Episode 19: Cimorelli Sisters: The Art of Being Unafraid
Transcript
Patsy: Hi, I’m Patsy Clairmont, and I’m a Boomer.
Andrew: And I’m Andrew Greer, and I’m still the Millennial.
Patsy: And you are listening to Bridges.
Andrew: Spiritual Connections Through Generational Conversations
Patsy: Now, we’ve talked about a lot of bridges, but our next guests could fill a bridge. There are 11 siblings in this family. Do you hear me, Andrew? Eleven siblings.
Andrew: I cannot imagine.
Patsy: No, I cannot imagine what that household is like, but from the experience of that, they’ve learned a lot about communication and differences of opinion and how to advise the younger generation because these girls are still full of youth. I love that. They brought so much energy and excitement into the program, and they’ve got something to say.
Andrew: They sure do. Amid all of the hyperactivity that was our conversation between the four of us — we engaged, did we not? — two of the Cimorelli Sisters are with us here today, and they are talking through some of the topics that are part of their book Believe in You: Big Sister Stories and Advice on Living Your Best Life, where they tackle everything from family relationships to dating to faith — all the things that they said flood their direct message inbox on Instagram or social media. So their topics are inspired by real-life conversations with real people across the country, which I think is very cool.
Patsy: And I think you’re going to enjoy this. You’ll get a chuckle and a smile and feel good about family.
One of the fun things about the Cimorelli Sisters, their gain to popularity started on YouTube where they had their own channel, and people flocked in to hear them do cover songs. And we thought it would be fun, and it was, to have Andrew and his ukelele join the girls on our featured bridge, the London Bridge.
The Cimorelli Sisters and Andrew Greer singing “London Bridge”
London Bridge is falling down
Falling down, falling down
London Bridge is falling down
My fair lady
Patsy: When I was thinking about bridges for this particular podcast, I thought about “London Bridge” and that that was a song I learned as a child. What I didn’t know is that song has been around since the 1600s.
Andrew: Since you were a…
Patsy: Just a child. That’s why I’m a Boomer, honey.
Andrew: That’s terrible.
Patsy: So then the 1700s, it became popular again, and in the 1800s. What I didn’t realize is that little song that we children sing here in the United States is sung around the world by children. It is something that has gone everywhere, which reminds me of our guests today.
Andrew: That’s absolutely right — the Cimorelli Sisters. Did I not say that correctly, Katherine and Amy?
Katherine and Amy: Yes, you did. You got it.
Andrew: Thank you so much for being here. You are part of this literally — I’m not using any kind of hyperbole here — enormous group, as far as six sisters, starting out in music singing but now mentoring through your music, through your platform, huge YouTube audience. In fact, we were looking at one of your recent YouTube videos that you uploaded, like 30 minutes later it has half a million views. Thirty minutes after I release one, people still don’t care.
But your audience has grown really from, more than music, your ability to connect, to build that bridge, between your generation, or just your age or your experience, what you have experienced in life, to this kind of tween age of girls. My first question really is tween. I don’t really know what tween means. Can you start out there?
Amy: It’s like in between a kid and a teenager, so the ages of like 11 to 13.
Andrew: So you know. But your audience goes beyond…
Amy: We started 10 years ago, so our audience is a lot of different ages. We have actually started reaching the younger, younger generation than us, like the Gen Z.
Katherine: We’re both Millennials.
Andrew: So you’re young Millennials, you realize that? I’m an old Millennial.
Amy: I’m at the cusp, so I kind of don’t really identify with either.
Katherine: Yeah, because I’m born ‘92. She’s ‘95. So we’re like the end of the Millennials.
Andrew: Yeah, and see I’m the beginning.
Patsy: And I’m not talking. I’m the well-seasoned one.
Andrew: Yes, you’re the millennia. No, I’m just kidding. Fire me. Someone fire me.
Patsy: Or militia.
Katherine: You bring the wisdom and insight that we need.
Amy: And the grace.
Patsy: Oh bless you, bless you. I’m not an age person, so I forget how old I am, and I just like and am interested in all ages. So I meet a person, not an age, and when I meet the person and then I find out I’m 50 years older or 60 years older, it always surprises me. Oh, I really enjoyed their company. They bring something so sweet and special to a conversation. And that happened with us. We both love reading. We both love classics. So that was an appeal. I love his music, and that was an appeal. I love the way he plays ukulele.
