Ep 51. The Little House of Brave: Leaning Into Pain and Loving Deeply | A Summer Slow-Down Pick

[00:01:37] As deep reminders of what really matters and how we can build a business in a sustainable way. These interviews are some of my favorite from social impact founders around the world that I admire most, and the neuroscience backs up what they are going to tell you when we pause and reflect on our why. When we connect to other humans with love and intentionality, we actually activate parts of our brain responsible for problem solving, innovation and strategic thinking. So my reminder to you this summer is this, if you want more sales, lean into meaning. If you want more growth, lean into purpose. And if you want faster problem solving, lean into relationships and personal connection. This week’s episode in our summer series will help you do just that. Let’s dive in.

[00:02:36] /Today’s episode is really gonna set the stage for our conversations around love, money, and leadership, because we are welcoming Meredith Toing on the podcast today. She is serving as the director of Morningstar Foundation. Morningstar Foundation takes in orphans with severe heart defects and loves them, cares for them, and helps them get the surgeries they need so that they can be able to be put back up for adoption and live with forever loving families. Meredith is also very entrepreneurial, so she started a new project at the Morningstar Foundation called The Love Project, where she’s working to really eradicate the orphan crisis by focusing more on the root cause of the problem and trying to keep families together. We’re gonna talk all about that project with Meredith in just a little bit. Honestly, this conversation, with Meredith is probably one of the most inspirational conversations I have ever really had with someone to date. I don’t say that lightly. Meredith is just full of grace. She has such a peaceful, calm presence about her, but she’s so wise and her advice just really touched me. So I know that you are gonna get so much out of this conversation today with Meredith. It doesn’t matter if you have a for-profit or a nonprofit or maybe even a hybrid model. Meredith has so much to share with you today and I’m so excited for you to get to know her and all that she’s up to in Beijing, China. Now let’s listen to my conversation with Meredith.

[00:04:06] Hi Meredith. I am so excited to chat with you today. Thanks so much for coming on the podcast.

[00:04:12] Yeah, of course. It’s so nice to get to talk to you and to get to connect with all of you guys.

[00:04:17] I have just so much I want to talk to you about and ask you. Let’s just start off, I guess, by having you share just a little bit about who you are and what you do.

[00:04:29] Okay. I am Meredith Toing and I live in Beijing, China. I’ve been here for almost four years now. It’ll be four years next month, which is really hard to believe. But I run, I’m the international Director for Morningstar Foundation, which is an organization that cares for children and at-risk families that have kids born with complex medical issues, usually heart defects. What I specifically do is I have a foster home here in Beijing and I have a bunch of sweet little babies that I’ll have really serious heart problems and I just love them and take care of them here in our home until they’re eventually adopted by families of their own.

[00:05:11] That is so amazing. So I forgot to mention before Meredith, that, I’ve been to Beijing and been to China. So I have a little fondness for where you are. My sister and my brother-in-law lived there for, gosh, I don’t know how long, doing ministry. I have a newly adopted niece from China who we got to welcome home this summer. So I am just really in love with where you are and gosh, I can’t, yeah, I just wanna kind of nerd out on China with you a little bit.

[00:05:39] Sorry. Where is your niece from?

[00:05:42] She’s from around Beijing. I believe the city’s called Leeway maybe. It’s on the coast, like maybe an hour or two from Beijing.

[00:05:52] That’s so how is she doing?

[00:05:55] She’s, she’s doing amazing. She is just so full of life and joy and she’s like attached so quickly. She gets jealous of anyone who talks to her mom or if, like her mom picks up any of her other children. She’s just doing really good.

[00:06:13] Oh good. That makes me so happy to hear.

[00:06:16] So you also have a sister from China, is that right?

[00:06:21] I do. I actually have two sisters from China. One of them is 12 now. Then the younger one, who you’re probably, who you probably already knew about is eight. Brooke, the younger one is a hundred percent the reason that I’m here in China, ’cause I was over here on a summer internship during college and I met her at the special needs foster home that I was interning at and fell in love with her and convinced my parents to come back and adopt her. But Brooke has a very serious heart defect. So it was kind of through Brook’s heart story and heart journey that opened my eyes to all of these kids with heart defects that needed someone to just be their advocate and their medical director or person to just make sure that they got the care that they needed. I had never really thought anything about the medical world before Brooke, but her little broken heart broke mind, so I’m here.

