SEQUIM — Norma Herbold figured out, on her fourth try, how to do one of the hardest things she’d ever done.
For each week she went without tobacco, she gave herself gifts — or gave her husband some cash to buy them for her.
She treated herself to a piece of costume jewelry, or a pair of shoes, or some other little thing.
“My husband asked, ‘Can’t you just tell yourself, good job?'” she remembered. To which she said: “It works. Be quiet.”
And one time Herbold handed him $8 and asked him to find her a pair of earrings. She still has them.
“I told myself that I wasn’t going to beat myself up if I fell off the wagon,” Herbold added. “I would just get back on.”
Today, the Great American Smokeout, is a day she celebrates inwardly, by feeling gratitude that she doesn’t wake up each morning coughing long and hard; she doesn’t tow an oxygen tank or suffer from the troubles some friends have.
She’d tried to quit three times before she finally made it.
In 1987, after 25 years of smoking, she was facing a major surgery and her doctors told her she had to get the habit out of her system.
She spent about two months, from operation to full recovery, without her cigarettes.
Gave up friends
“My family wanted me to quit, but my friends didn’t, because they smoked. So I had to give my friends up for a while. We talked on the phone,” Herbold recalled.
“Then, once the nicotine was out of my system and I had broken the habits, we got together again.
“If they’re good friends, they understand. And mine did.”
For her first eight smoke-free years after that, Herbold continued giving herself rewards, by adding a small diamond to a gold ring she’d had made.
Somehow, somewhere, that ring disappeared last week. Herbold figures it’s in her backyard compost pile or fell off at the gym.
“It’s just a thing. I can let that go. But it meant a lot to me, as a symbol of getting through something and past it,” Herbold said Wednesday.
Herbold’s health isn’t perfect — she has two artificial hips and still struggles with a weight problem — but bottom line, she is a happy woman who feels good and enjoys each minute spent with her big family.
She also teaches teenagers how to prepare for the general educational development, or GED, certificate in Peninsula College’s program at the Sequim Community School.
So Herbold talks with young smokers — and every now and then helps one find a way to stop.
She had one student who was smoking during her pregnancy. Herbold reminded her about tobacco’s effects on the baby, and the young woman has quit.
“I see her now; she comes to First Teacher,” the playroom at the Community School. “She has a beautiful baby boy,” Herbold said.
Walk down the school’s hallway, and it’s not hard to find other teenagers who’ve smoked. That’s past tense, they say quietly, since the cigarettes ultimately lost their allure.
Miranda Metz, 18, stopped smoking when the aftertaste and odor got to her. And her boyfriend, 19-year-old Chris Soriano, also quit after too many whiffs of information.
“The commercials got to me,” Soriano said.
Television spots told him how his health would improve, and how he’d have more life to live — unlike some of his friends.
“They’re like 22, but they look like they’re 50,” he said.
Soriano also knows of people who spend $80 to $120 a month on cigarettes.
“It’s not worth it,” he said.
Mike Johnson, 17, quit about seven months ago after a couple of years of smoking. His girlfriend is expecting a baby, and he said he didn’t want to give his secondhand smoke to either of them.
Some of the teens seem blase about quitting. But Herbold, even 22 years after her last cigarette, takes none of this lightly.
“When I have a kid who’s thinking about quitting, I encourage [him or her] to brainstorm. Talk to others, and find out what works for you,” she said. “Everyone has to find their own path.”
Started as teen
Herbold started when she was a young teen, and remembers how fun it was to sneak around, how cool her friends looked while smoking.
She was 39 when she quit for good. Ever since, that eight-diamond ring was both a reminder and a conversation starter.
“Putting a diamond in every year was probably cheaper than buying cigarettes,” Herbold added, smiling.
Both she and Jill Dole of the Clallam County Health Department understand that people tend to smoke in hopes of puffing away some stress. And these are tension-ridden times, Dole acknowledged.
When talking with people who say they can’t quit now because their lives are so stress-ridden, she tries for some humor. “I ask them, ‘Does that mean you’ve alleviated all of your stress?’ That usually makes people laugh.”
Of course smoke doesn’t erase stress for long. Yet Dole knows that people will make changes when they’re ready, and not one minute before.
The Great American Smokeout offers a chance to just try quitting just for one day this year, she said.
“Nobody’s asking you to quit forever,” Dole added.
But this day “is a way to remind people, encourage people, that if they can put cigarettes down for one day, they can do it forever.”
Herbold, now a 61-year-old grandmother, is looking forward to Thanksgiving with her 15 grandchildren — and the arrival of No. 16 in December.
She’s sorry she lost the ring she would have given to a granddaughter, but thankful for her smoke-free life.
“I feel very fortunate,” Herbold said, “that I was able to make it.”
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Reporter Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladaily news.com.