“I meet a person, not an age.”
Andrew: Keep going.
Patsy: So there were a lot of things.
Andrew: We’re so glad you came.
Patsy: Yes, we’re delighted, and you are cinnamon and you are confetti. What I want to know is in a sisterly family like you have — I know you have brothers as well, but we’re going to talk about the girls for a few minutes. When you have sisters galore in the family, there’s got to be a lot of adjusting to each other’s style and way of approaching things.
I was watching all of you in your morning habitat.
Amy: Oh, our morning routine video.
Patsy: So talk about what it takes to get along in a family with lots of different personalities.
Katherine: Well, so we grew up in a family of 11 kids, so it’s us six girls and we have five brothers, and we were all homeschooled too by our mom. So we have a very unique situation, and kind of as you guys were talking about intergenerational type of stuff, that’s something that I really relate to as well. I think when you’re a homeschooler, you kind of learn to get along with people of all ages because you’re not always with people in your age group. Our youngest brother’s 14, and our oldest brother’s 30.
Amy: Fourteen to 30, which is 16 years.
Katherine: So we’ve got 16 years in our family between the kids, so it’s kind of like when there are that many kids, you kind of just have to get along because it’s such a complex machine, for lack of a better word. So everyone kind of just has to jump in.
So I think because we grew up in such a unique situation, when you have that many siblings around you, you just have to learn to adjust and be there and jump in and help out, or else, I don’t know, things just keep moving along.
Amy: Yeah. And I think it was different because we didn’t go to public school, then we weren’t just around kids of our own age most of the day. We were around a whole diverse thing of ages and backgrounds and all this stuff, so it was a very interesting way to grow up, very different than anyone I’ve ever really met.
Patsy: Did you ever feel lost in the crowd?
Amy: Oh yeah.
Katherine: Totally.
Amy: Definitely.
Katherine: And it’s funny because, especially us girls, we’re really into psychology. We love the Myers-Briggs, the Enneagram…
Patsy: Okay, so what’s your numbers, girls?
Katherine: Okay, so I’m a 2.
Amy: I am a very strong 6. I panic all day every day.
Katherine: What are you, Patsy?
Patsy: I’m a 4.
Amy: I could see that.
Katherine: I was going to say, you remind me of my sister, Lisa.
Amy: Yes. Yes, you do.
Katherine: She’s a 4. And you’ve got that fun, funky style. I can totally see Lisa just…
Patsy: She’s got to be the one with the pink or the aqua hair.
Amy: Yes, yes, yes. She’s got the flair, just like you.
Patsy: I saw that aqua hair, and I thought, I need some of that.
Katherine: You were like, I wish she was the one coming.
Andrew: But you do have to deal with a lot of different personalities, and that’s true to life. I think it is interesting. I went to public school, so I was with my grade basically all throughout school. You’re with your peers. You kind of get a shock in your adulthood, maybe college or maybe just in work life. If your parents didn’t help bring other things into play while growing up, you’re like, Whoa, there’s more people out there than me.
It’s kind of insular, isn’t it, when you’re in this peer group. So how do you think that helped shape your perspective in a way that now you’re reaching, not just tweens, but you’re reaching girls, you’re speaking into the lives of girls, in a wide range of ages. I would assume some of them are even up into their late 20s that are actual peers of the older of you guys. How did that growing up experience, not just being with this peer group but being with a wide range of ages, actually prepare for the way that you’re speaking into so many people’s lives?
Katherine: I’m the second-oldest girl, so I’m the third child in the family. And Amy’s one of the older ones too. You’re No. 5, right? So we’re three and five in the hierarchy. And I think just naturally in our family you kind of feel this, I don’t know if you’d say pressure, but maybe it is kind of pressure, kind of like your duty to be a role model.
So when we started our YouTube channel, that was 10-plus years ago, and from the very beginning, we wanted to be positive role models, especially for girls, because especially for us growing up, we didn’t really have those role models in media. So we very, very intentionally and specifically created our YouTube channel and our content all with the idea of being good role models for girls in mind.
And I think growing up in a big family, that’s just kind of part of your very natural role — you’re a role model, your siblings look up to you, they copy what you do — so you kind of feel this sort of duty to be a good example for them. So I think that’s kind of how that played into our YouTube channel and how we kind of became… We kind of see ourselves as big sisters to our subscribers. That’s really how we view our career.
