The Place: Lola Savannah

The Cup: GiGi enjoyed a Café au lait and I opted for my favorite of all the coffee drinks, the cortado.

The Background: There’s a first time for everything. And this is the first time I am interviewing the spouse of a former stranger. That’s not to say I’ve never interviewed strangers who are married to one another. For example, Cup 25, Cooper Veazey is married to Cup 77, Bridget McCart. And as much as I’d like to take credit for hooking the pair up, I had nothing to do with it. They weren’t married when I interviewed them, but they are now. And they are absolutely adorable and are two of the most fun people you could share a bottle of wine with! Or a few bottles!

It should be said that there’s another pair of adorable former strangers, Cup 22, Tom Gimbel and Cup 44, Heather Schuck who I CAN take credit for setting up. And though they aren’t married yet, they will be in July! One of my favorite Coffee With a Stranger moments was getting the note from Tom sharing the news that they were engaged! They are so incredibly wonderful together — it brings me massive amounts of joy to have played a role in that!

GiGi is the beautiful wife of recent stranger-turned-friend, Cup 99, Jeff Miller. Jeff and I discovered we have many common threads in our stories and share similar life philosophies. So it came as no surprise that I immediately connected with GiGi as well. Have you ever met someone that you had the feeling you already knew? Jeff and GiGi are like long lost, cosmic family members.

GiGi’s story is all her own, but it’s quite obviously shaped by events Jeff spoke about in our conversation. If you haven’t read it, you might want to check it out. We’ll get into GiGi’s incredible journey shortly, but first, some:

Common Grounds:

1. What’s your guilty pleasure? I like campy vampire TV shows. Actually, I really like reading supernatural, historical fiction vampire books.
2. How did you make your first buck? As a child, my brother and I would make these terrible bows and take them door-to-door and sell them. So we were door-to-door, bow salespeople.
3. What is the best place to eat in Austin? Green Pastures. It’s like a time warp going there. I love anything that’s from another era. They have real silver and peacocks. I’m just blissfully happy there. They have the best lunches. I like a slow lunch, a three-hour lunch, and I never feel rushed there.
4. What is the best way to unwind? I space out. I like to be with myself. I just go sit somewhere and tune in. I daydream all day long. I also really love to observe things. Birds making a nest, or the cats play-fighting.
5. What is a book you consider to have been life-changing? Ethics for the New Millennium by the Dalai Lama. As a small-town Christian girl, the section on non-attachment rocked my little world. For my parents, their value system is very much about attachment. Something I heard a lot growing up was, ‘Take care of your things.’ Not being attached to things or outcomes — that was an idea I’d never been exposed to before. It really changed my life. Jeff will say I’m still a packrat. But when you have kids, they break things. And I’m able to just walk away. I care way more about how my child feels, than I care about the thing.
6. What’s the best gift you ever got? My favorite things in the world are animals. On the last day of 2nd grade — which was close to my birthday, my dad dropped off a calico kitten in a cat carrier to the school with a note that said Happy Birthday GiGi. I’ve never been so happy! I’ll never recapture that joy! I love my daddy!
7. What’s a food you can’t live without? Soups. Specifically, cream-based soups. Crab bisque is wonderful. We’ve been on trips and I’ve ordered soup as the dessert course. The waiter’s mind was blown.

Diversity

GiGi grew up in the small town of Gonzales, Texas. She told me that in a town of fewer than 7000 people, she often felt isolated. Always an artist and a self-described hippie, GiGi says she was someone who felt a little different from most of her peers — adding, “I didn’t have any people.” Fortunately, the diversity GiGi missed in her day-to-day was made up for in the travels her family would take. She says, “We went to Europe a lot and I got to see things that captured my imagination.” She said she was lucky that her parents felt travel was important and from a young age GiGi was seeing and experiencing the world, and was able to tuck those memories away to keep her inspired when she returned home.

Wonderland

GiGi’s favorite place on the planet is Disney. She loves the magic and whimsy that Disney created. As a young girl, she can recall wanting not just to visit and experience Disney, but she wanted to be Walt Disney. She says, “We’ll never know how many people’s lives have been touched by him. It’s the most popular Make-A-Wish request. That really says something.”

GiGi says, “I want to reside in a childlike state of wonder — that’s my goal, and I want to facilitate that for other people.” She has dreams and plans for creating a Disney-like environment for people of all ages and firmly believes that beauty, creativity and play can be huge influences in the stability of both our societal and individual mental health.

She tells me, “Disney is meant to fascinate, to create wonder and whimsy and take you outside of your ordinary mundane existence. We so often accept things the way they are, and we aren’t aware of the other possibilities. Or we make excuses. It’s too expensive or too difficult. Or this way is conventional or comfortable. I’m interested in things, like creativity, that are considered fixed traits and how they can be manipulated by the environment.”

