Randye Kaye – Schizophrenia: 3 Moms In The Trenches

 

Through the trenches of schizophrenia, love becomes our compass, resilience our strength, and hope our guide. A passionate advocate and author, Randye Kaye shares her journey as a mother navigating the challenges of having a child with schizophrenia, alongside two other mothers in a similar situation. She highlights the rollercoaster of emotions she experienced, from the initial diagnosis to the ongoing effort to provide her son with the best possible care. She talks about the complexities of mental illness and the impact it has not only on the individual but also on their loved ones. With her warm and relatable demeanor, Randye opens up about the delicate balance between acceptance and hope, emphasizing the power of action, engagement, and gratitude in her personal journey. Randye also shares her acronym for coping: BREATHE – Being Present, Engaging, Accepting Reality, Trusting, finding Humor, and cultivating Esteem. Whether facing mental health challenges or not, Randye’s insights resonate universally, reminding us that compassion, understanding, and a positive mindset can create a more empathetic and connected world. Tune in now!

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Randye Kaye – Schizophrenia: 3 Moms In The Trenches

Randye Kaye has two bestselling books, Happier Made Simple and Ben Behind His Voices. These two books are tied to her work as a motivational speaker, a radio and podcast host, an actress, a singer, a teacher, and a mental health advocate. It’s also tied to her life as a wife, mother, and grandmother. She’s the co-creator and host of the popular podcast, Schizophrenia: Three Moms in the Trenches.

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Randye, thank you for joining us. It’s a pleasure to meet you.

It’s a pleasure here, too. Thank you.

I am hoping you can start us off by letting us know a little bit about how you got into the work you’re doing and what drives your passion for it.

Love for my son is the second answer to that question. I got into the work of mental health advocacy, specifically about Severe Mental Illness or SMI, because I am the mother of two kids. My oldest, my son, who, for public purposes, I call Ben, but not his real name, developed what I learned a few years later and known for twenty years was a very severe form of schizophrenia. He began acting strangely in his adolescence, as many adolescents do, but instead of growing out of it, it got worse. Through a series of adventures, misadventures, and misdiagnoses, we finally got a diagnosis. We’ve been dealing with this horrible illness for many years through periods of success, hope, hospitalizations, fear, crisis, and incarceration.

As a result of that, I wanted to advocate for his rights to treatment, for the rights of his illness to receive proper research dollars to find what works for him, the four pillars that hold up his success when he is doing well, to advocate for the rights of families to be involved in treatment, and to talk about our experience so we can all learn from each other. That is one of my passions. Out of that grew a passion for mental health in general and helping people to shift their perspectives so that their lives can have more meaning.

Congratulations. It is nice to learn about people like you who are advocating. What form does that advocacy take? I know you have a number of different ways you’re pursuing that.

The first thing I did was get involved with the National Alliance on Mental Illness or NAMI. I became a family-to-family teacher for them. If some of your audience is not familiar with NAMI, they do many things, but the arm that I’m involved in is the education arm. I found that the more I learned about my son’s illness, the better I could communicate with him, the better chance I had of not making things worse, and the better chance I had of handling the situation. I became a family-to-family teacher and then a state trainer to train other family members to teach this course, which is free. You have to get into a class by going to your state NAMI website.

Out of that, I began to do presentations to hospitals and families, and people said, “You should write a book.” I eventually took them seriously and wrote a book called Ben Behind His Voices. It is a memoir with chapter guideposts along the way to help people get through what we got through. At the end of the book, my son was doing okay. He was never going to be the same as he was, but I had come to a place of acceptance. Since the book came out, we’ve gone through the rollercoaster a few more times, but I wanted to give people hope and information.

I have taken that book and met two other moms/authors/advocates who wrote books about their experiences with their sons and schizophrenia. They are Mimi Feldman and Mindy Greiling. The three of us created a podcast called Schizophrenia: Three Moms in the Trenches. Our mission is to bring information to our listeners that they may not have come across before.

