219. Positude in the Face of Cancer: Laura Lang-Ree’s Story of Strength

[00:00:08] Welcome to Episode 219 of Girl, Take the Lead, where each week we explore womanhood and leadership. And I'm your host, Yolanda Canny. Laura DeCracker Lang-Ree, Gen X, is a cancer mom and advocate for parents of children with cancer. She empowers families going through medical trauma with tools and tactics to help them navigate their new everyday normal.

[00:00:34] Her book, Through the Fire, Empowering Parents of Kids with Cancer, takes us through her journey once the pediatrician said her three-year-old daughter, Cecilia, had childhood leukemia. In this episode, you'll learn about emotions we can all experience during a crisis, especially a medical crisis like this one.

[00:01:01] You'll learn what positive is and why it's important, and lots about resilience, gratitude, and boundary setting. You may want to keep a tissue nearby. This one touches us very deeply. Enjoy, and here you go.

[00:01:27] So welcome, Laura, to Girl, Take the Lead. And we've been talking with each other for a while. Congratulations on your book. Thank you. Thank you so much. I'm so excited. Yeah, it's an important book. And, you know, I shared with you that I had worked with the cancer service line, and I just admire and love all those women. And I can't wait to share this episode with them. Yeah, me too.

[00:01:56] I think they're gonna love it. So why don't we start though, if you would introduce yourself to our viewers and listeners, and tell them a little bit about you and the book and yeah and why the book. My name is Laura Decraker Langry, and I am a Bay Area girl. I was born in Springfield, Illinois, but I've been in California ever since in Northern California.

[00:02:21] Art is kind of my thing as a profession. So I am a director of performing arts at a K through 12 school where I get to be with wonderful performing arts teachers and children all day long, which is a fantastic thing. I'm married to my high school sweetheart. And when our oldest was three, just barely three and a half, she we were hit with the diagnosis of childhood leukemia, which I'm sure I'll talk about more today.

[00:02:45] And through that experience, and the the the onslaught of the realization that it is up to us to be a part of that cure journey, and the lack of information for caregivers on that journey, spurred me long ago to know that I had a book in me and to connect with other people and to make that happen one day.

[00:03:05] And it's been a long time. It's been over 20 years. But it's, it takes a while for those of us who've been in a cancer journey with friends or family or ourselves. And sometimes we can get to a place where we can give back and sometimes we can't. And I knew I would and the privacy and quiet of, or relative quiet of COVID gave me that time and space.

[00:03:27] Mm hmm. And I think your book isn't just for somebody who is going through the any kind of diagnosis, but also all the people supporting them. Yes. And the caregivers out there, you know, just the family members who are affected by it. I mean, I think your book just brings everybody in to help with this kind of journey.

[00:03:59] This has been my experience. So it's what I know my dad was also diagnosed right after Cecilia was cured and and unfortunately passed away. So I've lived in those two worlds. And I can tell you from a parent's perspective that is it is an all hands on deck event.

[00:04:14] And that most of the time, even even we don't know what to say or what to do or how to help or what to help and I can speak from a parent's perspective in that you're so overwhelmed by taking care of this family that now is in trauma and dealing with a life threatening illness and maybe you work inside or outside of the home that you can't even form a sentence to even know what you want.

[00:04:39] So I actually wrote specific chapters for friends and family and grandparents. So not only do I teach the parents in the cancer parents handbook. Oh, I haven't told you the title, the cancer parents handbook, what your oncologist doesn't have time to tell you. And I'll give you a little bit of background first. That title was spurred not out of it's not a snarky comment on oncologists and nurse practitioners, they are our heroes.

[00:05:04] And they are the ones that are the medical gurus that are getting your child to cure. What I learned early on is that the rest is up to us as parents and that that was the information that was lacking. So that's where that what your oncologist doesn't have time to tell you because they're busy saving your child's life.

[00:05:20] So there's tips and tricks and training for not only the caregivers in this situation and whatever that caregiving family dynamic looks like married single, you know, parents, nearby parents far away and the rest of us friends and families grandparents, etc.

