In this episode of Second Chances with Christy Belz, we delve into the remarkable life of Dr. Judy Moore, a trailblazer who has dedicated her life to empowering women through her work in psychology. Christy shares how Dr. Judy’s guidance helped her navigate personal traumas and inspired her to pursue a fulfilling career in social work.
We also hear the inspiring story of a mother who returned to college at 30, highlighting the resilience and determination of women in the face of societal challenges. Join us as we celebrate women’s achievements, tackle the ongoing fight for gender equality, and reflect on pivotal moments in women’s history.
In this episode, you will learn the following:
- How Judy helped Christy navigate early life traumas and inspired a career in social work.
- Judy’s ongoing zest for life at 83, including her marathon running and passion for helping others.
- The story of a mother returning to college at 30, balancing family and academic ambitions.
- Anecdotes highlighting the progress and challenges in the fight for gender equality.
- Reflections on significant moments in women’s rights, such as Hillary Clinton’s presidential run and the impact of FMLA.
- Contributions of Sigmund Freud to psychology and their relevance today.
Learn more about Christy Belz Social Communications:
Website: https://christybelz.com/influencer/oh-god-of-second-chances-here-i-am-again/
Course: https://christybelz.com/uproot/
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00 Christy: Hi and welcome to Second Chances with Christy Belz podcast. I’m your host, Christy Belz. Enjoy our array of talented, openhearted guests and their thoughtfully curated stories of Second Chances, life-changing choices and new perspectives. We are here to empower you on Second Chances in your life.
00:00:38 Christy: So this podcast is about second chances. And I can tell you when I was maybe 22, 23, I had the second chance of my life. And it’s when I decided to put myself in therapy. Therapy was really necessary for me at the time, although I didn’t realize it, but I was introduced to this remarkable woman by the name of Dr. Judy Moore. And Judy, in a matter of probably two years, helped me change and transform my mindset, my belief in myself, and just an amazing facilitator to help me understand and correct the courses of my life.
00:01:18 Christy: She is instrumental, has been and was instrumental in me deciding to quit my six-figure job, to put myself through school to be a social worker. She helped me firmly believe in that idea of education as a means to self-sufficiency. And she also, through her work with me, helped me develop my great passion for supporting and empowering women. So I’m just so delighted to have Judy Moore with us today on this podcast.
00:01:45 Christy: And with that, welcome Judy Moore. I am so excited, probably more excited than any guest I’ve ever had before, because I have the amazing Dr. Judy Moore with me today. I have chills just saying her name and I can tell you the reason why is because this woman has been one of the most significant women in my life as far as game changing. This podcast is called Second Chances and I can tell you when I was young, 22 maybe 23, I decided to put myself in therapy and this was my therapist, this amazing Judy Moore and the work that I did with Judy in my early 20s even now 40 plus years later.
00:02:31 Judy: Wow.
00:02:32 Christy: I know, Judy. I can tell you that she still influences me. She’s the reason I went to college, to become a social worker. She helped me deal with trauma and issues of my youth. And she’s… also empowered to me, I think, to be the woman that I am today, supporting other women on their journey. So welcome, Judy Moore. Welcome. And thank you for being here with me.
00:02:56 Judy: Thank you very much. It’s wonderful to be here with you, Christy. I have always adored you and loved knowing you and working with you.
00:03:06 Christy: Yeah. Do you remember when we first met, Judy?
00:03:08 Judy: Yes. My office was still down on the Plaza. We worked there and you were having all kinds, all kinds of internal conflict.
00:03:21 Christy: Yes, I was. And I was not making very good decisions for myself at that time in my life, was I?
00:03:25 Judy: Well, I think you were very appropriate for a 20 something person.
00:03:31 Christy: Oh, wow. That’s what I love about you.
00:03:34 Judy: That’s what 20 year olds do.
00:03:36 Christy: That’s true. That’s true.
00:03:38 Judy: They aren’t in college. And that’s what I talk to people about. Are you doing what you love? Are you going to do it all of your life? Since your last name is not Rockefeller, you’re probably going to work all of your life. And so if we’re gonna work, we need to do work that we love.
