On Resilience, Grief and Timing with Jennie Baird

Dori and Jennie Baird talk about resilience, grief, and the role of timing in their lives. Jennie works as the Chief Product Officer at BBC Studios and is also a certified mental health first aid and volunteer suicide bereavement support facilitator, among her many professional and personal roles and pursuits. 

They reflect on their childhoods and the influence their parents played, particularly their fathers. And Dori updates listeners about what happened to her father after this interview with Jennie was recorded. 

They talk about their time at Aol, when Jennie hired Dori in 2006 for her first job after a decade as a stay-at-home mom, producing a branded contest sponsored by Dove called Chief Everything Officer. She shares the five words she looks for in all job candidates. Jennie also reminds Dori what she learned from our host about cooking. In admitting that she is not much for looking back and evaluating the past, Jennie reveals much about herself, yes, but also about resilience itself. This is an episode you won't want to miss.  


From Dori:

This episode is dedicated to the too many fathers my family and friends lost in 2024, many in this year's very challenging summer. I name some but, in my community alone, there were more. Too many. Much love and care to those in the complex, life-changing process of grief and mourning. 





TW: This episode contains a discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know is struggling, please listen with care or consider skipping this episode. In the United States, the suicide help line to call is the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline. You can reach them by dialing 988 

Connect with me!
Instagram: @dorifern
LinkedIn: Dori Fern
Email me: lifechangingwithdorifern@gmail.com

Visit https://dorifern.com for more about Dori's coaching services and to sign up for a complimentary call.

Transcript

Dori Fern (00:01.274)
wild to look back at your life and see yourself as a historical speck in a hugely influential moment in time. In 1989, the World Wide Web was invented by the early to mid -90s browsers and websites for the general public started to proliferate. in 1994, six years out of college, I got my first digital media job working for 

Dori Fern (00:26.282)
a pre -web -based film and TV database service called Baseline. It was already behind the curve when the internet boom arrived. The pay stunk and we constantly feared the business would go under. So we trauma bonded while other people landed multi -million dollar windfalls, which might sound familiar to some of you coming up in the business world today. 

Dori Fern (00:54.334)
Even so, it was clear that we were on the ground floor of a not yet built future. Today's guest, Jennie Baird, has made the best of her own life's timing. She was instrumental in the launch of SmartMoney .com just around the time I stepped off my career path to have my first child. She went on to co -found the cult baby naming website, BabyNameWizard .com, held digital editorial leadership roles at 

Dori Fern (01:23.958)
Entertainment Weekly, iVillage, RIP, and at AOL where she and I met. Fast forward, she was global head of product at News Corp and is now the chief product officer for BBC Studios. Outside of work, Jennie is certified in mental health first aid and volunteers as a suicide bereavement support facilitator. Topics she has more than a little personal experience with, which will 

Dori Fern (01:54.03)
discuss. I talked about Jennie's influence on my life in last season's episode 9 called Money and Mentors, but I wanted to understand more about where her resilience came from and explore the role timing has played in both of our lives. I got that, but what I understand now about grief deep in two 

Dori Fern (02:18.574)
compounded by unexpected events in my life in the time between when we recorded this episode and now. More on that ahead. 

Dori Fern (02:35.01)
Welcome to Life Changing with Dori Fern, a podcast about who we are, where we're going, and what connects us. It's a show for people in progress at any stage. I had very happy childhood and I've had a lot of trauma as an adult. I feel like there's something genetic in me that is a resilience that's like from the Holocaust survivor part of me. 

Dori Fern (03:06.936)
So how did you start this life, Jennie Baird? Tell me about Jenny Baird as a child. How do you remember yourself? 

Jennie Baird (03:36.766)
That's a really great question. I think that my childhood is very important for this conversation, probably. I've had the same best friend since I was in kindergarten. So I met my best friend on the first day of kindergarten, and she is still my best friend. 

And I would say I was a very wild and goofy and exuberant and slightly, and I guess creative kid. And I ran with a gang of neighborhood kids. My parents had a sort of interesting background. My father is a Holocaust survivor who was raised under an assumed identity in a Catholic girls orphanage and came to America as a penniless teenager with a pregnant single mother who was a very difficult person. And my mother was a red diaper baby so that her parents had been active in Communist Party during the McCarthy years. So she also is somebody who sort of grew up in hiding. So I always felt like those two were soulmates. 