We talk about different medications that are available, different treatments that are available, what it’s like for people so they don’t feel alone, and different ways of looking at the process through the eyes of providers, psychologists, social workers, siblings, children, and spouses. We’ve had a few people who have a diagnosis of schizophrenia talk about their experience. We have almost 75 episodes so far. We’ll be starting season four with an interview with Jonathan Rosen, the author of The Best Minds. We are working to get information out there and help people.

May I ask, how old was your son when you finished the book, Ben Behind His Voices?

He was nearly 30.

You said you’re entering your fourth year, and you’ve got 75 podcasts.

We do about two a month. We call it 25 episodes a season. I don’t know that it’s four years, but for the first 25 episodes, we were doing them once a week. We then got exhausted and said, “We’ll do them when we do them. We’ll try to do two a month,” which works out better for us. They’re always available for people. We have them on YouTube and wherever you get your podcasts. People are still going back to episode one and listening from the beginning. We’ve been at it for about three years, and then we’re starting season four.

I heard you say something about four pillars. What are the four pillars?

I love my son. There was a period after the book came out where he had a relapse but then lived with us for nine years. It was with the house rule of, “Even if you don’t think you need medication to live here, you’re going to take it. You’re going to let us supervise it. You don’t have to do that, but that means you’re out.”

With that, I saw him get stable enough to reach out for what I call treatment. That’s the first pillar. Treatment might be whatever that means to the individual. In my experience, for many, and I dare say for most, who have schizophrenia, at least as severe as my son, that does include medication. Medication alone doesn’t do it. Treatment might also include a psychologist. It might also include NA meetings or AA meetings. Treatment is getting help. That is pillar one.

Pillar two is structure. We all do better in structure, but for someone whose mind is constantly racing with a mental illness, having a predictable schedule makes a big difference, like having a job to go to. That’s why sometimes people do better in the hospital because they know 8:00 is breakfast and 11:00 is group. All of us are comforted by the right amount of structure. Structure is very important for mental health in general for some of us more than for others. In mental illness, it’s a comfort. It doesn’t have to be in the hospital. It can be a job. It can be volunteer work. It can be anything that has some predictability to your day, so you’re not living in a constant state of anxiety.

 

The third, and this is no great invention on my part because we all need it, is purpose. That’s getting up in the morning and knowing why you need to get out of bed. Are you beholden to someone else? Is your life meaning anything? Do you have a job to go to or people relying on you? We all need to feel a sense of purpose. It is important for stability in mental health and recovery from mental illness.

The fourth element is what I call love, but we can call it community. I know many people with severe mental illness whose families have given up on them, and they are heartbroken about that. They say to me, “If only you were my mother.” I’m not their mother, and I do what I can to help, but I’ve got my son’s back. Parenting is always that balance of stepping in and letting go. It is letting people make their own mistakes. You can’t always save or enable everybody. We know that.

With community, living in a group home can be such a comfort, as well as having coworkers or extended family. We are a species that needs to belong somewhere. Some of us need it to a greater degree than others, but feeling isolated and alone cannot knock that fourth pillar right out. A sense of community would be the fourth. It is community or love, structure, purpose, and treatment.

That’s very good. I suppose that there are times when people will tune in to a show like ours. We present so many different views about holistic or functional medicine or integrative treatment that try to look at the whole person, which includes everything you mentioned. It is not just the food I eat or, “Do I get enough sleep?” It is, “Do I have a sense of purpose? Am I connected with the community? Do I have a sense of love in my life?”

Sometimes, people draw the conclusion from that that we’re against medication. We certainly aren’t because we know the role that they play in so many different situations that are at that purely physical level. When they’re used appropriately in conjunction with this whole picture, including the food, the sleep, the rest, the purpose, the community, and the love, they can save lives, and they do. There are those of us who wouldn’t be here if we didn’t have the insulin or the medication for Type 2 diabetes, etc.