00:04:01 Christy: Yeah. Well, I love that you’re still working. And Judy, would you mind telling the audience how old you are right now?
00:04:07 Judy: Well, I’m 83. 83, and I am not on camera, but I wish you could see this thing that I have around my neck. And I got first place in my age group for Hospital Hill.
00:04:23 Christy: Yeah, you just ran Hospital Hill, which is how many miles?
00:04:27 Judy: Well, you can run five, you can run six, you can run or, 10… a 5k, a 10k or a half marathon. Usually I’m a 10k girl. Which is about six miles.
00:04:40 Christy: That’s amazing. And you did it with your granddaughter, if I remember right.
00:04:43 Judy: I did it with my granddaughter this time. My kids are very worried since I’m 83 that I might fall down or have some kind of accident like that. For all the kinds of good reasons, I am 83. And so my granddaughter went with me and she had never run that far. And so every time she would get so out of breath and I’d say, okay, let’s walk together and get your breath. And so she said she had never done it that far before. And so now we’re gonna start running together.
00:05:22 Christy: I love it. I love that.
00:05:24 Judy: Pass that on.
00:05:25 Christy: Yes, yes, indeed. So I want to go back to something that, you know, one, you are one of the most remarkable women. I just had the joy of spending time with you at dinner with several other women in my life back in Kansas City, where I’m from. And we are all in awe of everything about you. You’re funny. You are articulate. You are, you know, you’re still kicking ass at 83, 82. 83 and yeah, so awesome.
00:05:52 Christy: But one thing I want to go back to Judy, cause you seeded so many amazing things in my life. And I talk about you in my book and actually I’m gonna tell a funny story on you. So when I reached out to you to share with you that I was talking about you in my book, you sent me back this e, this a voicemail. Do you remember what you said?
00:06:10 Judy: I’m clueless.
00:06:11 Christy: Oh good Lord. Well, I’m going to say it and prepare yourself. Cause I’m going to say the F bomb. So Judy says to me, Christy, that is fabulous. You can quote me, you can say anything about me that you want in your book. Unless I said fuck. And then, well, I don’t know. Maybe anyway, I saved your message from months and months and months. I’m like, unless you’re…
00:06:34 Judy: I’m sure that I probably said exactly that. And you know, the F bomb has become very much a part of our language. Since I was in college, it’s when the F bomb came out and we started saying it all the time.
00:06:53 Christy: All the time. So did I get my F bomb from you? Cause I say it all the time, too.
00:06:57 Judy: I’m sure you got it at least from me and everybody else in your environment.
00:07:03 Christy: I love it. Yeah. So going back–
00:07:06 Judy: Your kid probably says it too.
00:07:09 Christy: Who says it to?
00:07:10 Judy: Your child.
00:07:11 Christy: Yeah, he probably does.
00:07:13 Judy: Does he say it in front of you?
00:07:14 Christy: Probably.
00:07:16 Judy: Okay, my kids do, my grandkids do.
00:07:20 Christy: Oh, interesting. Love it.
00:07:24 Judy: It’s part of the common vernacular.
00:07:26 Christy: It is part of the common vernacular. And it’s kind of fun to say, but anyway, so let me go back to what you said earlier, because I, this really resonates with me and I, again, I just credit you with giving me so many different mindsets in my life, that aspect of do what you love and do it for your lifetime. I’m such a proponent of that. I teach in my book, aspire to your desire, right?
00:07:49 Judy: Exactly.
00:07:50 Christy: Get clear on what your desire is, and then live that, like aspire to do that thing. And I can tell you that when I went back to school to be a social worker with your encouragement, I actually thought I was going to be a doctor like you. I didn’t quite get that far for lots of reasons. But yeah, I love doing what I do every day and I will do it until I can’t do it anymore, right?
00:08:13 Judy: No, I’m dead, that’s what I think.