But also it was very non -traditional kind of background for a kid growing up in the suburbs in New Jersey. Where was your dad from? My dad was born in Berlin and he grew up in Brussels, in occupied Brussels. And then he came to New York. He lived initially in refugee housing, which is now the public theater downtown in Manhattan. 

And then he lived, I think, on Eldridge Street in the Lower East Side. And, my dad was like a Lower East Side kind of kid. And then, you he lived on St. Mark's Place and was part of like a very bohemian movement. He went to the Army. And my mom grew up in Brooklyn on, I'm trying to remember now, it's just on Sealy Street, which I think is maybe now called Windsor Terrace. It's Windsor Terrace. Yeah. So that's where my mom grew up. 

Dori Fern (05:29.762)
Wow. That's a nice block. 

Jennie Baird
Yeah, it is. And how did they meet? My parents met on New Year's Eve at a going to a New Year's Eve party in the back of a Volkswagen in Brooklyn. My mother had just returned from her junior year abroad in Vienna. Wow. She agreed to go to this party and she got in the back of this Volkswagen Beetle full of, I guess, other college students and sat on my dad's lap and the rest is history. what did you take from your childhood into your adult life? What stands out to you? think the thing I inherited from my dad and from his mom is resilience. I think like, you know, there's this theory of orchid children and dandelion children and orchid children, no matter how much love and care they are given, they fail to thrive and dandelion children can grow sunshine and flowers through a sidewalk that people are stomping on. my dad is definitely a dandelion. He's still a dandelion at age 88. And when I think about the course of my adult life, because I had no trauma growing up, but I very happy childhood. And I've had a lot of trauma as an adult. And I feel like there's something genetic in me that is a resilience that's like from the Holocaust survivor part of me. 

Dori Fern
My first thought about this dandelions and orchids framing was dandelions hardy meaning better and orchids beautiful but fragile meaning weak. So I asked the great oracle chat GPT about this and it said in essence 

Dori Fern (07:25.854)
Dandelions are the embodiment of robust, widespread resilience, while orchids represent a more delicate, strategic form of endurance in the natural world. Which I think is kind of nice, and I kind of relate to, because I think I have a bit of both. Resilience, yes, but also a less widespread and more strategic form of endurance. 

Dori Fern (07:54.754)
That's really interesting, but it really resonates in my life now as I navigate this time in my life with my mom and her dealing with living alone for the first time in her life since my stepdad died. And my mom, you know, she will say she is a forever changed person. She will continue to move forward, but she is forever changed. She is not the same person. And there are elements of that I mean of course I understand that and I respect where she's at but my struggle with that is this idea that when something happens to you like when you've like you said you had trauma as an adult and going back to the cliche everything happens for a reason which I think is you know like you're rolling your eyes I roll my eyes when I think about it because you know sure, on an anatomical level, that's probably true, biologically, but it's not the point. It misses the point that it's not what happens, it's how we deal with what happens. 

Jennie Baird
I have a lot to say on this. So your mom is struggling with grief. So she says I'm forever changed because of her grief at losing her husband. So I have a lot of experience in this space. of grief. I lost my stepson, Henry, to suicide when he was 19. That's now 11 and a half years ago. Wow. It's hard to believe it's been that long. And, you know, going back to the thing about parents, I remember when we were marking Henry's first missed birthday. So it was March 2nd. He died in December and then it was March and we took the other kids out for like to Henry's favorite restaurant and try to make something special. And I remember talking to my dad and my dad said, you really have to get over this and move on. And, you know, and that may be my dad's style. And maybe that is how he's a dandelion is he's just like, you know, bad things happen, move on. But I'm not quite like that. And, and, know, that was a very tough time. But so spend a lot of the past 11 and a half years, thinking about grief, being in grief and working with the newly bereaved as a suicide bereavement support group facilitator and one -on -one. And I think the practice of grief or the role of grief is not to move on, but to find a place where your lost loved person sits with you in your heart and you carry them with you and that it's not disruptive to your life but that you continue to have a relationship with them internally even though they are physically gone. one of my favorite sayings about grief and especially from suicide loss which is what is designated as complicated grief is that your burden doesn't get lighter, but your shoulders get stronger. And I think that's really what it is. 

Dori Fern (11:16.674)
I wasn't planning to share this with my mom, but I think she needs to hear that. That is beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. 

Dori Fern (12:00.942)
few months after this episode was recorded, on August 4th, my father, Eli Fern, died. 