Andrew: Patsy, I hear that you have a book club.
Patsy: I do. Books are what God used to help heal me, so it delights me to offer that service to others, that they could sign up, anybody. All y’alls, come on in. We want you to join in the book club, and we will read ourselves silly and sane. We’ll have different selections, one every month with a bonus. You can check it out: patsyclairmont.com. And also on that page, you’ll see that I do cheerleading for people. I coach them in helping them stir up their creativity to tell their story. But here’s what I know: You’re into a different kind of storytelling, and you’ve been set up to win awards for what you’ve done.
Andrew: I love music, and I have a new record out called Tune My Heart, and it includes some of my really close friends, some of your friends, like Sandra McCracken and Cindy Morgan and Buddy Greene. And you can find that record anywhere you stream or download, or at andrew-greer.com. You know what else, Patsy?
Patsy: What?
Andrew: I’ve got another podcast. It’s not my favorite podcast, but if you like listening to Bridges, then you might like listening to and viewing Dinner Conversations with our pal Mark Lowry and myself. You can find it on Apple Podcasts or Amazon Prime, or simply go to dinner-conversations.com.
Bridges Sponsorship Message
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Patsy: I love that you’ve opened up your lives and your hearts and your arms to receive so many and make them feel like family, and you talk about such important issues throughout the book of what girls are going through, what their struggles are, and how y’all faced it.
You hear that, y’all? That’s the Southern part.
Amy: I love a good y’all.
Patsy: I love this pink edging on the book and the pink writing. Of course, you know that gets into the 4’s territory of let’s do something artistic.
Andrew: Absolutely. The title of the book, which I love this — this goes to you talking about being a big sister — Believe in You: Big Sister Stories and Advice on Living Your Best Life.
So you talked about, as you were growing up through your tween and teen years, not necessarily feeling like there were a lot of in-media or in-public personalities, a lot of positive role models. What are some things that you did not receive from public personalities or from media growing up that you have now wanted to implement into your platform? What do you want to exemplify that you felt like was missing in your teen years?
Amy: We grew up in the mid-2000s. When we were teenagers, it was a lot of not really moral things on television. The teenager shows were getting more awkward, edgy, out there. It was kind of getting to be a thing to make fun of people who had good morals on… I’m not trying to say good or bad, but a different point of view. I guess just a different point of view. There was not space where people were accepting that.
Like the Jonas Brothers were getting so much criticism for just wearing purity rings and all of these things, and so we grew up kind of seeing that and it was really hard because we were like, Well, where’s the person standing up for what we would like to? The Jonas Brothers was honestly really inspiring to watch someone going through that and just taking it.
We really wanted to be a space to be like you can relate to somebody out there. There wasn’t that before. We wanted to be a voice for the girls that wanted a different point of view, and not saying that either point is valid or invalid, but we just really wanted to be that space where people can say, “Oh, I relate to that. That’s someone that I can emulate or I want to emulate,” because there’s a lot of people that were growing up like us. The closest thing we had was Hannah Montana, which was great, but after her, no one really came along.
Andrew: It’s not about being invalid or valid, but there are choices in our life and there are some things — I think morality helps standardize this — there are some things that are healthy and unhealthy across the board for different humans.
If you think about this book, is there one topic that you’re like, This really themes throughout all of our six sisters?
Katherine: That’s a really good question. I think the general theme of our book and our entire career, the first word that comes to mind is hope. We’re in a very interesting situation. We’re really strong in our faith, we’ve been really strong. Our family’s Catholic, and we’ve been really strong in that since we were kids. But then we were thrust into kind of this secular audience.
Our channel is not a Christian channel, even though everything we do is positive, clean, and there’s a lot of Christian stuff in there. We have a Christian album. We have Christian covers. But a lot of our fanbase is primarily secular.
So a lot of that I really think comes with hopelessness because people are trying to find something to live for outside of God. I feel like woven throughout our message is this thing of there is hope, there’s something to live for.
We do a lot of anti-suicide stuff. We have a couple of songs that are anti-suicide and just have had some crazy stories from our fans. But I feel like that’s kind of the message is there is hope, and if you dig deeper into that and you really look in our content, you can see that pointing back to Christ. And that’s really the goal of everything.