It’s also important to understand that education, this thing that you said is so primary for you, is critically important. If we rely on what we consider our medical professionals, we don’t get very clean or unbiased communication. This is why books like Anatomy of An Epidemic by Mr. Whitaker are so important. You’ll find a deeper level of research that’s more honest and says, “These medications can help people, but they were only ever intended to be in this 1 of the 4 pillars,” let’s say. I’m all for it.

Especially when you have a situation like yours, any of us who have worked in the field long enough or have the mixed blessing of having a family member or a friend who’s had that pattern of diagnosis, we know the value of being able to help them stabilize throughout extended periods, if not forever, using the medication.

Thank you for saying that. I’m aware that the other three pillars are important. There have been studies. I know that if they get outside more, socialize more, and get more exercise, they start to feel better. Some eventually do go off their meds, so I’m all about a holistic approach in so many ways. The sticking point with schizophrenia is something called anosognosia. It is a documented medical condition often found in stroke victims where they don’t know they are ill. If any of your audience has a parent with Alzheimer’s, when they get past a certain point, they don’t even know they are ill. They know they don’t know who you are and you stole their jewelry. It’s real to them. There is no medication for Alzheimer’s, so that is what it is.

My son, some people will say, “He stubbornly won’t admit he has schizophrenia.” He simply has no insight into that because his frontal lobes are impaired by the illness. It is the same way a stroke victim may say, “I didn’t draw that clock. You brought that in.” It’s not that they gratefully accept these medications. They don’t go, “I feel so much better.” Their reality has been skewed for so long that all they feel are the side effects.

I saw a speaker once who did gain insight into his schizophrenia and was on his medication willingly, but he talked about all the years he spent not being aware of it. He had a member of the audience stand up and tell him about her life. He said to her, “I’m going to tell you that husband you tell me you have, you don’t have a husband. That job you say you have, they keep saying, “Don’t show up. You don’t even work here.” That job is not true. That husband is not true. You don’t even have any children.”

He said, “I know it’s real to you, but it’s not there. I’ll tell you what. I’m going to give you this medication to straighten out your brain. It’s going to make you gain weight and you’re not going to have much sexual desire but trust me. You have this illness and this will help you.” He then said to all of us, “Would you take those meds?” It was so eye-opening for me because I understand from my son who thinks there’s nothing wrong. Anything that might go wrong in his life is the employer’s fault, the police’s fault, or his mother’s fault. He simply doesn’t know.

It doesn’t register in his brain.

Without help, I know where he’ll be. I always used to say he’d be homeless, dead, or in jail. The third thing has come true. He’s on his medication, but he’s using marijuana. That interferes with everything. That is when his life on his medication began to spiral downhill. He started abusing his money. He started lying. It’s this kid who was amazing, and I believe still is an amazing, ethical, moral, loving, and right person with the combination of inadequate medical treatment for marijuana. There aren’t many options, and what he’s on isn’t helping that much. It’s quieting some things down. The combination of that and marijuana always makes you think you have a great idea until you wake up in the morning not stoned anymore, and you go, “Oh.”

You misspoke once there. The combination of less adequate medical treatment for schizophrenia and treatment for marijuana and the use of marijuana. It is so difficult because there are some people who respond adequately to some of the medications and then others who have horrible side effects and almost no benefit. It’s all over the map.

It depends on the medication. Can I use actual medical names here? He was on Clozaril for nine years, taking blood tests every week to make sure he wasn’t part of the 1/10th of 1% that got a granulocytosis, whatever that small amount is. He did it on the Clozaril. He got off social security. He was a waiter in a restaurant. He leased a car. He paid his bills. He wasn’t perfect, but I used to say, “We’ve got him back 65%, and we’ll take it.”