[00:05:38] You know, I'm even guilty of falling into that trap to you recently had a friend who had a pretty bad scare with a breast cancer diagnosis and I had a minute of like, oh, I don't know what to say or I should give her a second and and I and I remembered oh no no that's exactly what you shouldn't do we need to all rally around this person.

[00:05:57] Well, I think, well, I think, as I read your book, I know that it was for parents but I also felt it could be for adults going through this. And, because it's a crisis. Yes. And, I think all of your insights in and lessons learned can relate to, to so many people who are going through this. So, one of the things I loved was,

[00:06:26] the story about positive. Can you tell our listeners about that I think that will warm their hearts. I'd be glad to I it, it was early on and we were trying to rally Cecilia our, our oldest who was in treatment for another day at the hospital we were still pretty new to all this and we were still expecting.

[00:06:49] You know, a little bit of manners what is appropriate for age three so we had gotten some early feedback that letting them know early on what was happening was wise as opposed to hiding it. And you're right these tips and tricks in the book are for us to to really face something head on. So, in this particular case we explained what was going to happen, what doctors and nurses she would likely see, what kind of poke she would get, and that we expected her to say hello and please and thank you and at the end she'd get a popsicle.

[00:07:16] And we repeated ourselves probably three times and she's kind of looking at us and she goes, oh, well, you mean you want me to have a positive? And that's a positive attitude, meaning she got it. We were asking her to have a positive attitude about what she was going to face that day. And that word positive became our little family's rallying cry.

[00:07:35] It really became our mantra because it was in that small child statement that we realized it is up to us in our narrative to change how we look at scary traumatic situations. And that's not dismissing that they're there, nor that they might not be awful or that they might not hurt or be crushing. But we can bring an energy of positive to whatever it is that we're facing in life. And that really only serves us in the end.

[00:08:03] It makes that experience a little bit more easy to manage than sinking into the despair first. Yeah. How many, I remember you put it in the book, how many shots did she end up getting? She had over 2000 in her protocol. So that's two years of every chemo every single day. So it's in the form of IVs. It could be in the form of blood draw of spinal taps. It's extremely invasive.

[00:08:29] So to learn how to teach your child to advocate for herself and what might make that process easier and to teach parents how to advocate for their child in that process is so important because it's never ending. And I think that was one of my early catalysts for this book is that this isn't a quick in and out. It's not something, an awful illness that we will endure for three months and we'll be done. This is going to be around for three, four, five years.

[00:08:59] And that's pretty standard for most childhood cancers. So we need to approach it from a different way in order to make it sustainable. And especially if our child is doing okay during treatment, how do we live life in, not only for our child, but for ourselves. And for perhaps our other children who might be in the house as well, because they're so important.

[00:09:26] So what are things, what are maybe aspects of advocacy that you would suggest a parent have at this point when they've gotten word of this kind of crisis? I think advocacy is one of the most underrated things for all of us in the healthcare system that we can imagine. We are not trained to advocate for ourselves and our lives.

[00:09:52] And for some reason, even my adult children still hesitate when they're advocating for themselves with a medical professional. So we somehow have it in our society that we're not meant to be teammates and collaborators. I think one of the biggest joys in working on this book is that I collaborated with doctors and nurses. In fact, Cecilia's oncologist and nurse practitioners and current researchers. And they all said the same thing.

[00:10:16] We want parents to understand how to advocate too, because it helps us help them. We don't know your child. So when I talk to parents about advocacy, I think we automatically will think about our kid, if our kid's in treatment. Less so if it's ourselves facing cancer or some other trauma in our lives, but it all matters. And that advocacy piece is key towards the greater health of our child or ourselves.

[00:10:44] So we can advocate for everything from the beginning, from the way that a needle is inserted or where the child sits on your lap, or your child can advocate for how they want to receive treatment. So for example, our phlebotomists, our doctors and nurses, they're so busy and they're working on childhood cancer, saving lives. They are just going to do their routine that suits their quickest need, which makes complete sense.