Deep down it all points back to Christ, and it’s crazy. A lot of our fans will be like, “You guys helped me find my faith again.” Or, “You guys helped me come back to church or start praying again.” I get those messages almost everyday in my Instagram. And it’s crazy because it’s not like we’re out there saying, “You should be a Christian. Christian, Christian, yay, yay.”
There’s the great quote — it used to be on the back of our youth group t-shirts — but it’s like, “Preach the gospel at all times, and if necessary, use words.” So I feel like we just want our lives to be that example but not necessarily in such an overt way that makes me people who are secular I guess turned off by it. So we’re trying to walk that fine line.
And of course, we do get made fun of by some people, but you’ve just got to be true to yourself.
“You’ve just got to be true to yourself.”
Amy: I think one of our biggest things is there’s no one way to be a Christian woman. There’s a lot of different ways. Sometimes people like my sister with blue hair, they might feel like, Oh, I’m not what everybody thinks a Christian woman looks like or acts like because I have blue hair. But that’s who she is. There’s a lot of different ways to express it, and it doesn’t always look like we’ve had in the media.
I think that as we’re putting our lives out there, I think we’re really just showing this is who we are and this is our example of being a Christian woman — and they’re all totally different because we’re all totally different.
“There’s no one way to be a Christian woman.”
Patsy: And I think that gives a lot of hope, a lot of hope to a lot of people.
One of the things I love about the design in the book is you have squares full of suggestions. I love lists. Lists are all full of hope because they’re all positive things you can do when you want to spend time with your family together and you can’t think, Well, what are we going to do? And you’ve got a great list for that. You’ve got lists for things you can do for yourself to nurture, to have a private time that’s directed toward something that’s gonna improve the quality of your existence, because that’s important.
And you know that in a family with as many as individuals as you have, there’s got to be some place that you just get to be alone. Is that true?
Katherine: Yeah, and that’s really hard to find most of the time. When we lived all together, it was like finding alone time, I remember I’d have to go outside.
Amy: Yeah, you go outside.
Katherine: You go outside and just sit in like a corner somewhere because you can’t really find it in the house a lot of the time.
Patsy: Find a tree limb.
Katherine: Yeah, exactly. I had a little spot in our backyard where I would always go, just to be by myself when I needed some time.
Patsy: I think of Jo in Little Women. She went to the attic, remember.
Andrew: Never seen it.
Patsy: Oh yeah, you’re here, Andrew. We got into the girly stuff.
Andrew: What I saw in some of yours — and Katherine, this may have been in a portion of a chapter that you were writing, but Amy, this might’ve been in yours too — about panic, anxiety, about fear-driven emotions. And I think that’s something that both Patsy and I can relate to very personally, I think many, many people in our culture today can relate to personally. But I’m curious, do you remember where that began for you in your story?
Katherine: Yeah, I think that’s a really deep question.
Patsy: It is.
Katherine: I think, for me, I remember having anxiety from the age of like 6 or 7, so just being really young, and I think it’s just because naturally I took on this caretaker role in my family. And that’s such a 2 thing — you can relate. I don’t know where I got that, but from a young age, it was like I felt this internal pressure like, I need to be the one to hold my family together. So if there was anything going wrong in the family, I felt a lot of anxiety.
And to this day, when there’s anything going wrong with my sisters or the people that I care about, I feel a great deal of pressure to… And that’s totally the opposite of God because you’re supposed to give it to God and he’s supposed to be in control, not you. So I have to remind myself of that, but I think I definitely like to think I’m in control because it makes me feel better. I think that’s where a lot of anxiety is rooted is just feeling out of control.
“[God’s] supposed to be in control, not you.”
Patsy: And your sister, Christina, she also struggles with depression, which can be a long lasting result of anxiety, and so we’ve got a kind of recurring theme. I think in the world today the No. 1 health issue is the mental health issue of anxiety, and I was an anxiety gal and became housebound from it for a number of years.
So learning how to manage your emotions is huge and certainly during the angst of teenage years, so the hope you bring is so vital and necessary. They say if you want to be a success, find a need and fill it. That’s what I feel like you’re doing. I think you’re throwing confetti and you are sweetening our lives with some cinnamon.
Katherine: Oh, I love that.
Patsy: I’m loving the whole thing.
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Patsy: We’d love to sit down, Andrew and I, with each one of you and have a meal and a conversation. That’s not possible, but because of this contest, it is possible for us to sit down with someone and their friend.