When COVID came, he lost his job. Therefore, all the pillars fell, all three of them. Structure, purpose, and community were gone. He worked in the restaurant business, and you know what happened to the restaurant business during COVID. He had no money, and then he got anxious. To make himself feel better, he started smoking pot, and then he thought it was a good idea to refuse his medication. Before you know it, he was back in the hospital. He would not go back on the Clozaril because it makes him tired. It doesn’t compute for him how well he did on it.

He’s on an injectable, which is very convenient, of an old anti-psychotic called Haldol. His hands are shaking and his teeth are black, but he likes the convenience of it. He says the side effects are less. I can’t force him to change meds, nor can his logic centers put two-and-two together and realize that every single time he was on the Clozaril and sticking to it, he did well. It’s not computing for him.

That is my thing about medication. Whether it’s cancer, schizophrenia, or diabetes, we all wish for better treatments. We all wish for research that will find meds that will eliminate COVID and all the things that we’re dealing with. Kudos to the people who are doing research. Keep at it. I don’t think schizophrenia gets a lot of research dollars.

As I heard that, the part of me that likes to generate sadness kicked in. In my humanity, I instantly want to run away from sadness into happiness. I know there’s a book, Happier Made Simple. The things that you did not use to stay happy, we’ll talk about that before we’re done. What are some of the things you used to keep yourself going as you’re trying to advocate for your son and his struggles?

That’s the same question, in a way, so thank you for asking it. It’s a combination of things. The easiest way to describe it is what happened to me when I got the call that he had been arrested. First of all, you got to feel the pain. Your cat dies, and suddenly, you’re like, “We’re fine.” You’re a psychologist. Depending on the amount of pain, you need some of what I call processing time or absorption time. You need to feel it. You need to let it sink in. The first thing’s always going to be shock, and then let that not be in your chest for a while. It’s a horrible thing to get a shock or grief.

Another thing that helps me is taking an action, any action. I looked up Al-Anon meetings. I didn’t go to one yet, but I looked them up to see that there are some in my neighborhood if I want it. I told what was happening to a few friends, so reaching out to the community. After that is the self-talk, like, “It is what it is. What are we going to do now? I’m not going to wish it was different because it isn’t different. I’m going to get my information.”

It’s a combination of acceptance and hoping, and then saying, “I’ve done what I can do. I took action. I’m going to do something fun because it is what it is. He is awaiting a court date. I can’t do anything else, so I’m going to watch a funny movie, or I’m going to do my podcast and distract myself.” The time is yours. Sometimes, it helps to distract yourself from something you love.

Sometimes, it helps to distract yourself with something you love. Click To Tweet

We did a podcast talking to other family members. The last question is, “What do you do for joy?” Many of them were, “I take a walk. I swim. I talk to my friends.” We concluded that refusing to have joy isn’t going to do anybody any good. I love my son, and I will do whatever turns out will be best for him, which sometimes includes letting him sink.

I’m not going to ruin my life, my marriage, or my relationship with my daughter and her husband and her kids. I love a lot of people, and I love a lot of things in life. I’m going to take care of this as best I can. I know I’ve done my best, but I’m not going to believe the myth that you’re only as happy as your unhappiest child. I’m not going to buy into that.

Those are some of the things that help me if somebody’s nice to me and says, “I’m so sorry,” or, “He’s such a nice kid. How could that happen?” and then I want to cry. Like any grief, you let yourself feel it when you need to feel it. Having a child with a major mental illness is grief. You lose that child over and over again. People who have loved ones with cancer that is in remission and then comes back, you feel that again. It’s a lot of little losses.

This is one of the quotes from my book. I’m not promoting it. I’m saying it because this is what I live by. “Life is what you highlight. Savor the best and learn from the rest.” That helps me. If I can go outside and hear a bird chirp, it helps me. Life is going to go on somehow. Knowing I’m doing my best helps me. Knowing that there are others to help me helps me. I’m so grateful for the social workers, the forensic social workers, and the people who are working to get my son into mental health care instead of prison. I’m grateful to the other people. Gratitude helps a lot, too. Those are some of the things that I use.