00:08:16 Christy: Yeah, so I wanna go back to your origin story. You had just actually graduated college a few years, maybe a little more when I met you. You had gone back later in life to get your doctorate degree. Tell us about your journey, Judy. What got you to this time and place and this love of psychology and being a doctor of psychology?
00:08:38 Judy: Well, I started my undergraduate degree. I always wanted to go to college and I wanted to graduate because so many people have dropped out of college, dropped out of other things, but dropped out of college and I wanted to graduate. So when I finished my undergraduate degree, I had a degree in speech pathology and audiology and biology. And I realized that I hated.
00:09:07 Judy: Well, hate might be too strong, but I didn’t like being in speech pathology, audiology. I learned tons from those two forces, but biology. So I thought, what am I gonna do with biology? So I took the MedCat in Kansas City, which is a test that you take to go to medical school, and I got accepted for… I sent it to every school here in the greater Kansas City area, and I got accepted in two schools. And this started in January because I graduated in December.
00:09:47 Judy: So while I was waiting to go to med school, I decided I would take every class I could in psychology. And that way I would satisfy all the electives that they were going to make me take, get to the program because I had kids that needed to be cared for. I wasn’t divorced from my first husband yet. And so I had plenty of other activities to be involved with.
00:10:16 Judy: And so I went to school and after I went, took those two semesters and the med schools were saying, come on down, I had to write them a thank you note, of course, and tell them thank you so much for considering me but now I must decline because I’ve decided I’m going to become a doctor of psychology.
00:10:40 Christy: I love that.
00:10:41 Judy: And so that’s where I kept going.
00:10:45 Christy: Yeah. How old were you when you started college? You got your undergraduate degree.
00:10:50 Judy: I think I was maybe 30. I had kids, I had things to do, I’d been married. I think I was still married maybe, no, not at the time I’d met you, but I had been married for a long time. My kids went to college. You know, if you live in an environment where people are very educated, then you’re in a different environment. As a kid, you grow up in a different environment.
00:11:25 Judy: My youngest daughter said, you know Mom, making me an honor roll was easy, so I thought I liked her attitude. If making the honor roll is easy, then do it. Do it all the time. From a kid’s point of view, she made perfect sense. From parents’ point of view, she didn’t know or remember how many times I had to remind her to do her homework. It’s a mix, but she is a very smart kid.
00:12:00 Judy: And so she finished high school. She finished her undergraduate degree. Had a degree in English and was going to teach English. And then something happened, and she decided she didn’t wanna teach, and she didn’t know what she was going to do. And so she got a job working in a law firm. And she said, like most young kids, “I think I can do this better than the lawyers.”
00:12:26 Judy: Well, of course, she had positive good feelings. And I said, “We’ll take the LSAT and go to law school.” She did and she did. And she graduated from law school, and I just laughed and thought it was so wonderful. I said to my patients and people around me that we were gonna be really rich with this rich lawyer, maybe like a New York lawyer, and we were gonna get a yacht.
00:12:57 Christy: Yacht.
00:12:58 Judy: So I thought, “How cool is that?”
00:13:01 Christy: That’s so cool.
00:13:02 Judy: Right. So she graduates from law school. She takes… She graduated from law school and got a job, and we’re gonna buy a yacht, remember? That’s my mindset. She says, “Mom, I have a job.” And I’m thinking, “Great.” And she’s going to be a public defender. Well, there went the money. I’m going to have to give her money all of her life because you don’t make very much money. And then she became a prosecuting attorney.
00:13:39 Christy: Wow.
00:13:40 Judy: And now she is on the attorney general staff in the state of Missouri. So she’s kind of climbing the lawyer ladder. Forget about a yacht.
00:13:51 Christy: Yeah, forget about the yacht. That’s wonderful. And of course you inspired your daughters just like you did patients like me. I want to go back though, Judy. Did you not attend college out of high school?