[00:07:16] That’s amazing. So, how did that happen though? Because I mean, for my niece, I know that you can’t just select who you want to adopt, right? You have to like, go through a process. How did that happen where you like worked with Brooke and then you ended up having her be a part of your family?

[00:07:37] Yeah, it was totally wild and honestly only God because that’s pretty much exactly how it works. There are ways to try to find a specific file if you know, like the right details about a child, but it’s really difficult to locate like that specific file to be able to adopt that child. So I had worked with her for weeks and weeks and weeks all summer, had totally fallen in love with her. She had finally gotten to the point where she trusted me and loved me too. Then I had to leave her at the end of the summer and I was just heartbroken. So I moved back to Sanford, to my school and I was starting my junior year of college and I was telling everyone about her. I mean, my parents knew about her, my friends, everyone was like, yeah, there’s this baby named Brooke. Meredith was obsessed with her in China. But I had emailed my dad about her and just said look at her, she’s so sweet. I just wish there was some way that we could adopt her. My dad said, well tell ’em we want her. We’ll start the process. I was like, well dad, there’s like, you can’t do that. That’s not how China works. There’s no way we actually could, but wouldn’t it be amazing? He was like, yeah, well I think that we’re gonna call the adoption agency and just start paperwork just in case there’s ever a chance that we could adopt her. I was like, ha ha. Okay. So I’m sitting in the Sanford Food Court telling one of my friends about this baby named Brooke that I had fallen in love with and as I am like sitting there pulling out my computer to show her pictures, there’s this online advocacy site called Rainbow Kids, which advocates for kids who have recently had files prepared and need to find a family. And I had no idea at all. I got an email saying that a new little girl named Caroline, they give them advocacy names, but this girl named Caroline had been added to the list. I scrolled down and it was a picture of Brooke and I just started freaking out , you can’t understand. I’m trying to explain to my friend what a big deal this is. I was like, but it’s her file. It’s like, it’s my baby. She’s here. It’s her paperwork. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, but I just have to call my dad. Wow. so I, with my parents and on the phone with the adoption agency, and so long story short, they were able to lock her file that day. Six months later, Brooke came home. So it really was just a total, like her file ended up in my email inbox and there was no other way except that God made sure that it landed there.

[00:10:07] Yeah. That’s incredible. Yeah. No other explanation besides that. Things like that just don’t happen by chance. That’s so cool. Yeah. Do your family and Brooke and all of your siblings get to come visit you in China at all?

[00:10:22] So a couple years ago my parents sent the two little girls over to China alone. Which was really fun, but it was also insane ’cause they were, I think six and nine at the time. They were really little. But they came and spent almost a month with me. Then this summer my parents and the two little girls came back again ’cause they were doing a homeland tour for the girls. I only saw them for two or three days of the trip. But then they went onward through China to go visit both of their orphanages and to meet their nannies again and to see where they came from.

[00:10:57] That’s amazing. I’m sure that was so impactful in their lives too.

[00:11:01] It was really special for them. Really, really special for them.

[00:11:06] So I’m curious because I spent a little bit of time in China. I studied abroad there and just went to visit my sisters and stuff, and it was always so random when people would ask me what my favorite thing about the country was. So what’s your favorite part about living there?

[00:11:24] Oh man. I really get so much joy from just the complete, I mean, I love China with all my heart, so. I’m not making fun of it, I promise. Just people just don’t care about things here the way that we maybe would in the States. For example, they will wear clothing that has eight different patterns in all the different colors, and it’s totally fine to go to the store in your pajamas if you want to because it’s weird or like it’s totally fine to put the weird clip thing in your hair. There are just lots of weird things here and no one looks at you and is like, oh wow, you really don’t match. I also really love how communal China is, and you probably saw it when you were here, but at night there, every neighborhood or apartment complex has one big common square or playground or parking lot or something. But they all just, it’s like flies to a light or bugs to a light at night because they all just like congregate in this square and they’ll be dancing or they’ll be playing, or they’ll be riding their little like light up motorized cart bike things around. It’s so different from when you go back to the states and everyone is just kind of in their own home and doors are closed and you all just sit. You’re home at night. Whereas here, it’s like everyone from the apartment complex comes down and is all hanging out in this square together.

[00:12:52] Yeah. I, you know, I totally forgot about that. But you’re right, like the old people just go out in the square and they like dance and they do Tai Chi. Always music playing.