“For example, my studio is a disaster. I’ve always felt a lot of judgment there. My whole life I’ve heard ‘What’s wrong with you?’ and ‘Why are you like this?’ There was a study that talks about a messy desk and a clean desk. The study had students take a test called a ‘novel use inventory’, or something like that.  They gave the students an object and they had to name everything they could do with it. Students sitting at clean desks had fewer ideas and the students at the messy desks had lots of ideas. It turns out chaos changes your perception.”

Our environment also plays a role on how we feel and act. GiGi explains, “If there is a high ceiling —  you will have more ideas and more creativity. People know it, but they can’t articulate it. They just know a low ceiling doesn’t feel good. It impacts you in more ways than we can articulate.”

Medical Mysteries

GiGi is passionate about art, but she’s also passionate about research — specifically related to health and nutrition. She shares, “After Jeff’s brain tumor is when I started researching hardcore. I turned to research as a survival mechanism. I thought I could game it. If I put enough effort into it, it would all work out. It came at a cost to my personality. Or it could just be growing up, I guess. Friends started saying things like, ‘You’ve changed.’ Before, I was always happy-go-lucky. After, I unfolded as a more somber person.”

What GiGi discovered was that she was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). And soon she’d connect a few more dots and uncover a disorder that she’d suffered from her entire life, but never had a name for. And this mystery disorder actually gave her a pre-disposition for developing PTSD.

MTHFR mutation. I ask GiGi to repeat it, to be sure I have it right and she smirks, lowers her voice a little, leans in and says, “It’s like mother-f*%#er, without all the vowels.” I laugh and agree this is surely a mnemonic device that will ensure I never forget it. And this is precisely the aim GiGi is going for.

She explains that it’s fairly prevalent — up to one in five people have this genetic mutation — and most don’t know. I ask if this is something that the medical community has on its radar and quiet voice is gone. She says, “NO! And that’s why I’m talking about it and looking for advocates to spread the word.” Okay, let’s do this!

Here’s the deal — according to GiGi, MTHFR mutation {you’re not going to forget it either, are you!?!} is often the culprit in people who suffer from “mystery” illness such as chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, cancer, mental illness, auto immune diseases – or who just generally have unexplained low energy, weight gain, insomnia, and a whole host of other issues.

Some good news – determining if you have it is simple and straightforward. It’s a blood test and likely one insurance companies will pay for. And unlike conditions shrouded in controversy, such as thyroid disorder, the test results are black and white. You either have the mutation or you don’t. So the test produces answers and not just more questions.

And I have no idea if this is always the case, but the remedy for GiGi are a pair of natural supplements – methyl folate and methylated B12. And she also has to stay away from foods that contain folic acid — because it’s bad for her, and others with the MTHFR mutation. Which makes me curious if some of the “gluten sensitivity” we hear about it actually this mutation and the decrease in symptoms has less to do with eliminating the gluten and instead is related to the elimination of folic acid (very commonly added to breads and cereals).

New Beginnings

The most significant thing that happened to GiGi in the last 30 days was, she tells me, “Jeff got a good job — based in Paris. I’ve really noticed a change in him. He’s always awesome. But it’s like I get to see a new window into the future. It’s a new possibility so there’s a lot of excitement around that. And the pay is significant enough that I can just focus on my art. I was going to do a project to make money, but my heart wasn’t in it. Jeff told me to make the art I want to make. It’s been very liberating.”

In GiGi’s view, the biggest issue facing society today is mental health. She explains. “I want to be an advocate for joy and for living that slow life. There’s this false thought that if you get this amazing job, you’ll be super happy. I don’t see that that’s usually the case. Parents have their kids scheduled from the moment they wake up to the moment they drop. The joy of childhood just sort of goes away. I am a big proponent of free play. And as an artist, I realize it’s the free play that builds you as a person. The interactions during free play as a child are what teach you how to navigate social relationships as an adult.”

“All animals have play as a part of their brain maturation. It’s kind of getting skipped. There’s a significant spike in anxiety and depressive disorders and medication use, and I think it’s directly related to our lack of being playful. So I want to bring back the play. Not organized sports — just playing to play. Doing something only for fun. Focusing on joy and play. Doing what we can to prevent mental illness. There’s so much we can do as a society to prevent really terrible things.”

GiGi has plans for creating a solution to the problems she sees. According to her website, “The Bee Caves Playarium is a whimsical sculptural playground that unlocks children’s imaginations and provides opportunities for creative problem solving, musical education, and physical, social and cognitive development.”