Dori Fern (12:12.462)
I've been processing where my father belongs in this weird, melancholy grief I've been feeling, compounded as it is by the fact that ten days after my father, his older brother, my Uncle Jerry, died unexpectedly too. My dad wasn't speaking to my uncle when he died for no good reason. Cutting people off was just my father's way of getting control of situations instead of examining his feelings about anything. 

Dori Fern (12:42.378)
And as a result, letting things go was just not within his wheelhouse. Here, Jenny and I talk about my challenging relationship with my dad. What it means to be powerful, to feel powerful, the resilience that comes from action, nature versus nurture. Reflecting on everything I've learned about how not to be for my dad, I'm 

Dori Fern (13:07.896)
convinced that while the orchid child in me struggled to grow in my adolescent environment, my inner dandelion child has transformed into a pretty robust grown -up. I learned to accept my father and his inability to be or act how I wanted. I chose to let go and show up. 

Dori Fern (13:32.962)
Dependent though it was on him honoring certain boundaries, I was not willing to let him cross. Each visit I brought him homemade food which he loved, even though he sometimes freaked out over something stupid. Instead of yelling back like I used to when I was younger, I would patiently point out other options available to him besides anger. My fondest childhood memory was of 

Dori Fern (14:02.496)
six or seven year old me laying my head on my father's shoulder at bedtime as he read me, The Wizard of Oz. And a few days before he died, I read the book which explores how the way we see reality shapes what we believe is possible back to him. 

Dori Fern (14:23.562)
He was unresponsive by then, but I know he felt it. 

Dori Fern (14:28.898)
When do you feel powerful? 

Jennie Baird
I don't even know what that means. I feel, maybe I feel powerful all the time. mean, I don't feel not powerful at all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like when I think about that, what does it mean to be powerful? Is being powerful having power over somebody or is being powerful just a sense of like, I belong? And I guess I have just always felt you know, to a certain degree, like I belong and never really cared too much what other people think about me. 

Dori Fern (14:58.038)
So what I'm hearing in what you're saying is that leadership for you, it's confidence, leadership, power, purpose, all of those things come from internal sources. And that ultimately 

Dori Fern (15:22.584)
And this is a very coachy thing. This has very much been kind of my journey is really trying to wanting to step into that because I don't think I have, I don't think I have that. I have that in some ways, but not in it. Yeah. 

Jennie Baird
I think there's many people. think there's two kinds of people in the world. Can we say that? 

Dori Fern
You can say whatever you want. It's my podcast. And I say, you can say that. And I always feel like it's a recipe for unhappiness to be a person. 

Jennie Baird (15:52.366)
yourself to other people. But I believe it's intrinsic. I think this is like a born -in thing that some people are just people who look externally for validation. They need a good grade, they need a status car, you know, but they're looking for people to respect them based on, you know, sort of external judgment. 


Dori Fern (16:21.086)
I sort of agree with what you're saying because I think that most things we're born with, I do believe in nature, eclipsing nurture, but you know, nature can influence nurture and so my memories of growing up are having a very, very critical father who always His view of me was absolute. know, however I looked, however I was, I was smart, I wasn't this, I was, know. And so I know that I internalized that to some extent. And I think that's a big part of it. When I think about you, when I think about my friend Amy, who I've also said has been a really deeply influential person to me as a mentor and role model. One thing I remember that she said, and she had a challenging relationship with her father, as did I, but she also told me that her dad always just told her she was going to be great. Like she could do anything. She could do everything. And I didn't not hear that ish, but it was always through the lens of, it always sounded like I was being chastised, even when that was said. Interesting. 

Jennie Baird (17:38.462)
I would say I have a challenging relationship with my father just because my father grew up with nothing and I grew up with so much. I was not in like a wealthy family, but I did have so much compared to my father. And I think there was a lot of sense from my father that I was an underachiever and that if he had everything that I had, he would have been doing so much more with it. And I think that there was always very low expectations on me. 

Jennie Baird (18:06.446)
But also I never had that thing that I cared that much about what people were judging me or what they said about me. 


Dori Fern
After 10 years as a stay at home mom, newly separated and in very urgent need of a job, Jennie Baird hired me to develop all the content soup to nuts for a branded contest at AOL called Chief Everything Officer, Women Who Do It All and Do It Well. It was sponsored by Dove, a precursor to their very popular Real Women campaign. And in seeing in me what I couldn't yet see in myself, Jenny gave me the job that launched my career. 