[00:13:03] I know. I was like, I hope the music is not gonna be too loud and that you can actually hear me. They’re out there with the boombox and they’re all doing their tai chi and yoga. They’re funny.

[00:13:15] I totally forgot about that. I’m glad you reminded me of that. I used to tell everyone something way more, I don’t know, shallow. I used to tell them that the green beans were my favorite part about China. Let’s talk about your baby’s Meredith. ’cause I am just, gosh, so excited about the work you’re doing. I love that you call them on your Instagram, your little house of brave. I think that’s just so profound.

[00:13:43] They’re the bravest babies. A couple years ago when I moved in, I was like, our house needs a name. We need to name the house. I love names and choosing names. I was like, it’s a brave house. It’s our little house of brave. It fits us and I feel like they embody it and live it well. So yeah, it’s who we are. I love it.

[00:14:00] Take me inside your little house of brave. If I were to walk in, what would I see?

[00:14:07] Well, you would hear it before you even walked in because it’s loud. But it is a very normal looking home. It’s not an orphanage, it’s not an institution, it’s not a school. It is very much a two story residential home, which is probably my favorite thing about it because these kids learn what it’s like to live in a home and learn what it’s like to be part of a family. Usually they’re coming to us from orphanages with 600, 700, 800 kids and then they come and live in our little house and have their own bedroom with one other baby and their nanny. It just is the home for them. That is a hundred percent hands down my favorite thing about who we are and where we are and what we get to do. But you would come in and we typically keep between 10 to 12 babies at any given time in the home. So it is smaller and that’s very intentional just because I am crazy about attachment and I want them to feel like they are valued and seen and known really intimately. That we do have like a small little family community here in Beijing. But our downstairs area is pretty much all communal play area. We have our playroom and we have a medical room. We have our kitchen, we have my office and all of that. Then upstairs, we have four bedrooms and in each of the bedrooms we have two or three babies. We have one nanny for every two babies. So we try to keep really intentional. That one nanny, I mean we have two sets of nannies. Each child has two nannies that kind of rotate in and out with them, but those nannies follow them for their entire time that they’re here with us. So when I have a little baby girl right now who’s in the hospital for surgery, and so since Aven isn’t there at the home, Ava’s ie is there at the hospital with her, so they always have like their consistent person who’s there with them so that they associate: yes, I live in this big home with all these babies and all of these like potential mamas, but I know that I have my one mama who always looks out for me and takes care of me and meets my needs because then when they’re adopted by a family of their own, that bond is able to transition to their forever mama. ‘Cause they’ve learned in their head like, oh, there’s not 12 mamas. There’s my one mama who takes care of me and who meets my needs.

[00:16:35] Yeah. I think that’s so great because I didn’t really know this until my sister was adopting recently, about how important attachment is and how just them learning to, to love is so important. Because a lot of orphanages, they don’t get that. Right?

[00:16:54] Right. Not at all. A lot of times they just haven’t attached to anyone at all. So they don’t even know how to receive love or to let themselves be loved. Or in other circumstances they’ve had indiscriminate attachment or indiscriminate affection where they’ve attached to so many people that they don’t know, like how to only attach to their family. They don’t know how to distinguish only these four people are my family because for my entire life, I’ve had person after person after person come in and out. So they no longer know to trust like, oh, this person is my person forever. If that makes sense.

[00:17:31] . It’s just, gosh, something I didn’t even think about when I first, you know, was learning about Morningstar and then the more I was just looking into you, I just was just so taken back by, of course you’re doing all these amazing things for them to get their hearts repaired and healed and working with trying to get families to not have to give up their kids, but that simple act of teaching them how to love is like the most impactful thing you can do. Gosh, thank you for just doing that simple thing.

[00:18:07] No, it’s been honestly just the most beautiful thing for me. Because it’s the most important thing in the entire world because we can heal their physical hearts by doing heart surgery or by making sure they take their meds, that if their emotional hearts are damaged or in a place where they don’t know how to be loved or how to loved, then that’s something that honestly takes so much longer to heal and is so much harder to fix. So for me to get to be part of that other side of healing on the emotional side and to make sure that these children know that they’re cherished and that they belong and that they’re named and that their lives have worth and meaning, that to me is so critical and so important, and I just feel so lucky that I get to be part of that at all.