00:14:04 Judy: I did attend college out of high school. I got married. And that was… Well, yes, I married [Jerry] Moore. And he was in the military. So he was at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. We hardly… We were so young and dumb. We probably didn’t even hardly know where Virginia was. We drove to Virginia, found an apartment, a basement apartment. Oh my God. The man who is renting us the apartment asked Jerry and I why we were there, and Jerry tells him he’s in the military and he’s stationed at Fort Belvoir. And then the man asked me, and I told him that I had finished a semester of college and I had to drop out so I could accompany my husband.
00:15:01 Judy: And so Jerry went to Fort Belvoir, studied, and I said to him, “Please study and learn everything you can cause I like this.” Because the man said, “Well, you know, if you walk two blocks up to the Clarendon bus and you take it down and you’ll go across the key bridge… He’s telling me things I didn’t know about before. And you’ll go straight into the district, which is an abbreviation for the district of Columbia, and you say you’ll be on M Street, get off on 37th, I believe, and walk up the hill right through a area in Washington, D.C. called ‘Georgetown.’
00:15:49 Judy: And so I walked up the hill and you know, there was a college up there. It’s called ‘Georgetown.’ And so I went to Georgetown. But again, back in those days, women had very few rights. So I went to, several semesters and then in the third semester, I became pregnant. And I had to hide my pregnancy under a sweater or a jacket or something until May. So then we got out of school, and then I could act like a normal pregnant woman. And I had my first child in October.
00:16:27 Christy: Wow. What year was that?
00:16:29 Judy: That was 1960, I guess, or 61.
00:16:35 Christy: Really amazing. The women’s history, right? Our women’s history, how far we’ve come.
00:16:41 Judy: Oh, and they had just discovered at that time, Watson and Crick in the UK had discovered about the sperm. And so we learned a lot about biology. I had a daughter named Michelle. And so I thought, well, since we’re gonna have two kids, some professor in undergraduate school said we were filling up our planet. I mean, he was ahead of his time, or my time anyway. He said we can only replace ourselves. So I knew I could have two children with that attitude.
00:17:23 Judy: And so since we’d learned about the sperm and everything, we thought, “Okay, we’ll try to have a boy.” Well, we didn’t. We had another girl, my second daughter, Elizabeth, or Beth is her nickname. In fact, when she was in elementary school, they called her Bethlehem. She loved it… Or not. It was great being a mother and great going to school. And then when I started finishing my PhD, I realized how much I love interacting with people and helping them problem solve.
00:18:08 Christy: Yeah, beautiful.
00:18:10 Judy: I am very pro-people, but women in particular. I come from a family of three daughters. I’m the middle child. It was before we knew about sperm and all of that. My father was furious that my mother had had three girls. It was all her fault, sort of like in the Sistine Chapel where Eve gets the blame. So my dad was mad. And his parenting style was to give the kid a good beating. So before he died, he died when I was three, he had already given me a good beating then because I had done something. Well, I was a dumb little kid.
00:19:04 Christy: Well, we are free though.
00:19:05 Judy: Yeah, right. And his parenting style, my big sister was waiting out in the hall and she said, “You’re gonna get beaten all your life.” And so I think she’s right. As rebellious and oppositional as Mike would say about me. So we all have said, but it really hasn’t been till I’ve been a grownup. We’re glad he died because he didn’t beat us. We stopped getting beaten all the time. So try not to beat your kids anymore. It’s against the law. And furthermore, as a doctor, I’m required to report that.
00:19:50 Christy: Yeah, we are. And as a social worker, as a deed. Hey, Judy, we need to take a quick break here. So we’re just gonna take a moment and we will be right back with Dr. Judy Moore and her stage wisdom. We’ll be right back.
00:20:07 Christy: This is your host, Christy Belz. Many of the people you meet on my podcast have participated in my online curriculum called ‘Uproot.’ This 15-week course takes you through my transformational process of understanding our roots, reviewing our path, and collecting the tools for life success. I would love to help you on your journey. Learn more about the Uproot course, take my quiz, and explore my transformational retreats at Christybelz.com/uproot.
