can. Uh, we just have to figure out how and when.

SPEAKER_02 25:53

What advice do you have for other quiet women? You've gone through an amazing experience yourself. You've um gone out of your comfort zone by doing this podcast with me. What would you like to share with other quiet women?

SPEAKER_01 26:05

Oh my goodness. You know, just reflecting back on everything we've talked about and um how glamorous a lot of this seems. While there were many great experiences, there's not a lot of glamour in it. It is a very hard way of living. Again, it's not without sacrifice, but in order for any of us to get where we're going, there's sacrifice and blood and sweat, and it's just a matter of how badly you want it.

SPEAKER_02 26:32

Thank you for your time. Thank you for your wisdom. Thank you for your stories.

SPEAKER_01 26:39

Can we do it again? I think we can. This has been fun.

SPEAKER_02 26:53

Thank you for listening to this episode of Quiet Women. I invite you to join our Facebook community. Search for Quiet Women Podcast. And if you are a quiet woman with a story to share, or would like to nominate someone to be a guest on this podcast, please reach out to me at QuietwomenPodcast at gmail.com. Until next time, remember, your silence doesn't define you. Your unique and complex life is what has made you into the amazing person you are today. I see you. We all see you. And we are here for you, and we cheer for you.