[00:11:11] But you have the power as an adult or a parent to say, you know what? My kid actually wants to sit on my lap and let your child say, I'd like it in the right arm today, or I'd like it in the left arm today. You can teach them as we did Cecilia, how to whale breathe, you know, just a child's form of Lamaze. And then give them the tools to manage it as opposed to forcing them into a situation where they're going to cry every time it happens. That's two years of tears at least, which is just not a sustainable way to operate.

[00:11:41] So how can you advocate and not a happy situation for a parent. So how can you advocate for what you know your child will like and what will make for a more calm atmosphere? I'll tell a little story in that. I knew two stories. One, I knew I was going to be headed towards being a fierce advocate on day two. We had the most incredible medical team and they all collaborated on the Cancer Parents Handbook.

[00:12:09] And on day two, our oncologist was giving us the statistics for her survival. And he said, but, you know, you just need kind of need to understand she's never going to do math or science. And I just slammed me. And I think for listeners, it might be like, well, your kid's got cancer. Just be, you know, thrilled they're going to maybe live. And of course I was. But in that moment, I was enraged that the cancer was not only going to take her life maybe, but who she was meant to be.

[00:12:38] And we know our children. And even at three, she was one of those little nature nerds and science kids. And she loved all things like that. So I was enraged. Now, my oncologist was correct. If we didn't do anything about the chemo that was going to pound her little body, she would have side effects that would have rendered math and science very difficult for her. That was what he knew in his world. What I ended up doing was figuring there has to be another way.

[00:13:06] So I discovered the head of the protocol that she was on, and I gave him a call. And he said, well, that's true, but that's not quite true. And he proceeded to spend an hour and a half with me and told me all of the tips and tricks that we could do to rewire a small child's brain and to have them be able to do math and science quite successfully, which was the case for us. That was an example early on that a parent, just because they're mad, like I was, shouldn't have to fight for. Right.

[00:13:36] I aim in the Cancer Parents Handbook to give you the tools to ask the questions so that you can then make choices. Will all parents see the side effects and do something to help make them not so severe or prevent them? No. And that's perfectly fine. That's one's choice. But I would like to level the playing field of knowledge. And so that's an important piece of advocacy.

[00:13:58] Something we can do for ourselves if we're in a trauma or with our child if they have cancer is allow them agency in how things get done. And so early on, when we were out of the first woods, the nurse asked Cecilia, hey, Cecilia, do you want to come back once a week and have your shot in the leg or have your parents be trained how to do it? And we're dying. You know, like, please, God, no. And she says, oh, I want to do it at home. Anyway, it turned out to be one of the most pivotal forms of advocacy I could imagine,

[00:14:27] because I think that nurse practitioner had an idea that it would be healthiest for all of us to be home. So we allow Cecilia to define the evening. She got to pick dinner. She got to watch TV with dinner. She told us when she was ready for the shot. She had to breathe and she took it. And what's incredible to me to this day is once we had all of our boundaries and rules and we had advocated for Cecilia, and she had advocated for what she wanted, she never cried for any of these things.

[00:14:57] And that's pretty powerful, because if we feel trapped and tied down, we're going to protest. But if we feel we have agency because we've advocated for ourselves, we've perhaps surrendered to the situation, which is kind of key. I've got to get it done. Everything goes a lot more smoothly. Yeah. Well, one of the things that hit me when you were talking was

[00:15:22] why the why don't we advocate more for ourselves when it comes to our healthcare? And I think there used to be, I don't think so much anymore, but there used to be the underlying belief that the doctor knows all. And you shouldn't, if you ask questions, then you're actually challenging the expertise of the doctor.

[00:15:49] And I love that you're talking about breaking that up and looking at collaboration and partnership and let that belief go. Like, don't hang on to that one. That one's not going to help you in this crisis. Absolutely not. You're so right. It really won't help you. And they need us and they want us to be part of the medical team.

[00:16:16] The way I looked at it was when I was told the statistics that she had an 80 to 85% chance of survival, which I will admit if a friend said that to me about their own cancer, I'd be like, okay, that's good. But when you hear that about your kid, that's not good. And so all that hit me was she has a 15% plus chance of dying. So I think what we need to change the narrative of as parents is that that 15% can be ours.