00:20:45 Christy: All right, welcome back with Dr. Judy Moore. Oh my gosh. Can I tell you how much I love this woman? Love, love, love. Oh, love, love, love. Anyway, Judy, you have so much wisdom. You’ve touched so many lives. You certainly have touched mine in numerous ways. I’m just curious. I mean, when we talk about your history, the fact that you were young when you married, that you moved away from your family to Virginia, the fact that you walked to Georgetown to go to school all on your own, to getting divorced, to putting yourself through, going to graduate school, et cetera, to become a doctor. And now how many years of practice?
00:21:22 Judy: I’ve been a doctor since 1979. Most people weren’t even born then.
00:21:30 Christy: I was on the planet, but there were a lot of people-
00:21:33 Judy: Were you in utero or were you out walking?
00:21:36 Christy: No, I was… I think I was about to graduate high school, but I literally met you shortly after that, like maybe three or four years into your practice. So, yeah. Part of what I love is that I’m so blessed to have remarkable women in my life that are older, that have wisdom and carry wisdom that I don’t have, that I want to share with my listeners. And so, Judy, I want you to think about and share with us maybe three nuggets of wisdom that you would want a younger woman to know. Based on your experience, based on all your years of practice. Just share with us some of your brilliant wisdom and fun humor too.
00:22:15 Judy: Well, I think that women, females are fabulous. I’m one. I have two female daughters. I have two girl granddaughters. I have one grandson. My life is great. I live with a wonderful man, and he has one child, a son. So we have plenty of kids between us, and we have a marvelous place where we live and our kids or grandkids, in my case, both my kids and my grandkids, and George’s son was just here last weekend as a guest. So we always have things to do and ways to entertain, and George makes the best margaritas in the world.
00:23:02 Christy: This I can testify to.
00:23:04 Judy: So if you want to drink a margarita, come on over.
00:23:06 Christy: Come on over to Judy and George’s. I’ve been there plenty of time. Yes.
00:23:12 Judy: Yes.
00:23:13 Christy: So women are fabulous.
00:23:15 Judy: Women are fabulous. And we have always… We have a big pool in our backyard. So that makes it very accommodating in the summertime. Like now that we have people over, we’re laughing, talking, drinking water, swimming, it’s great.
00:23:34 Christy: It is great, yeah. So what do you think is most remarkable about women? Not to say men aren’t fabulous, but what do you think that it is that makes women so resilient and so awesome?
00:23:48 Judy: We have so much to do. Women work incredibly hard, and many times they don’t give themselves the credit, let alone hear it from other people, giving them positive feedback. So lots of times they get not too positive feedback. You’re a girl, you’re a woman, you don’t rise, the glass ceiling and all of those things happen to women. And so I just said this week to a patient of mine, she was talking, a black woman, she was talking about how they had, she thought they’d been hard on her child because he was black. Of course they had been.
00:24:35 Judy: And, you know, I said, well, if you and I went out on the sidewalk and we started walking down the street because of the violence in Kansas City or maybe in our nation, or maybe on our planet that might get a little bigger than that, I said we could both be shot, because we’re women. And she said, yeah. And I said, and who’d get shot first? And she looks at me and I said, you would because you’re black. You have two strikes against you. I only have one. I’m a female. And then I’d get shot next. So it’s still pretty hectic for women to make it in this world. And you really have to have a lot of education or a lot of ways that you have represented your femaleness and people have seen it.
00:25:34 Christy: Yeah, you know, it makes me think and again that you’ve, things that you taught me all these years ago was that, you know, we live in a world of, you know, white male privilege and it’s still true today, right? And we have one strike against us because we’re white women, right? Black women, two strikes against them. So I think that’s so interesting. And I’m curious your perspective, Judy, about like, we’ve come so far, but what do you think it’s gonna take? What do you think it’s gonna take for women to truly stand in equanimity and equality with men?