[00:18:57] Yeah. I mean you and what you’re, are they called IE. The nannies, what you guys are doing is like such a self-sacrificial gift and just you’ve impacted so many families around the world to have these kids and their families now. I hope, you know, that I think that it’s probably hard, cause in order to get a child to attach, you have to attach to them. So then you have to let go of them after you’ve had them for a while. I’m sure that can be tough, right?

[00:19:30] It’s crazy hard and I tell my, I what you just said to me all the time, I tell them how important their work is and how much it matters what they’re doing. It is a huge sacrifice. It’s asking them to give up pieces of their own heart because you literally are sending these babies away with your own heart when they get adopted and you’re so happy for them. But I always tell my IE and I feel it myself, that we see the other side of adoption that the people who are so excited about the adoption don’t always see, because we’re the ones who feel that loss. We’re the ones who have that hole in our hearts from the baby that has been ours for sometimes years and years in our home. Then you hand them off and in a moment, they’re no longer yours and they now belong to someone else. It’s crazy hard and it’s so worth it. It takes pieces of your heart with them when they go. I just think my IE’s are the bravest women in the world. ’cause they do this over and over and over again for baby after baby. It does, it means, it means the world.

[00:20:32] I was watching a video that Esther Havens, the girl who introduced us, sent to me when she first put you on my radar. It was by the journalists at Bitter Sweet. I was sobbing. Just bawling by the end of the video. But for everyone who will listen to this conversation, they’ll probably be thinking it was because these poor babies, who need homes and who need heart surgery and they’ve got these scars on their chest and that’s the reason why I was crying. But it actually wasn’t. I mean, of course there’s that need and that reality and, the video made me very passionate about the cause that you’re working for. But I was just touched by this act of loving and letting go that the nannies are doing ’cause they’re really heroes in the work that you guys do.

[00:21:27] They absolutely are. They’re a hundred percent the hero of the story. That’s kind of what I when I was talking with the team at Bittersweet, when they came over, they asked what story do you want to be shared? We know there’s so many facets that, of things that happen here and things that go on in your home. We could make a whole documentary that would tell all the different stories, but what’s one thing that you really want people to see? I desperately want people to see just how loved these babies are because of the love of the IIes and just these brave women who truly give up their whole lives to love these children. So I love that that’s what you saw and that’s what touched you because that is, that’s my whole heart. I’m so proud of them. I really am so proud of these women ’cause I think they’re the bravest.

[00:22:13] Yeah, they are. We need to talk more about this because when we put together your piece, I would love to showcase like all the different facets of brave like you and of course the babies and the IE’s, I think that all three of you guys need to be highlighted and people to be cheering you guys on. Cause every single one of you has a different part of the journey and each one is beautiful and unique and important. The other kind of unknown part of this, which I think is really interesting is your journey of how you’ve learned about the different facets of the orphan crisis. What have you learned and seen since you got there about how you can help this issue?

[00:23:04] Totally. I think that everyone in the world knows that there are orphans and I think that everyone knows that there is an orphan crisis. I think that everyone, even if you personally have not adopted, most people know someone who has adopted. So I think that that is a very common held known oh, there are orphans, we should adopt them. That honestly was sort of where I was when I moved here, was that every family should have started adopting kids because that’s the only way that we’re gonna solve the orphan crisis. Since I’ve come here, my theology on it, I guess, if you wanna use that word, but my theology orphan care has completely changed. Because yes, I still believe that adoption is important. Yes, I believe that it’s needed and meaningful, but I don’t think that adoption will ever solve the orphan crisis. I think that orphan prevention is the only way that you’re truly going to make a dent in the orphan crisis or in this epidemic of kids without families. Because what I’ve seen here in China is that, and in around the world, Morningstar is also in Uganda, but most families, most kids who are orphaned still have living parents. They still have living families. In China, most of the kids who are orphaned are abandoned children with medical needs because what we can presume is that their families didn’t have the funding to be able to pay for their surgery or their medical care or whatever it is that they may need. My thinking has so shifted because I interact with these families day after day after day who have kids born needing complex open heart surgery or cleft lip cleft palate repair, or transfusions. If they have thalassemia and they need transfusions every three weeks. In America or wherever we live in the world, we usually have some sort of healthcare system where we know that there’s a safety net. Even though insurance isn’t perfect in America and there are lots of struggles that people deal with, there still is a safety net. We still have programs in place where that people can get the care that they need for their children. Even children who end up in US foster care, they are assured that they will have some sort of baseline medical healthcare, which is not the case at all in China. There are so many families here who are uninsured. There are so many families who are so poor and could never afford a heart surgery for their child or could never afford what it would cost to pay for a blood transfusion. So these families know that there are orphanages and they know that there are systems in place where the child will be able to get medical care. They’re literally forced to choose to abandon their child because they know that that’s the only way to save their life. As I was starting to get these babies coming into my home, all with very complex heart disease, they would have notes with them. The orphanage would send them to us and they would say, this child was left with a note. They’re six months old. The note says, we’ve spent all of our money, we have nothing else to give. We’re so concerned about our baby. They’re going to die. Someone, please help our child to live. It’s just the most gut wrenching, heartbreaking realization to know that a family chose to give up their child because that was the only way that they could think of to save their life. That should not be the case. That just if there is anything that we can do to get to the root of the orphan crisis, to prevent these families from ever feeling like their child has to become an orphan in order to live and survive and thrive. If there’s anything that we can do on that root level to say, no, you don’t have to abandon your child. No, we will stand with you. We believe that you should remain as a family and we wanna help you be a family. I think that, that is the best way that we can be able to enact change and to prevent orphans from becoming orphans in the first place. That was a really long explanation for why we now have our love project, which basically partners with Chinese families and Ugandan families whose children are born with complex medical needs, but they just don’t have the funding to pay for it. Because I think that every child deserves to remain in a family and that if there’s anything that we can do to make sure that that is the case, then I want to be involved on that level and in that way. So we have our foster home, but also have the love project, which helps prevent children from becoming orphans in the first place.