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Bridges Sponsorship Message
Patsy: “Where would I be if I did not believe I would experience the Lord’s favor in the land of the living? Rely on the Lord! Be strong and confident! Rely on the Lord!” Those are the last two verses of Psalm 27 from the Abide Bible. It is a new Bible that has been in my home now for several months, so I’ve had time to work with it and it to work inside of me. It offers beautiful, old art that is associated with verses, so it helps it to become a bigger picture in our mind and our retention is improved. It has places for us to journal on the side as we read. It also has instructions on how to pray this Scripture, how to meditate on it, how to contemplate it so we can sit and soak in God’s Word and allow it to dwell richly within us.
Andrew: What I love about the Abide Bible is that it’s invitational, not just informational. It’s inviting us not to just exercise the Word of God in our head but to really invite it to dwell in our hearts, which to me reminds me of John 15:4: “Abide in me and I in you.” So you can order your copy of the Abide Bible today at bridgesshow.com/abide.
Andrew: I was talking to my dad, who’s a therapist, about this one time, how even 20 years ago, 25, 30 years ago, but especially 40 years ago and beyond, anxiety was something that was more circumstantial usually. It was based around maybe a presentation or a broken relationship or something like that that you got through it and over it so there was relief on the other side, and then anxiety would present itself again around another circumstance.
We don’t feel as much culturally today with our anxiety relief, which is part of the problem, ultimately sinks us into I think depression. So what are some real practical — these are just surface things — little things that you can be like, You know, I feel some lingering anxiety today, or I can feel something building. What do you do with that? Where do you go? What do you listen to, read, et cetera?
Amy: I think part of it is because I try to predict the future way more than I should, and I try to overthink every single possible scenario that could happen, so I make sure that I stay safe, but that’s never gonna happen because I can’t just keep myself safe because the world is the world.
There’s this quote: “The world gives us the cross. Christ carries it with us.” So I think the two most practical things that have helped me the most with anxiety is I started reading this book a while ago. I didn’t finish it unfortunately, but maybe one day I will. It’s called literally How to Stop Worrying and Start Living by Dale Carnegie. I think he’s the one How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Patsy: Yes, that’s correct.
Amy: Just because of the title, I was like, I need this, because I worry all day. It just gave me such a relief because it was just saying, okay, if you’re worried about a specific situation, or if you’re feeling this, go to the absolute worst case scenario, absolutely worst thing you can think of, and then think of how you would cope with it. That has helped me so many times in my life, like, Oh, if this happens, I can do this, and I will be fine.
I think the problem is when you don’t finish out the loop, it just keeps ringing. You have to finish the circle is what I’ve learned. And another thing which helps me tremendously is I take a notebook, my trusty notebook, and I literally write down what am I feeling right now. I literally write down every single thing, the deepest, deepest way I could write it — everything I don’t want to write down because I feel like if I say it, it’ll make it true and I’ll feel bad. And then I write down what makes this true or untrue and then how am I doing enough, and it just makes me feel so much better.
Andrew: To piggyback off that, my dad told me one time when I was in a really concentrated element of anxiety, and I had never really experienced that strong anxiety that felt like, Where’s the relief in it? And I was really emotional about it actually, so I called him. He’s real patient and easy-going, and he said, “You know, a couple things. It takes time to work into it. It takes time to work out of it. So just so you know, you’re probably going to wake up tomorrow with the same feeling, but it will go away.” He said, “The other thing is you’re not going to die from it, so you can just carry that with you.” It’s a little bit of thinking of the worst case scenario and realizing you can cope.
Patsy: Did you want to respond to that as well?
Katherine: Oh yeah, sure, I’d love to. Coming back to being a 2 — it feels like that’s where a lot of it comes from — I think when I’m stressed, I tend to focus even more on other people, and it’s almost like I start giving other people what I wish I had in terms of love and help rather than helping myself, and that’s how things build.
So I was actually just talking to my therapist about this last night because I’m still trying to work through and get better about anxiety and stuff, but she was telling me that really the source of anxiety is you have a problem in your life that you haven’t resolved and you don’t know what to do about it. So until you know what to do, it’s going to keep cycling in the back of your mind.
Amy: Or the front.