I remember years ago reading the book, Happy for No Reason. Marci Shimoff was the author. This is in the early stages of internet access and things. She put it out amongst her network that she was looking for connections to whoever you think is the happiest person you know. She went about interviewing. She interviewed over 100 people who had been referred to her specifically through the filter of, “Introduce me to the happiest person you know.”

The expectation was that we’d find all these people, the vast majority of whom had wonderfully easy lives, had a silver spoon in their mouth, plenty of money, and good health. What she found was the opposite. These were people who’d overcome adversity in various forms. She took 10 of those 100 and highlighted them in the book, and then she included the research results of people who’d studied how you get happier. They were, “You do a gratitude journal. You focus on this and that. You get some exercise. You get fresh air when you can.” It is all of those practical things. I’m hoping that when I read your book, Happier Made Simple, I’ll find similar things.

Thank you. It is very interesting because I did a lot of research on this book. Mostly, I wanted to write a book that was easy to read. I’m telling you, it’s like a fourth-grade reading level. I did that on purpose. I opened so many books. I deliberately called it Happier Made Simple because we’re not supposed to be happy 24/7. That is not life. Life is feeling the whole thing. Otherwise, where’s the contrast? We are here to experience the entire spectrum of life, but it’s about percentages.

We all know people who got stuck in a traffic jam and all day long, it makes them crabby. There are other people who are like, “That was fun,” and then they laugh it off and go on to have a good day. It’s about increasing the percentages. It is things like money only makes you happy to a point where you can be like, “I can survive now.” It’s community and your attitude.

My whole book is about what you tell yourself about what happens. In this book, Happy for No Reason, it sounds like what she did was similar to what Stephen Covey did with The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People. He interviewed all the successful people he knew and boiled it down to the end in mind. You seek to understand, not to be understood, and so on.

In my book and all the research, I’m like, “Everyone talks about mindfulness. I’m not going to give you a whole book on it. Let’s give you a chapter.” I call it Being. It’s a phrase I use in my head that triggers me down a good path. I can say, “Be here now.” When I was watching Star Trek with my husband, instead of crying in the corner about my son, I said, “Let’s be here now. This is good.” It’s Reality. It is what it is.

E is for Engagement. We are so isolated that we forget to engage with other people. If we remember that we’re all connected, that is a huge self-talk phrase that helps me. When I pass the people who caused the traffic jam by fixing the road and I say, “We’re all connected,” then my thoughts go to, “Thank you. Thank you for leaving your family in the middle of the night and fixing my road.”

If we remember that the person delivering our mail, we are connected to them and we need them, that is a huge part and what is missing from a lot of gratitude lists. We’re grateful for but not grateful to. A is for Appreciation. T is for Trust. All will be maybe not the way I planned, but it’s going to work out somehow. When I do presentations on this, I always ask people to fill out something they thought they could never go through, and yet, they’re here, and what they learned. It’s interesting.

H is for Humor. That is what I find missing from so many of the books about being happier. My background is an actor, a voiceover talent, a theater actor, and a radio personality. I’m not going to say I would joke about trauma on the radio, but if my kids were driving me crazy, my heel broke on the way to the wedding, or whatever, it would make a funny story the next day. That taught me the value of humor for those little things that might make us crabby. They’re a great story.

A bunch of theater actors get together, and the stories they tell are never about the great nights they had. It’s always about when the scenery fell on their head in the middle of the show or, “I did a presentation and my nose started bleeding in the middle.” These little things become funny eventually. If you can learn to laugh with others, not at others, a little sooner.

The last E is for Esteem. Whatever happens, I’ll handle it somehow. That’s what I say to myself in the situation we’re in. Whatever happens, I’ve got help. I’ll handle it or we’ll handle it somehow. It’s a lighthearted book with stories, key points, and resources if you want to know more. If you don’t, here’s the next chapter. That’s the book.