[00:27:44] Yeah. You explained that so well because I totally agree. I have a fit new family member who’s adopted and I’ve seen just, God work in that and it’s such a beautiful thing. Just having her come into our family and for her to be loved. So I do think adoption is so important. But she was left with a note saying that they hoped that she could get the medical care she needed, exactly like you said. It’s really just a close thing to my heart, which you just explained. I think it’s so cool that you’re not just loving on the babies, but you’re loving on the families who really, really want to fight to keep their babies with them.

[00:28:23] It’s just a really beautiful way that we’ve been able to be involved and even just seeing the Chinese families that we work with and hearing from them where they say, we had no idea that American families or that foreigners would wanna help us as the family. We thought that they would only want to adopt our children, or that we thought that they would only want to help our children in the orphanages. We didn’t know that they would wanna help us too. So just to get, to help change that line of thought for them. That no, we want you to be a family. We desperately wish that all of these kids in orphanages could still be with their families. We’re willing to do whatever it takes to make sure that can happen for as many kids as possible. It’s just, it’s really beautiful to get to tell these families how worthy they are and that it’s not just that their child’s life has value, but that them as a family have value.

[00:29:19] Right. Yeah, because how much does it cost, like for an open heart surgery?

[00:29:25] It differs depending on the severity, but you can pretty much count on it being at least 10,000 US dollars in cash. You have to have that upfront before they will even operate on your child. I wouldn’t have 10,000 US dollars. Well, I mean, some people do, but very few people have that kind of money in cash to be able to just bring to a hospital to say, okay, here you go. Here’s our down payment for the heart surgery. Then it can go far upwards from that depending on how complex the surgery is, whether or not they have to use any kind of life support. If they have to stay in ICU for months and months, that can all factor into the cost. When you have these poor, poor, poor farming families here who come from rural China and they do everything they can to get themselves to Beijing or to Shanghai, to these big medical centers that can actually help their baby or do surgery for their baby, these people are making, I mean, pennies on the dollar. There’s no way they could ever afford a $10,000 heart surgery. So to them that seems astronomical and the doctors will tell them like, okay then you just have to take your baby home to die, essentially. When they’re faced with the choice between taking my child home to die or leaving my child outside the hospital with a note and hoping that someone somewhere someday, will be able to provide for this baby. I would absolutely make the same choice that they do. But it’s a heartbreaking one. I cannot imagine being in their shoes.

[00:31:01] It’s such a tough thing. I’m just in awe of the fact that you guys are working on all these different fronts. Doing the profound just act of loving these kids and helping them get this surgery that they need, but also working at this deep root part of it. How did you get the love project up and running? How did you figure out how you could find these parents, like in this moment of crisis, emergency? It can happen fast, right? Like where they come to the hospitals.