Dori Fern
The other way in which this dandelion motif reminds me of you is the thing that I talked about in the podcast where I talked about you not with you. I talked about how you were. 

Dori Fern (19:03.662)
my mind a mentor and I was thinking about it and in fact you were you were a role model probably more than what people think about with mentors in the sense of we didn't have any sort of formal relationship around that. Interestingly I never worked for you though you did hire me and you hired me like it was so illogical that you hired me. You're looking quizzical but you know I was a 39 year old 
stay -at -home mom and part -time freelance writer. And this was a pretty big deal branded contest that had a lot of kind of heat on it, as I recall. But it took some balls to hire someone like that. You just were so unflappable, and I was so stressed out every minute of that job. The pace of it was so fast, and that what I remember about you, is how you would just get up and go every afternoon. I said it was 5 p It was 4 p You corrected me because at the time you were a single mom, yourself going through a difficult divorce and you had to go home to your kids. And I said to you, how do you just leave here? And you seemed so calm. And your response to me was, 

Dori Fern (20:25.494)
It isn't brain surgery, like no one's going to die. 

Jennie Baird
I still feel that way. 

Dori Fern
You still feel that way. 

Jennie Baird
And so that's also a resilience there, that being sort of un... It's like nobody's going to die if they don't get their content right now. Right, right, right. Actually, that period at AOL was really rich period for invention. So I think that Chief Everything Officer Awards was the beginning of content. Maybe other people were doing it, but it was pretty revolutionary at the moment. So why would I have hired you is one, you were a Chief Everything Officer. So I felt like you would understand the audience. And also, you were a newly single mom. And I think I appreciated how hard it is to be a newly single mom and how hard it must be to reenter the workforce. 

Jennie Baird (21:23.702)
and you were qualified, you seemed like a grownup, I felt like you could do this. It wasn't like there was somebody else who had experience doing branded content or somebody else who had experience doing this exact thing. And I really believe like most things that we do, it's like somebody asked me in another interview, you know, what I look for when I interview people. And I always say, you know, I look for these five words, I'm listening for these five words, I just figured it out. 

Dori Fern (21:52.414)
my goodness. like people that just figure it out because I think there's a lot of things in the world that have not been solved. think when you're in a creative field, if you're in technology and innovation, you're inventing all the time. And so probably the most valuable skill is somebody who has just figured it out. 

How do you deal with conflict? 

Jennie Baird (22:20.216)
Well, I am very like fine with conflict. So I'm very direct. That I do know about you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that maybe I am a purveyor of conflict because if I'm not happy with something, I will vocalize my unhappiness or let my unhappiness show. And maybe that creates conflict where other people might just sweep things under the rug. Whereas I sort of like to deal with things directly? 

Dori Fern (22:49.974)

There's different ways that that can go. So I'm generally a straightforward person, although I funny enough, and I don't know that people would think this about me, but for the hothead I can be, I also don't really like conflict. And I think that part of that is that I don't always feel like it's worth getting involved in the conversation. 

Dori Fern (23:18.146)
So there's direct and there's mean, and there's direct and there's, let's have a conversation about this. Because if you're going to be direct sometimes, and a lot of times people who are direct and honest in their own conception of things, then walk away for the other person not to have kind of an equal voice in the conversation. How do you have difficult conversations or? 

Dori Fern (23:48.034)
when you are direct, what happens next? I think that what you just said is very astute because when you are the person who expresses themselves, sometimes the person who's on the receiving end is just shocked and they feel very hurt and they retreat rather than engaging. And I think I've probably been in that situation many times with people that I care about. And so that's something I'm going to think about. 

Dori Fern (24:19.468)
I remember you, when we were at AOL, you just being like, I don't cook. over the years that I knew you, that was an area that I always got the sense was a source of stress for you. When we met and I was at AOL, I did not cook. My nanny cooked dinner for my kids and I would usually just have like a yogurt or something, you know, like it just didn't matter to me that much. 

Dori Fern (24:48.672)
When I remarried and was suddenly the mother to a family with five and sometimes six kids, because we had a Fresh Air Fund kid who lived with us, kind of that situation didn't work. you know, like we couldn't have takeout food for seven people, it was too expensive. And so I tried very hard to cook for this new blended family. And I remember like roasting a chicken and 

Dori Fern (25:17.358)
one of my step sons saying, what is this? This is disgusting. And it was very hard for me because like I was really trying to like have family meal time and I was really trying to like do something for my family of value. And I love food. I love to eat food. You know, this was like a very big stress point and you actually helped me an enormous amount because I remember you came out. 