“Whenever there’s a big problem, we never trace it back to childhood to implement a preventable solution. Research shows that the type of high­ quality, self­-play that a Playarium will encourage is critical for providing children with the skills necessary to solve the types of physical, social, moral, and emotional problems encountered in daily life. Through high­ quality play, children learn how to develop creative solutions to real world problems, how to manage risk, how to negotiate with one another, how to empathize, and how to overcome fear and anxiety.” Can you imagine a world where these critical life skills were more important than math scores?

Ideal Day

GiGi tells me her perfect day would look something like this, “Slow and lazy.  Wake at 9 or 10. Maybe I’d be up earlier, but I wouldn’t get up until then. There would be animals and they’d be playful and cute. We’d eat lunch at Green Pastures or somewhere slow and lovely where they have great food. And we’d go to some art museums and sculpture gardens — just Jeff and I. We’ll pick up the kids and have a silly fun dinner somewhere, like Magic Time Machine in San Antonio. Then we’d go to Main Event and play laser tag and games.” A leisurely day of fun and games — sounds perfect to me!

Making Lemonade

If she could go back and change anything, I want to know what GiGi would do differently. She says, “I had a mentor once ask me, ‘Why would you change anything? Don’t you like how you turned out?’ I realized she was right. I think we’re given the journey we’re given and we can make lemonade out of lemons. I like where I’m at and how things have turned out, so I don’t think I could go back and change anything. There’s obviously been painful things — but that’s where growth happens, in the stuff that’s painful. I think my life’s pretty awesome!”

A daily practice GiGi has found useful is intentional breath work. She tells me, “It’s been a long journey to get there, but a while back I learned about breathing exercises. Throughout the day I will catch myself and I’ll say, ‘I’m feeling anxious and I’m holding onto my breath.’ So I’ll slow my breathe down and deepen it. It’s good.”

Head Banging

I want to know what GiGi thinks is something people would be surprised to learn about her. She tells me, “I think when you’re an artist, nothing surprises anyone. My friends say I’m a huge contradiction. I have all these idiosyncrasies. A college friend once said, ‘So you’re a Christian and you listen to heavy metal music.’ Music has been very cathartic in my life. I was a Metallica, Pantera, White Zombie fan. My favorite concert growing up was White Zombie. I was not a depressed drug addict — probably because music fed me.” I must agree — this is surprising.

If GiGi had one year to get really good at something, what would she do? She explains, “Graydon Parrish was my art instructor for a year, and during that time I was drawing and getting really good. He’s the only person who ever called me higher in my life. He took me somewhere I never thought I could go. I always wanted to, and I had a lot of drive, but no one was ever really able to pull it out of me. People always thought what I did was good enough. But he pushed me to do more. We never got to the painting — it’s a multi-year process, but I want to paint in a Renaissance/neoclassical style — like Raphael – a beautiful, lush painting style that’s super-technical. I hope to return to that at some point. I think it’s like people who run a marathon. It’s not for anyone else — just to see how good I can be. I’d be so proud of myself if I could master this genre of painting.”

Find Beauty

With 30 second to make a speech to the world, GiGi’s message is this, “Beauty is something we take for granted. I feel very strongly that we need to be aware of what we’re putting into our visual system. If we think about it consciously and we choose to surround ourselves with beauty and joyful things and playfulness then that will become part of us, just like the saying “you are what you eat”; I think “you are what you see,” becomes true to a certain degree as well. If we soak up loveliness, we will reflect that back into the world. We should do all that’s within our power to inspire and create a sense of well-being, and connection and joy and hope, and just be really aware and focused on that.”

GiGi has given me a lot to think about. As I type this blog post at a desk covered in a mash-up of things; some deliberately placed here, and others in piles, waiting for that magic slice of free time to appear so I can sort through it all.  That time never seems to come and the piles grow larger — as does my stress level. I internally bark at myself, “You need to create some order out of this chaos!”

Or do I? If I change my mind about my environment, could it feed my creativity instead of my anxiety? Is it possible to see beauty where I used to see junk? I don’t know.

GiGi is right — our environment impacts us in huge ways. You only need to open a jam-packed closet or walk into a freshly cleaned house to experience it for yourself. And though I’d never given it much thought, I can say that bright, bold, colorful art with curvy lines and softness makes me happy — while harsh, angular, pointy metal sculpture doesn’t. I also know that any song by Jason Mraz brings a smile to my face, while Metallica, techno music, and frankly, most classical music makes me anxious.

What’s true for me, isn’t likely to be true for you. As the saying goes, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So tune in, slow down, breathe deeply and truly allow experiences to flow over and through you. It isn’t about assigning labels — good or bad. It’s about discovering what’s true for you — defining beauty in your own words. That begins with awareness.

Find the environment, music, art, people, conversations, work and play that make you feel alive and joyful and then create space for these things in your life. Start looking for and seeing beauty everywhere and I believe you will like what you discover. Like GiGi says, you are what you see. 

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