[00:31:33] That is the hardest thing is how do you identify these families? How do you get to them before they make the choice that they have to abandon? Our biggest inroad has honestly been through the hospitals and we have outreach programs and lots of hospitals here in China. Obviously in Beijing we have our best relationships ’cause those are the ones that we’re working with pretty much on a daily basis with all of the kids that we’re bringing in and out. We basically just sit down and have meetings with all of the surgeons and all of the doctors who are the ones treating these families. We tell them, we trust them to kind of let us know if they think that there’s a family that’s struggling or a family that’s in need. Or, we tell them: Hey, if there’s a family that comes to you and doesn’t have the money to pay, please tell them that we are an option. Please give them our name, please give them our information, please let them know that we’re an option for them. So that is where most of our referrals for the Love project come through, is just from the doctors calling us, saying: Hey, there’s this family here. They’ve been denying treatment, denying treatment, denying treatment. They don’t have the funds to pay for it. We really think that they’re at risk. So that’s probably the biggest way that we identify families. Word of mouth is also a way that things spread where someone will hear of us or have worked with us, and then they’ll go home to their village and they’ll talk to their village and someone else is oh, well we have a baby with such and such, or we know this other person who has a baby with such and such and they can’t afford the surgery. We’re able to make connections that way. Then finally, I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Dropbox movie, where these orphanages sometimes have a safe room outside the gates of the orphanage where parents can come and basically it’s an empty crib and an incubator, and literally just a safe room outside the orphanage where parents can come in to leave their baby. Inside these drop boxes or safe houses, we’ve called them, orphanages that have allowed us to, we’ve put up a poster that says you have options. Here is our information. We would love to help you. We would love to partner with you. Please know that you don’t have to make this decision. Then families can call us and contact us through that. That’s our threefold way that families come into the program. But it’s predominantly through the hospitals where the surgeons or the doctors will call us and let us know about a family.

[00:34:03] Yeah. How has it been working with the doctors? Being from the United States and working to start this new project? I’m curious to know how it works with them. Cause I’m sure there’s some cases where we don’t know if this baby’s gonna make it through surgery?

[00:34:19] Yeah. When you asked me my favorite part about China, I didn’t know if I could say this specifically, but hands down a hundred percent, my favorite part is the way that I’m able to be involved in medical care here in ways that maybe you wouldn’t be allowed to be in the states if you’re not actually a medical person. Just because records are much more open here, like HIPAA is not a thing. Privacy laws and issues are really not so much a thing. I just get tons of information about tons of kids and they’re not necessarily kids in my program, but I just get to know about them and get to follow their hearts and follow their stories. I love that. I love being able to be involved with that. But my doctors , we have such a fun relationship and they really do love me. I know that they really do. They will joke about me a lot is that I’m the hope girl. They’re always like, oh, Meredith is the hope girl. She’s just the hope girl. Because they know that I will never, ever, ever turn down a surgery. No way. It doesn’t matter how expensive it will be. It doesn’t matter how risky it is. But if it’s on the line of if we don’t do the surgery, they will die, but maybe even if we do the surgery, they will die. I will always a hundred percent say, do the surgery, and they know that about me. That’s a little bit counter-cultural to China. I’m so blessed to have the surgical team that we have because China is very results based and results driven, and so they want to have a perfect operating record and they want to have a perfect mortality rate. They want to have very, very good rankings and ratings. So many times surgeons in China will actually turn down surgical cases if they don’t think the child will survive because they don’t want to have a death on their record or they don’t want to have a poor outcome, if that makes sense. Because then that reflects poorly on them as a hospital and as a surgeon, which, I think is a little bit skewed. But that is the way things are here. But my surgeons know that I will push them to do the surgery no matter what. Obviously I care if the baby dies and it’s devastating and heartbreaking, but I don’t care if they can’t guarantee me. If that makes sense. If we spend $30,000 and that baby dies, that $30,000 was literal hope. Hope costs and hope is worth the risk and it’s always worth the cost. Every life is worth a chance, no matter how poor the prognosis looks, no matter how risky the surgery may be, no matter how much everyone is saying they’ll never survive. I think that child is still worth someone saying, you know what? They might not, but it’s worth it to try their life. Their life deserves that. It’s been a fun four years of seeing how their hearts have opened as well. And when Bittersweet came here, they got to interview my surgeon and talk to him for almost an hour. He really did. He told them that, Meredith always tells us that we must hope. We must hope. He says, for me, I think that that is the best thing to do. I think that every life has value, and I think that every child deserves the chance. And so I will always say yes. When Meredith asks me, I will always say yes. The doctors are the most beautiful people and we have really grown together and we’re a team, like we’re very much a team. They take on the really hard cases and they know that we always want that and we want the surgeries to be done no matter what the outcome may be, just because we think that every life is deserving of hope. It is interesting just ’cause Chinese medical care is so different, but they’ve really not joined my team. That sounds terrible. They’re very on board with the love project and us, and what we do and are willing to take chances with us in ways that they might not have been earlier.