Dori Fern (25:46.786)
to my house, I don't know if you remember this, you came out to my house and I told you about this struggle I was having and you gave me some cooking tips in general of like, you know, things I could do, but you also said, just make one meal and if they don't want it, they can make themselves a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And I did that and it was fine. And when I was freelancing, Grace Parisi, great, 

Dori Fern (26:16.556)
recipes editor at Food and Wine. gave me some tips and between your tips and her tips, I'm like a very good cook now. It's something I enjoy. Yes, I have had your very delicious food. Yes. Yeah, I enjoy it's something I feel that brings people together. It's something my family enjoys. I now grow a ton of food because I'm a serious gardener. It's an empowerment you gave me because I think having that 

Dori Fern (26:45.838)
Capability and maybe this goes back to your question about when do you feel powerful? guess you feel powerful when you feel competent and capable and It's one of the things I learned as a parent. I can figure it out. can figure it out I it's so I hadn't even thought of that but one of the things I learned In parenting and especially the time strip struggles after my stepson died 

Dori Fern (27:14.508)
You you want to fix everything for your kids. And I think especially when you're a competent and capable person, you want to step in and solve their problems. And really what your job as a parent is, is to make them feel that sense of confidence and capability that they can go forth into the world and they can do it themselves. 

Dori Fern (27:47.212)
My last question for you. Well, there's two questions I have for you. So one, what does community look like to you? It can be as expansive or as small as comes to mind. I guess the first thing that came to mind is the idea of sangha. So, you know, I'm practicing Buddhist and I practice yoga. And so like I have the community of those practices of people who I see. 

Dori Fern (28:16.224)
in every week or sometimes a couple of times a week. That's just, you know, it's just nice to see them. It's just like, like there's nothing, there's not a sort of value exchange there. My last question for you. So I recently heard it said that when we die, the one thing that everyone leaves behind is their stories. What story would you like? 

Dori Fern (28:46.252)
other people to tell about you. 

Dori Fern (28:50.102)
You ask really hard questions. Maybe that I left things better than I found them. I'm not sure. don't think too much. You know, like a lot of these things that it's interesting listening to your questions and the direction of this podcast is I'm feeling like maybe I'm not the most introspective. 

Dori Fern (29:17.144)
person who hasn't spent a lot of time pondering some of these sort of deep meaning of life or reassessing things that have happened in the past and asking myself why and how could I do it differently? But I don't think I've thought about legacy at all. you in doing that and answering it just like you have. 

Dori Fern (29:45.174)
you've answered that question. So one, that you left it better than you came, fine. But also that you don't think about it seems very on brand for me about you and living your life and not necessarily pondering it. That's the Jenny Barrett I love and I know. And you've given me so much in this conversation to think about. And it was actually exactly what I had hoped it would be. 

Dori Fern (30:13.358)
and more. So I hope that you don't feel like you have been anything less than that. I love you just the way you are. And I am grateful for you for all the things you have been in my life. So thank you for being here. And thank you for your friendship. Thank you for our great conversation. And thank you for your friendship. This episode is dedicated to the fathers who left my friends, my family and me forever changed in 2024. 

Dori Fern (30:43.054)
Benjamin Cairns, December 29th, 1941 to February 7th, 2024. Jean -Pierre Muelle, August 4th, 1954 to July 29th, 2024. Leverett Hope, who went by Lev, December 23rd, 1930 to August 20th, 2024. My father, Eli Fern, February 19th, 1939. 

Dori Fern (31:12.206)
the same year The Wizard of Oz was released as a movie, to August 4th, 2024, and my dear Uncle Jerry, who will always be UJ to me and my brother Brian, February 16th, 1934, to August 14th, 2024. 

Dori Fern (31:42.136)
Life Changing with Dory Fern is produced and edited by Lev's daughter Anne Pope. Music is cool jazzy bass and vibraphone and orange blues by M33 Project and it is Raining Outside the Library by LaFaina. If you liked this episode and I hope you did, please give it five stars and maybe a nice review on Apple, Spotify or yes, it is now on YouTube. 

Dori Fern (32:10.73)
It helps other people find this podcast, which would be a wonderful thing. I will be back in a couple of weeks with another life -changing conversation. Thank you so much for listening.