Mary Bratton talks about a lifetime of pain, and what she has learned about living with it. Polio as a child, cancer at fifty, walking on a broken leg for three weeks without knowing it, and the focus she found — once, on the fur of a rabbit pictured on a hospital wall — that let her through procedures she could not stop. She talks about naming her fears, about giving in to grief for a while and then moving forward, about the nights when pain keeps her awake and the blank, quiet place she has learned to find, and about the marriage that began with a disagreement over who paid the bills. Her advice, in her words: name it, and claim it — then get behind you, devil.

Watch the behind the scenes video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RTnbYDoE_98

Episode 19 of Focus Your Inner Bitch — The Mary Bratton Story. Mary Bratton is living with stage four breast cancer, diagnosed more than three years ago, and she and Jim are having a good time every day — "we don't know how many more we've got."

This episode is the story of the houses: the funky East End house Jim bought himself for his birthday in the late 1970s — out of level, no closets, a furnace he was afraid to light, and a kidney-shaped pool that had become an ecologically balanced pond. Mary stayed for the pool. Two summers of it, before and after the wedding. Then the Polk house, which they bought because, as Jim puts it, you break it, you bought it — Mary shook a pipe, the pipe came off the wall, and the water ran until they found a water key.

Along the way: quitting smoking cold in the Methodist Hospital behavior-modification program ("I wouldn't mind living a little bit longer"), the Greater Eastwood Civic Association where they met, and the math of a long marriage — "the two of us are greater than the sum of one and one." These days, Jim says, they're just trying to stay off the silver alert.

Next, in Episode 20: life at the Polk house.

The Jim Bratton Podcast — every one has a story. jimbratton.com/podcast

Watch the behind the scenes video here: https://youtu.be/T6SMFMwqwNI

Episode 18 of Focus Your Inner Bitch — The Mary Bratton Story. Jim and Mary go back to the beginning: their honeymoon in the Canadian Rockies, and the months of preparation before it — walking the Lone Star Trail in Texas summer heat until their clothes soured on their backs, testing packs and tents and wool pants every weekend, and Mary emptying the backpacks almost every night to repack them — a little less, a little more — until they were right.

Then Canada: flying into Calgary during Stampede, a bus to Banff, and a storm that rolled through the valley and flattened tents all over camp — by morning there was snow on the ground and the ladies' room had become a hostel. There's the night something rubbed against the tent and they were sure it was a bear (it was a mule deer), the Banff Springs Hotel, a propane stove burned out in the room and the fire alarm that followed — and a second honeymoon, a Rhine River cruise where they slept in one tiny twin bed and the turndown service finally gave up and put both mints on one pillow.

It's a story about preparation, stubbornness, and focus — the kind that gets you through a freezing night in Banff, or anything else life throws at you. As Jim says at the close: "She will never lose focus of her inner bitch. I'll tell you that."

Next, in Episode 19: The Funky House — the crooked East End house, the pool summers, and the house they had to buy because Mary broke it.

The Jim Bratton Podcast — every one has a story. jimbratton.com/podcast

Watch the behind the scenes video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88W9UyW8Jik