[00:38:25] Yeah. I didn’t know that. I think it’s just another facet of the impact that you’re doing that maybe people wouldn’t know if they just went on your website and it was obviously focused on the babies, which it should be. But just that impact of coming together with the doctors and making a relationship and working to shift the mindset over time like that, inside the hospitals and how many people they treat every day. I mean, that’s just changing so many lives I’m sure.

[00:38:57] It’s been really amazing to get, to be part of that and to get to see how much these doctors care about the Chinese people and care about China and care about these babies. Especially for my kids who are in the baby home, the orphans, they’re loved, but they’re also, they can easily be seen as a subclass in China, if that makes sense. Where they’re not given priority or they’re not as welcomed because of their status as an orphan. My surgeons have never, ever, ever treated any of my kids as less than for being an orphan. For me to get to see that and to see how much they love them and how much they cherish them, is just, it’s so encouraging to me and it’s so beautiful to me. They follow up with them. Dr. Joe, our chief of surgery, he’ll text me constantly and be like, have you heard from Sum Sue’s mom recently? Has she said how his heart is doing. Have you heard from meme’s? Mom? Do you like, did Maime have surgery in the us? How did it go? Can you send me the records after they have their surgery? They love these kids and they know these kids. Years later they love these babies. I had a friend who came to China to visit me a couple months ago and she had adopted one of my babies last year that Dr. Joe had done surgery on. So I texted him and said: Hey, Fin’s, mom is here. Do you want, would you want to see her? He was thrilled beyond words to get to see Ellie’s mom, F’s mom, and to get to hug her and to get to ask all the questions about how Fen was doing and how was her heart and how did her surgery go. I feel like I’m so blessed and I’m so lucky to get to work with these people who clearly care so much and have such giving hearts. The Chinese surgeons do not make, I mean, in the states, you think, oh, they’re a surgeon. They’re making the big bucks. In China that is not the case. They’re not making nearly the amount of money that US doctors would be making. It’s really not something that they’re in for the money, it’s because they love their job and they love these babies and they give up so much of themselves for these kids. I feel like I am the luckiest to get to work with them and also to get to see , how their hearts have grown and how my heart has grown and how we get to work together to just do more good and help more babies and help more families.

[00:41:22] Yeah. When you were just talking, it reminds me of this Mother Teresa quote and I wanna read it to you. So she said, I’m not exactly sure what heaven will be like, but I know that when we die, God will not ask how many good things you have done in your life. Rather he will ask, how much love did you put into what you did? I just feel all the different facets of what you guys are doing with Morningstar, from the eyes to the doctors, to you working with them, to the babies, it’s just so full of love and bravery. So thank you so much, Meredith. You have been so inspiring to me. I’m sure that everyone listening is gonna just be so inspired too that whatever they’re doing, whether it’s a nonprofit or a business, that they’ll just really wanna put more love into what they’re doing.

[00:42:17] I love that. I love that quote. I think that’s so profound and so true. It’s the love that matters and it’s the love that you leave with people. That’s my hope that if we can do that in any way, even in the smallest ways here, that’s always my hope.

[00:42:32] Do you have any sort of words of advice? Maybe there’s someone who’s going to listen to this conversation who’s like, yeah, that’s awesome. I want to do something purposeful with my life. I wanna love on people. I wanna make an impact. But I don’t know what that looks like yet. Do you have any advice for how they can start searching and understanding what their life’s purpose could be? This is a hard one.