[00:16:42] That 80 to 85%, which is many cancers, not all, that's their job. They've got the whole medical routine down. They're so good at it. So what can you do? What can you advocate for in terms of their healthcare, in terms of how they're taken care of, in terms of how they rest, how they play, how they eat to raise their chances and to be a participant in that 15%. So good.

[00:17:06] You wrote in your book, one of the gifts of this journey is that your child can learn to build upon their resilience, which is a beautiful thing in the long run. And what did you learn about her resilience and your own in this? Gosh, I mean, it's so, it's so interesting to look back on it. I think for children, their resiliency comes when you have advocated for them and given them

[00:17:35] a voice in all of this. I think if we saw plenty of times out of fear and despair and overwhelm, parents didn't give their kids agencies. So they were kind of hauled into treatment and had to just sort of tough it out. And so that there's always going to be trauma for Cecilia, for any child, no matter how it went. But when you create a situation that is as good as it can be, it changes things. So I'll give you a little example with Cecilia there in our particular protocol at that particular

[00:18:05] time, we knew we had six scheduled inpatients, which just sounded like hell. And we would be admitted for a minimum of three days, depending on how she processed the chemotherapy. So we were just on overwhelm. And at some point, maybe somebody said it to me, but we decided to turn it into fun. And knowing that she was okay right now, we allowed her to create a party out of it. So we called them hospital parties. There were certain decorations and toys and fun things that we never brought out except

[00:18:35] when we had these hospital parties. Fast forward to the end, she was delighted because her friends had come to visit. She would go down the hall with her chemo and tell knock-knock jokes and make pictures. I mean, it wasn't fun, but it wasn't horrible because she had turned it into the best it could be. She walked, we all walked out of that hospital in the sixth month after it was over and looked at each other like, I cannot believe we made it. And she's spinning around in circles at the front of the hospital and says, I'm going to

[00:19:05] miss this place. Now that's resiliency. She was no, I mean, there was no mistaking. She had bone marrow aspirates and she had blood draws and she had chemo 24 seven and on and on and on. But part of it is that I think step number one in developing your own resiliency and a child's resiliency is to surrender and accept the situation at hand. I think that is so fundamental. So yes, my kid has cancer.

[00:19:33] This is what I'm, what I'm facing. It takes a while to understand that surrendering and accepting is not giving up. It's actually giving you power because when you stop fighting the diagnosis, you stop fighting the trauma that's happening in your life. If you stop fighting the reality of what is, then your brain has space to go, oh, well, what can I do about this?

[00:19:56] And I think the second step in developing resiliency is to have good habits around self-care in terms of looking for those little moments for, in this case, our child that would be fun and delightful for her. And for us, could I have a friend bring me a special coffee that I love so much? Or when I was cold one day, I remember my mom surprising me with a new little tracksuit from Nordstrom across the street that just like made my day, but it was a little moment of self-care.

[00:20:25] Is it the kind of self-care I would have wanted in normal circumstances? Of course not. But I was in this situation. I surrendered and accepted it and did some treasures that made us feel better. And that developed in my resiliency even more. And then the last piece I think is so crucial, and you brought it up in the beginning, is that asking for help. So resiliency isn't about just toughing it out and waiting for the storm to pass. I think we kind of feel sometimes like it's bearing down and gripping until we can get through, and that's resiliency. Resiliency is not waiting for the storm to pass.

[00:20:55] It's looking for ways to surrender, accept, ask for help, give ourselves some help, and rally the people around us to help lift us up in the circumstance that we're facing. And that's what develops resiliency. And that's what I experienced. Was it always, could you always, were you always a person that kind of asked for help? Or did this crisis kind of move that into a way of to survive? It was a way to survive.

[00:21:25] I was not, it was not a habit. And in talking to cancer parents back then, and I have a whole slew of, on my team now, of current cancer parents, it is not something we do well, kind of like advocacy. So the asking for help piece, especially in a cancer world situation, you're so freaked out that you forget to ask for the simplest of things. So in the cancer parents handbook, which as you said, could be used for adults too.