00:26:08 Judy: Well, that’s gonna be very difficult. When Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton’s wife ran for president, I think that’s when Donald Trump became president first. Somehow was able to beat Hillary. My gosh, a woman with brains coming out of her ears. And her husband, though, a fabulous president, and he initiated the FMLA, Federally Mandated Leave Act, to Congress. And that means now to all of us that they can’t fire you. If they have 50 employees, they can’t fire you. You can take a day off. Actually, you can have a lot of days off with FMLA. But of course, if you take a lot of days off, you’re not gonna get fired, but are you gonna get a good reputation from that? Maybe not.
00:27:09 Christy: Maybe not.
00:27:10 Judy: You don’t come to work enough.
00:27:12 Christy: Right.
00:27:13 Judy: So I have worked every day, six days a week. I’m not working quite as much as I used to. I’m probably only working five hours a day. And just five or six days a week. I love my job. I’m going to do it. I tell my patients that if one of these days I am talking to them and I’m pointing my finger at them, telling them something and I fall out of my chair and I’m dead, I want them to know that they can tell their friends that they were at their doctor’s office. She died in front of them and they saw somebody who died happy.
00:27:58 Christy: Oh my God.
00:27:59 Judy: Because I’m doing what I love to do.
00:28:01 Christy: I love it. I love it. So let’s talk about education because I know you’re just the staunch supporter of women in education. Tell me why you think education for women is so significant, particularly.
00:28:14 Judy: Well, part of it, I’ve experienced a fabulous part of it because I have a PhD.
00:28:21 Christy: Right.
00:28:22 Judy: I suppose if I had an MD or something like that, I would still get some credit because I had all that education and that education thrusts you in a certain direction. I have a PhD in psychology, so it thrust me in a direction. And when I was a senior finishing my PhD, our university said, had a statement that they said, I was one of the best people to talk to. And so they gave my name to the medical school, the law school and the dental school. So I’ve seen tons and tons of doctors and lawyers and Indian chief, oh no, other things. And I’ve seen that in my career. It’s been fabulous.
00:29:19 Christy: Yeah, It’s so beautiful. All right, one last nugget, Judy. Anything you want to share with the audience that you just feel is in your heart?
00:29:28 Judy: Well, most of us know that Sigmund Freud, Dr. Sigmund Freud, was the one who kind of started this whole psychology stuff and turned it into a therapeutic way. And he was born in the 1800s and Adolf Hitler, if you recall, was a pretty big guy in central Europe in the 1940s. And so Sigmund Freud was a Jew and somehow they didn’t send him to a concentration camp, but they allowed people who had… were known about and Sigmund Freud had come to the United States the first time in 1904, which was before I was born and maybe everybody on this podcast. And so, Freud was a famous person.
00:30:31 Judy: And so, Adolf Hitler said, if you are famous and you write a letter telling everybody how fabulous it was living under the Nazi regime, you can leave the country. And so he did and he moved to London and I went to his house in London where he lived for several years before he died.
00:31:01 Christy: Wow.
00:31:02 Judy: I’ve had such a fabulous life. Learned a lot. Seen a lot, made wonderful friends. It’s great. That’s what we all should be able to say on our last breath. It’s been great.
00:31:20 Christy: That’s been great. Yes, well, it’s been great having you on this show. And I just, you know, I know you know how much I love you and I look forward to seeing you again when I’m back in KC and just thank you so much. Thank you for all that you’ve contributed to my life and many, many thousands of lives of the patients you’ve touched over the years, Judy. I love you, love you, love you.
00:31:45 Judy: Thank you very much, I love you too. And that’s really another good thing about this degree. It lets you open up your heart. And you can have a lot of love for a lot of different people. It’s wonderful.
00:32:02 Judy: It is wonderful.
00:32:03 Judy: Thank you very much for having me here.
00:32:05 Christy: Thank you. Thank you.
00:32:10 Christy: It is the joy of my life to showcase the voices of people and the messy details of life’s journey. As you have experienced, my guests are thriving with purpose and style, but that does not mean that their life is easy and without challenges. I’ve dedicated my life to you and your journey. Thank you for listening to Second Chances with Christy Belz. Please subscribe and learn more at christybelz.com\secondchances.