I missed the word you were giving us an acronym for. Is it BREATHE?

Yes. Instead of breath, it is BREATHE because it’s an action. It’s Being, Reality, Engagement, Acceptance, Trust, Humor, and Esteem.

Is that an acronym that you expound in the book that becomes the structure of the book?

Yes. I’ll send you one if you want to read the book. I’ll send you the Kindle or whatever you want. There are seven core phrases. There is being or be here now, there is reality, it is what it is, this is an engagement, and we’re all connected. It’s a mix-and-match. If that phrase doesn’t do it for you, you make up your own. I struggled with engagement between, “We’re all connected,” and, “Find common ground,” because I thought they were both important. I put that in the book, too. You can put your doubts in a book. That’s important.

It is appreciating like, “This is good.” Here we are on Zoom and chatting. I’m meeting a new person, and we’re talking about mental health. This is good. It’s savoring the moment or reframing a bad moment. Maybe my son getting in trouble with the police will end up to have been good. Maybe it will teach him a lesson. I don’t know. I can’t predict it.

It’s like what you said earlier when you ask people for the last E in your acronym. They said, “Whatever happens, we’ll get through it,” when you asked people, “What have you been through?” Look at it. Here you are. If it’s far enough in the past, regardless of how intense it seemed at the time or negative at the time, can we look at how it has led directly or indirectly to some better things in our lives? Chances are it does.

There is a sticking point to that. I could say, “My son’s illness turned me into an author and a podcast host,” but I would give it all up if he was well.

It isn’t that so much as it is, “I’m so glad this happened.” I’m never glad those things happened. Yet, the way I choose to interpret and respond to them creates my experience. If I choose to make the best of it, use an acronym like yours, get centered, be here in the moment, appreciate others and trust, and look for some humor, then I find I grow through that process rather than get hamstrung by it.

It is partly the experience. We’d all rather open an envelope and get a $100 check than a $100 bill. Sure, why not? When you get it, the layer of what you tell yourself about it creates that experience for you. If you go, “Ugh,” the grumbling doesn’t help that much. It’s not a panacea. I say at the beginning of the book, “This is not new. You go back to Aristotle. You go back to the Bible. You go back before the Bible. There were people considering this question.”

I don’t like the word struggling with. I’m a big fan of choosing the right word. I never say, “I’m struggling to.” I always say, “I’m striving to.” If I catch myself going, “I have to go to the gym,” I change it to, “I get to go to the gym.” One-word change can make a big difference because words are like little time bombs in our brains that lead us down one path or the other path. That’s the power of words and the words we use to each other. There’s a P.S. at the end. When you’re talking to other people, this matters, too.

Just a one-word change can make a big difference because words are like little time bombs in our brains that lead us down one path or the other path. Click To Tweet

These seven phrases are for self-talk. Don’t say to anybody, “Look on the bright side,” that is the worst thing you can say to someone. Say it to yourself. Don’t tell other people how to feel. I share these as self-help phrases that help me reframe whatever is happening and send me down a different path. Be here now can be as simple as brushing my teeth, but part of me in my head is already downstairs drinking coffee. I’m like, “Be here now. Brush your teeth. Taste the toothpaste.”

You can’t be in the moment every second of every day. When I’m having a root canal, I do not want to be here now. I want to be fantasizing about the future or something else. Even then, you can choose if you want to have a happy thought about the future or an anxiety-ridden thought about the future. There is some choice in what we tell ourselves about what’s happening to us, even something as serious as your beloved child having one of the worst illnesses that could possibly be. That’s how I combined those two passions into two books.

Take a breath, get centered, and think about it. We are coming close to the end of my available time. If you think about it with whatever we’ve already hit on, is there something in there you want to go back and highlight or something we haven’t mentioned yet that you want to share with our audience?