Katherine: Or the front, yeah. Or the front. But for me, because I’m really good at focusing on other people and not thinking about it, then I’ll just kind of shove it back and then it’ll get worse.
So she was saying it’s really simple. You just bring it to the surface, take some quiet time, and write down what is the source of this, where’s this coming from, and then write out possible solutions. And I thought back, I was like, Light bulb moment. I’ve totally done that in the past, just a natural instinct, and I always felt better, just simply writing it down and writing down what are solutions. That helps me so much.
Patsy: A friend of mine is a therapist. In fact, I have a lot of friends who are therapists. I think I’m their visual aid for mental health, so they’re always giving me insights. But my friend Marilyn Meberg said, “Emotions don’t have brains, so we can’t let them think for us. They were designed to feel, not to think, so it doesn’t mean that they’ll be reasonable when we feel them.” So they’re not bringing the brains to it, and God designed us with a will that is stronger than our emotions, so we can choose to do the right thing regardless of how we feel. So that becomes really invaluable.
You have an international reach. It’s just mind-blowing. And you know that God is in this when something with that kind of reach happens that’s influencing for good. But your real emphasis is on family, just by the very fact that you are family, and you speak of yourself in the book — this caught my attention — as a fierce tribe.
Katherine: That was my words.
Amy: Of course it was. It’s true honestly.
Patsy: I love that term. And that means that if anybody causes anyone else in your tribe difficulty, watch out.
Amy: Oh, it’s so awkward.
Andrew: So you said you termed that, right, Katherine?
Katherine: Yeah.
Andrew: What were you thinking when you termed that?
Katherine: Okay, so I have this memory. I’m totally sappy. I feel like it’s totally coming out. Amy’s maybe a little more… I don’t know, you’re sappy too.
Amy: I’m so much less though.
Katherine: But maybe you’re more salty. Salty sappy? I don’t know. I’m pure sap. I’m like a tree, a nice pine tree. I’ll give you a sappy memory of where that thing kind of came from. So I write poetry, and I think it was on Thanksgiving. This was like six or seven years ago. We lived in Malibu at the time, so we were one mile from the ocean.
This is totally sappy. Oh man, I’m embarrassed.
Amy: Kat, it’s just you. Let your light shine.
“Let your light shine.”
Katherine: I know. I’ve got to live. Alright.
So I was at the beach with two of my siblings, Lisa and Nick, and I looked over at two of my siblings and they were like playing in the water, and I just started crying because I felt so much love for them. And I was like, I love my family.
So I wrote this poem called “Precious Ten.” There’s 11 of us, so I was talking about my precious 10 of 10 siblings. That was where the fierce tribe… I think I wrote something similar in there, like we love each other, but we’re also like a fierce tribe.
I don’t know if it’s because we’re Italian-Irish, we got those fiery things, but we’re very, very protective and very loyal to each other.
Amy: Yeah. Growing up, our parents always… Now that I’m thinking about it, I’m not sure if this is the norm or not, judging by the way I’ve seen a lot of people talk to their siblings. Our parents always really emphasized loyalty to your family. They’re like family’s the only thing that you really have. So whenever we were disrespecting each other or anything, they’d be like, “No, this is your sibling. You’re going to be respectful.”
So I think that might be most of the reason why we’re so loyal to each other. They really were like, We’re not going to favor any siblings. We’re not going to label. I know a lot of parents will be like, “This is my smart one.” I mean, some of them label their kids as the dumb one. I’m like, What?
What I’m saying is they never made us feel compared. They’re never compared us. And my mom was always really good about that. Like she was teaching swimming lessons to one of friend’s daughters, and she was like, “She’s the best 7-year-old swimming, but you’re the best 5-year-old swimming.” Like you don’t have to be as good as her because she’s bigger and older, but you’re the best at your age. So she was always like that with us.
Andrew: It’s also smart for peace-keeping. If you’re the parents of 11 children, you might as well not pit them up against each other.
Amy: Yeah, definitely. I didn’t even think of that.
Patsy: Listening to the two of you go back and forth just gives me a flavor of what the dinner table must’ve been like.
Amy: It was wild, I have to say.
Katherine: And that was another thing. Our mom, and our dad too, they both really wanted us to do family dinners every night, so we always ate together and that was like…
Amy: We had a giant kitchen table.
Andrew: Were all 11 of you at home together?
Amy: Oh, literally up until four years ago, it was all 11 of us.