[00:43:00] I have a lot of feelings about it because I think that everyone everywhere has the impact to do so much, even just where they are. I know that Mother Theresa has another quote that says, I’m totally paraphrasing, but if you wanna make a difference in the world, go home and love your family. So I think that even just starting right there, where you are, and I think that family is defined by so much more than blood. It’s your people. It’s your neighborhood. It’s your community. Just loving the people around you well because I don’t think that you can go off into another culture and learn how to love other people who are very different than you well, in a good way until you’ve really learned how to like, be a good neighbor and be kind and to be a good kind human who likes to love people. I think just starting small where you are is really, really important. Then I always feel very strongly about people who go overseas, we are not the white saviors who come over to save a country or save a culture, but we get to partner with them and we get to work with them and we get to learn from them. I think that when you’re searching what you could do or what you could be involved in or any way that you could get involved in some sort of like NGO or some sort of development work or anything in another country, I think the most important thing to do first before you start to do anything, is to just get to know the people who are there on the ground to just immerse yourself in their culture and in their community and in who they are. To talk to people on the ground who are already doing the things that line up with what your passions may be. Because that’s where true change can happen. When you’re able to pair your passions with theirs and then create this incredible partnership. How it’s worked out with me and my surgeons is that their passions and mine have just created this amazing partnership to enable us to work really, really well together. I learned from them and they learn from me. It’s just been an amazing experience for us both. I just think it’s so important to approach everything first from a learning perspective where we don’t have all the answers and we don’t know all the things. We can always, always, always learn more. Especially when we’re entering into a new culture and a new country where there’s so much that we don’t know, I think it’s important to just have a super teachable heart and to really get to know the people who you’re there to love and work with them, if that makes sense.

[00:45:42] Yeah. I love that you said that because I think there’s so much pressure on the find your purpose kind of tagline. I love asking the people I chat with that question because I mean, there’s purpose all around us, right? We’re put where we are for a reason, we’re in our families for a reason. There’s ways to live in that purpose every day. Now that I left the United States, I have this even a bigger passion for making a difference in my family when I see them. But also now that I am in Norway, I’m sort of a fish outta water. I just need to learn and embrace it and learn the language, listen before I decide how I’m going to be impactful in my new neighborhood. Thanks so much for sharing that piece of advice.

[00:46:32] It’s what I feel like I’ve been learning over and over again and over again. This is totally for the cross-cultural, counter-cultural kind of thing, but it’s not weird or bad. It’s different. Not worse than, it’s just different. There are so many things still where I catch myself being like, Ugh, China, what in the world? Why are you so bad at this? Or why is this so awful here? I catch myself and catch my train of thought where I’m like, no, it’s not bad. It’s different. Or yes, maybe this is not how I’m used to doing things, but that doesn’t mean it’s bad. It just is different. That’s just the way it is. Just being able to realize that I’m here for such a time as this and I’m here for whatever my purpose here may be. I think that no matter where you are, you can find that purpose. Honestly just loving people. Loving people is the most impactful thing that you can ever do for that one person. Just like with my babies in the baby home. I tell my IE’s the most important thing that you can do is to just hold that baby and look in their eyes when you’re feeding them their bottle. Or to pick them up when they cry and just pat them on the back. Just letting another living, breathing soul know that you’re there for them and that they’re loved and that they’re worthy, I think is the most important thing that you can ever do. I agree. There’s so much pressure to find your purpose and to do this big thing and to start the million dollar raising NGO that does all the things, or to hit the New York Times bestseller list with a book or to change the world in such a profound way. But I think that everything starts and ends with loving the people around you really well. You can do that everywhere. You can do that everywhere you are.

[00:48:18] Yeah. Thank you so much, Meredith, for that beautiful way of saying it. Before we wrap up, how can people find you and follow your journey and cheer you on? Where can they find you?

[00:48:32] I am most active on Instagram. I do have a Facebook. I’m really bad at Facebook. On Instagram, i’m just at Meredith Torin is my name, and Torin is spelled like tow ring, exactly like it. Or you can follow along with my organizational profile, which is Morningstar Foundation or our website, is just Morningstar Foundation.

[00:48:57] I will definitely put those in the show notes for everyone so they can connect with you. I know that they’re gonna love your Instagram. I just find it so encouraging and it just keeps me rooted the last few days that I’ve just been following it and reading like all of your posts from like the last year. Thank you for sharing so vulnerably there. It’s really makes a difference even just that. Thanks so much Meredith for joining me today and just chatting more about what you’re doing and I’m sure we will talk again soon.

[00:49:31] Yes, for sure. Thank you so much for having me and it was so nice to get to talk with you.

[00:49:37] Thanks for listening to this episode of Business Brain Rewire. If you wanna learn more about my work, come visit me at do business better school.com. See you next week.

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