[00:21:51] I give you lists of all the things that are helpful and then take it, steal it, make it your own or, or think, let it allow you to think, oh, but actually what would really help me is that. So no, it didn't, it didn't come naturally, but it came fast. And there are people I think who insisted on it, friends and family, like, no, really what's it going to be? What do you need? That's the kind of friends you want to be when your friends, when your person's in trauma, don't give up on them. Cause they're going to say no, cause we don't know how else to do this. We're just going to be like, no, I'm good. I got it. They don't have it.

[00:22:22] And I didn't then. And somehow along the way, it's a great question. I don't remember when it was, but I realized, oh, hang on. I can't ask. Yeah. What world did gratitude play in this? I mean, that must've been hard in the beginning, but then I'm imagining your journey as you were kind of getting through some of it, maybe it became easier in along the way.

[00:22:50] Not really, at least not in, in, in my experience. Cancer is a funny thing. We had a little group of six kids that we bonded with families and their small children. And most of us had essentially the same diagnosis or similar diagnoses. Three of those kids died to the other two relapsed, repeated treatment, relapsed again, and did bone marrow transplants, which they saved their life, but it left them with a lifetime of side effects.

[00:23:17] So we never have the, we never had the privilege of thinking it's going to be okay. Um, so actually gratitude played a role in that case because you couldn't count on anything. You really had to not look at the big picture in terms of gratitude, but the small. And I remember, I think it was a friend and it had just recently become popular. And Oprah was talking about it. I think of doing a gratitude journal. And I, it was really pissed. I was like, really right now? I'm sorry. What do I have to be grateful for? That's just nonsense.

[00:23:47] And, uh, I reluctantly started it and I've never stopped. I've done it every single day since. And what I have learned about that process is stuff's going to happen in your life up, down, sideways, big stuff, little stuff, small stuff. So having that practice of gratitude where you are grateful for the small things in life is actually what builds up your resiliency because you become centered in what truly matters

[00:24:15] and that, you know, every day you can find something good. Even if you're stuck in the hospital, even if you are dealing with a landslide on your house or whatever the case may be, you're going to find a good human, a good person, a really good cup of coffee, a beautiful sunrise. And until you start doing it, it does sound pretty dorky, especially if you're in a crisis. I will, I will admit, but it has been, it is a foundational piece of self-care for me that I have never stopped.

[00:24:44] Yeah. I, I think it would have been the hardest thing. I think I would have faced in your situation was the unfairness. Like I would have had to really do some serious work on. Looking at my beliefs about fairness and do a lot of Byron Katie work to turn them around. Whoa, especially, I mean, a three-year-old. Yeah.

[00:25:16] I, I think, you know, that would have been very, very hard for me. I know. I mean, I, when I listened to you talk, I mean, I am like choked up feeling like the tears want to come, you know, just can't imagine. Yeah. 400,000 new cases worldwide every single year of childhood cancer. It's not right.

[00:25:45] They're just babies. So the host has to have a moment here. I think for me, I really spiraled in that a lot. And some of the, the chapters and the advice that I'm giving of my own, of our oncology team, of current parents is to maybe help parents not quite go down the rabbit hole. I went at the time and to help them maybe see things more clearly early. I was only looking for help at all times.

[00:26:15] We'd been in an amazing childhood cancer camp early, early, early on. And I was so excited because all I wanted was somebody ahead of me to teach me. And I'm a teacher by trade. So I think that comes naturally, but like, I wanted to learn. I wanted to understand. I wanted to see, see examples of what it could be. And it was just the group of people that we ended up with in the parent, the private parent council meeting. And, but there were parents in there and this was not a bereavement camp,

[00:26:42] but their kids were close to us five years out, three years out, 10 years out. And these parents were a puddle of tears and despair, still living in that land of cancer. And of course, as new parents in this journey, it terrified us, but it also made us hell bent to know whatever it was, we didn't want to do it that way. We didn't want to come out of this scarred for an entire life that if we were lucky enough and our kids survived, we make it a chapter and not the whole journey of our life.