Andrew: So 13 of y’all.
Amy: Yeah, on this giant table. My brother would usually have a friend. Michael always had someone right there.
Katherine: Yeah, our older brother always had people over, but we always had a really full and a huge… You know you expand a table with those leaves? We had all the leaves out to make the table 10-feet long.
Amy: These giant benches, just because there’s a lot of people to sit there.
Andrew: I feel my anxiety rising right now.
Patsy: Oh, I would love it.
Amy: It was so fun.
Andrew: So I’m curious what influence have men had in your life? That could be your father and your brothers or other leaders, et cetera. Where does that come into play?
Katherine: Definitely I would say there’s been good and bad influence. I think Amy and I both would agree on that.
Amy: With any people, there’s going to be good and bad.
Katherine: Yeah. Like our dad was an awesome role model for us, so hard working. He really cares about our family.
Amy: Fiercely loyal to us.
Katherine: He modeled that fierce loyalty that I feel like is kind of the Cimorelli thing.
Amy: He always apologized.
Katherine: Yeah, he was very humble. So our dad was a really awesome role model for us in so many ways, and I think that was a positive presence.
Definitely dating was hard I think for most of us girls, I think all of us girls.
Amy: Who didn’t have a hard time? Name one.
Katherine: That’s true.
Amy: Nobody.
Katherine: I feel like we all had some… And you read them in the book. We had some pretty up and down dating experiences. I think that for me gave me a less than favorable impression, but my fiancé now is incredible.
Andrew: So one worked out.
Katherine: So now I’m like, Oh, I have faith again in the male race.
And our brothers are amazing. We love our brothers.
Amy: Yes, our brothers are great.
Katherine: We have one brother in particular, Alex, and I don’t know if it’s because his birth order, he’s surrounded by girls…
Amy: He’s literally in the center. He has four older sisters and two little sisters.
Katherine: All are right around him. So he’s just so sensitive to girls and so girl-friendly. And so I’ve had so many deep life talks with Alex. We’ll just have tea and we’ll talk.
Amy: You say like one thing about anything related to womanliness or hormones, and he’s like, “You are just so strong. You are a warrior.”
Katherine: Yeah, Alex is incredible. All of our girl friends have crushes on him.
Amy: Honestly, true. When I think of influence, I think a lot of my dad, and the biggest thing that I think he impacted on us was, No. 1, he’s always said to us, “I will get you out of any bad situation.” No. 1 thing he’s said to us.
Katherine: Our dad is super strong.
Amy: He’s like, “You get, for some reason, in a bad marriage or anything, I will get you out.” And then he always apologized, and I always will forever respect that because it’s hard to apologize. But everytime he did something he thought was wrong, he always apologized. He would come in our room, and he’d be like, “I’m really sorry,” and I always respected that.
Another thing he taught us was do the right thing when nobody’s looking. That’s when it counts. He always tried to have really great integrity in that sense. So I learned a lot from my dad in that way.
Patsy: It’s interesting, this London Bridge that we started with. One of the things it’s known for is its many arches, which is part of not only the visual feature but the practical aspects and the fact that it made it strong. And I see with your family, while there are many arches, they have all added to not only the beauty but to the solidity of who you are today. And I’m blessed by the fact that you would use all the things you’re learning and have learned to extend that out to others, so I just bless you in the sweet name of Jesus.
Katherine: Oh, thank you.
Amy: That was so nice.
Katherine: We really appreciate that.
Andrew: And I’m kind of spent, so.
Patsy: Do girls wear you out?
Andrew: They have before, yes.
Patsy: Okay, this is the Cimorell Sisters. Believe in You: Big Sister Stories and Advice on Living Your Best Life — if you have a teenager, if you know a teenager, if you are a teenager, you’re gonna want this book. And don’t miss following their videos as well. They’re entertaining and inspirational, and they’re a whole lot of fun.
Bridges is co-produced by Andrew Greer and myself, Patsy Clairmont.
Andrew: And our podcast is recorded and mixed by Jesse Phillips at the Arcade in Franklin, Tennessee.
Patsy: Remember, don’t forget to leave us a rating, a review, or a comment. It all helps our little show get going.
Andrew: To find out more about my co-host Patsy Clairmont or myself, Andrew Greer, or to read transcripts of our show, simply go to bridgesshow.com.