I took a deep breath. I didn’t know if that was for your audience or me, but I listened and took a deep breath. I am going to say what came to my mind first, which is that love is powerful. Everything we’re doing, we do for love. It’s a song from A Chorus Line, What I Did for Love. I know it also from Legally Blonde. I’m a musical theater junkie, so all my references are Broadway lyrics.

For my son to live with us for nine years, when my husband and I weighed it up that one of us had to give him his medication to make sure he did it, although we never went to bed at the same time because he was working in a restaurant, we did it for love. When I reach the end of my days, and hopefully, it is 30 years ahead, I want to look back and say, “I did my best. I loved as best I could and as many people as I could.”

It can even be as simple as somebody taking the parking space that I wanted. I’ll say to myself, “I’ll find another parking space.” Maybe when you look at other people, assume good intent whenever possible. That would be something that helps me not judge other people and not get mad at other people. When you get mad at that person for taking your parking space, you’re assuming bad intent. You’re assuming they saw you and they wanted to screw you over so they took your space. What if they were talking to their daughter on the phone and they didn’t see you? If I’m going to make something up in my imagination about that person, I’m going to make up the good thing.

That’s because it’s going to generate your experience at that moment.

Exactly. I saw that person exactly the story you make up. I’d rather make up a good story. If life proves me wrong, I can be wrong. I can change my mind. The hardest thing for people to say is, “I was wrong.” I’ve learned to say, “I was wrong.” I used to think marijuana didn’t cause schizophrenia. I was wrong. I’ve changed my mind about that. That’s how we learn from each other. If you’re going to make up a story about someone, assume good intent. If you find that new information comes in and the opinion you held so strongly might not be right, say, “I was wrong.” You’ll be happier.

If you're going to make up a story about someone, assume good intent. If you find that new information comes in and the opinion you held so strongly might not be right, say, “You know what? I think I was wrong.” And then you'll be happier. Click To Tweet

I greatly appreciate your willingness to share time with us. The podcast is?

Schizophrenia: Three Moms in the Trenches. If you Google Podcast Schizophrenia Moms, it will come up.

It will be there. The book is Ben Behind His Voices.

That’s my book. The other two books of the other two moms are new. One is Fix What You Can by Mindy Greiling. She was a state legislator in Minnesota when her son was getting ill, so there’s a lot of the story about the legal battle behind it. The other is He Came In with It by Mimi or Miriam Feldman. She’s an artist on the West Coast. She talks about her experience. They’re all beautifully written. My other book is Happier Made Simple: Choose Your Words. Change Your Life.

I would be happy to take you up on the offer of your book. I look forward to reading it. If you keep doing this for another half a year or so, maybe we’ll have you back on. Maybe we can get all three of you together on an episode.

I’m sure we’d love to.

I would look forward to that.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. I appreciate the time. It’s a blessing.

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Randye Kay has two bestselling books, Happier Made Simple and Ben Behind His Voices. These two books are tied to her work as a motivational speaker, a radio and podcast host, an actress, a singer, a teacher, and a mental health advocate. It’s also tied to her life as a wife, mother, and grandmother. She’s the co-creator and host of the popular podcast, Schizophrenia: Three Moms in the Trenches.

 

Important Links

• Randye Kaye
• Happier Made Simple
• Ben Behind His Voices
• Schizophrenia: Three Moms in the Trenches
• The Best Minds
• Anatomy of An Epidemic
• Happy for No Reason
• The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People
• Fix What You Can
• He Came In with It

 

About Randye Kaye

Randye Kaye’s two bestselling books, Happier Made Simple and Ben Behind His Voices, are tied into her work as motivational speaker, radio and podcast host, actress, singer, teacher and mental health advocate – as well as her life as wife, mother and grandmother. She is the co-creator and host of the popular podcast, Schizophrenia: 3 moms in the Trenches.

 

 

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