[00:27:12] And that is that if, if we are blessed and that's my big, one of my big messages in the book to, to be able to come through this, let it go. And I did, I, I happened to practice a faith. Some, some people do, some people don't, doesn't matter, but it's interesting with some people who practice certain kinds of faiths, they can get really stuck in the unfairnesses because they think that their God did this to their kid. That was never, that was never it for me.

[00:27:38] I could, I could, I personally couldn't believe in a God that would do that to a small child. It just doesn't make sense to me. Nonetheless, I was spiraling on the what ifs when we had our little posse of friends dying and relapsing. And we went to a pastor at our, our Methodist church and spiraled for a bit. And she listened and listened. And she said, you know, have you ever considered she's the hope? And that just like, it was as though every cell in my body just went, I hadn't, I hadn't allowed

[00:28:08] myself to think it could be okay. Yeah. We're so good at thinking of the 15,000 things that won't happen or will go wrong or that they will die. That's natural when a child gets cancer or we get cancer or our parents get cancer, but we can just as easily change that narrative to maybe there'll be the hope. It's a practice. All of this is a practice, resiliency, advocacy, gratitude.

[00:28:36] These are, these aren't things that just suddenly we don't go through bad things and they become easy for us. Life still happens. And it's a practice to center us and ground us as we move through what it is we're facing. I can't imagine that those practices maybe help us to avoid burnout because if, if we're in

[00:29:00] the negativity and we're in the despair, then we're so susceptible to just giving up and having that resignation. And if you have a positive, what, you know, what a gift that you can persevere and you can

[00:29:25] keep, you know, coming back at it with an energy rather than be burned out about it. Especially if you have other kids in the house, I think that's important that they don't, they need to feel that your family is still intact. They have so many fears and worries and concerns when their sibling is sick or in treatment,

[00:29:50] I should say that, um, some normalcy for them that the quicker that we can make this journey feel normal and that's work. And that's in the gratitude and the positive, the better it is for everyone that even if during the day, we just have a few moments of like, this feels good. This feels normal. That's a gift. That's a gift. Yeah. Well, we, we kind of covered what we wanted to talk about, but is there anything else there

[00:30:20] that you stop of mind for you that you want to pass along? I think when you're facing this kind of diagnosis, the main thing that you're going to want to do is to get help. And I'm not trying to be a book pusher, but what frustrated me so much is I was just looking for information. And at the time there was only one book available and it was a little bit more, um, geared towards medical explanations.

[00:30:48] And I was so, so, so grateful for it. When I decided I had the bandwidth to write this book, I thought surely there will be 15. It's been a long time though. People will have handled this and they hadn't. And I think that's because we're all so fried. It, there is, there is, there are varying kinds of burnout, but it is inevitable that after something like this, you're going to be, let's just say very tired at least. So it took a lot of time and I'm not surprised now that nothing else was out there.

[00:31:19] My book, some other situation, parent groups get with people because this is a very isolating experience. Trauma is a very isolating experience. You need to surround yourself with people and it doesn't have to be a lot. And it might not be the people that you expect. So allow yourself to be open to who shows up and offers the help and take it because you can give it back in tenfold another day. Yeah.

[00:31:46] The other thing I, I know is that when some, when you do accept help, the person who gives the help is so joyous to be helpful, you know, and to have, to give some little part. Yeah. And I do, I do teach in the book, all of us, friends, family, grandparents, how to do it. Like here's a 10, here's how you do it to get them going. Cause they do want to help.

[00:32:15] They want to be there and they want to have that feel good. We just get a little trap sometimes, especially with the word cancer. Well, before we end, and I'm hoping that you're good to read that section of the book cause I just loved it so much, but before we get there, I wanted to ask you what you would tell your 20 something self today. Well, I've been thinking about this and I had a funny story when I was in college.

[00:32:45] So as around, you know, 18, 19, 20, 21, I, I am a UC, a proud UCLA Bruin. And I was, I'm not quite sure how, but I was a homecoming princess or why, but I was, and I remember going to the interview and they asked me something to the effect of what do you want to do with your life? Or how do you want to change the world? Like a big question, this panel of people. And I remember very distinctly saying, I want to be happy.

[00:33:12] I felt the room like stop for a second. Like what? It was very clear that I'd said the wrong thing and that I, I would find out later that people were like, I'm going to save this and do that. And you know what I mean? And I get that. But at the same time, now I think hold onto that. Don't change who you are that because there really isn't anything fun, more fundamental than that. However, I would change it from tap finding happiness to joy.

[00:33:42] I enjoy every day. I think we're caught up in this elusive idea of what happiness means and that you need things for happiness, but joy, joy's everywhere. Yeah, that's great. And how can our listeners and viewers get your book and follow you? It's available for presale on Amazon at the Cancer Parent Handbook. And I'm on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and my website. And they're all the same name, cancerparentshandbook.com.

[00:34:12] And I know you went to our online store. I did. You took a look. And there were a couple things I think you liked. I know, I can't, I can't decide. You don't have to decide if you just tell me what you like. It's yours. I will. I'll go, I'll go again shopping. There's so much cute stuff. I know. Thank you. I think you'd like one of the bookmarks. I did. And I think the other one was one of the cards about, I think it was the butterfly one.

[00:34:42] Yeah. I think I'm going to go with the bookmark. I think you'll, you'll get both not to worry. Okay. And I, I got to tell you listeners and viewers, this passage that she has, I think it's, we all need to hear it. And so we're going to end our episode with Laura reading from her book and, and I hope you enjoy it.

[00:35:09] When you are full of problems, there is no room for anything new to enter, no room for a solution. So whenever you can make some room, create some space so that you can find the life underneath your life situation. Eckhart Tolle, the power of now. The hope conversation with my pastor made me realize I was lost in the dark side of our cancer journey and full of problems. As Eckhart notes above, I constantly focused on potential problems.

[00:35:38] She might die, might relapse or get sick. Instead of seeing how good life was at this moment, she was in maintenance and rocking it. My self-absorption had become all encompassing and I had no space to give a crap about anything or anybody else. My made it problems loomed large because I was not managing my mind. I'd let it run wild with endless what ifs. Learning how to let go of worries and anxieties that were not relevant anymore.

[00:36:08] And instead, orient myself around the present good moment was transformative. It takes both inward and outward work to make that transformation happen. Thank you, Laura. Thank you for sharing your story. Thank you for letting me. Thank you for listening today. And we sure hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, please leave a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts. Tell a friend about us.

[00:36:38] Join our public Facebook group, Girl Take the Lead, or visit our website, girltaketheleadpod.com. We also have a YouTube channel where your subscription would be appreciated. Once you're on YouTube, search at Girl Take the Lead. And we're on YouTube music where you can find a video of this episode. And you can find a video on Spotify. One of my favorite quotes from the episode was,

[00:37:05] Surrendering and accepting is not giving up. It's actually giving you power. And I can see a card in that quote for sure. And she loved our butterfly card with the sentiment that reads, With brave wings, she flies. And she also liked our Embrace the Journey bookmark. Here are three episode takeaways.

[00:37:33] One, cancer is an all hands on deck kind of journey. Laura has included chapters in her book specific to parents, grandparents, friends, family, and caregivers. Two, positive is Cecilia's word that can help all of us. It means to have a positive attitude when we're facing things head on like she did.

[00:37:58] It is up to us to change our narrative so that we can manage and have agency because we've advocated for ourselves. Three, giving our kids the tools to advocate for themselves can help everyone manage. And create a calmer atmosphere. The aim of Laura's book is to give you the tools to ask the questions so that you can make choices.

[00:38:29] Our next episode will feature our guest, Scarlett Stanhope, the biz hippie. Scarlett is an expert on money management. She tells us how fear and scarcity can play a role in making decisions. And that money management can actually be fun. So please join us again and talk to you soon. Bye.