Latest / Giving Pain Purpose with Lyndsay Soprano / The Emotional Chaos of Cancer

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The Emotional Chaos of Cancer · Giving Pain Purpose with Lyndsay Soprano

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This is Your Pain Game podcast where we talk about the game of living in
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and with chronic pain and trauma get into the heart of how to heal.
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I am your host, Lindsay Soprano. On the show, I plan on
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discussing with doctors, chronic pain patients, ballistic practitioners, loved ones, and
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anybody that is interested in having their voice heard in the chronic pain and trauma
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world that we live in. So I woke up this morning and asked myself,
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how the hell do I endure all of this? Right with my CRPS
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and my pain and all of this. How do I endure so much stress
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and pain and the feeling of feeling like suffocated in it sometimes and stifled dreams
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things that I thought I'd be doing right now that I can't physically do right
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now, right now, right guys, is come in the sadness, the
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hurt like past trauma and current traumas. You know, how how do I
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endure this? How do I endure? So? I googled endurance and this
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is what I do, And this is what so many of us do.
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Right We endure. I endure unpleasant and difficult processes or situations without giving way.
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I fall I cry, I lose my mind, but I don't give
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up, and I endure the emotional chaos of my diagnosis and how it has
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uprooted every single ounce of my existence and those in my life as well.
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But I was stand that hardship and adversity with as much grace and laughter and
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tears as you all know from listening to this one as I possibly can.
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And then there is looking at endurance from a different lens, right, the
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lens of sport, if you will, the lens of persevering through unbearable conditions
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to continue in a long distance race to a finish line and a fish line
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that you kind of set for yourself. Which I love that idea of setting
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our own goals, right, So we set these finish line for ourselves.
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And it's not unlike my guests today. Wow, guys, just get ready
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for this wild and crazy animal. We are certainly cut from the same cloth,
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that's for sure. So let's get into this thing today. So we're
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going to talk about one of our favorite topics, cancer. Right, we've
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all been affected in some way, shape or formed by cancer. We've experienced
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it, We've looked at straight in the eye, whether it is from even
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if it's far removed. We've had people that are in our lives. I've
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talked about my aunt passing away from brain cancer. Right now, I've got
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an uncle who has a brain tumor that's killing him, who's going to die
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at any time, and it's horrible, and we're all affected from it,
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right And We've all been on this emotional journey, and I've dealt with the
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chaos that cancer throws at us to endure. And we've talked to so many
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people that have endured their cancer diagnoses and have lost many to it. One
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of my past guests, in fact, Fitzkohler, is a concertant reminder of
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how endurance and perseverance and spirit and spunk helped save her from her cancer diagnosis.
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And not everybody is as lucky as she is. So let's be real.
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I mean, cancer is like the queen of emotional chaos, right.
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She injects high doses of fear and anxiety and uncertainty into the life of the
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patient and the caregiver and the loved ones. So let's pull her off our
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throne and let's talk about it, and how my guest has worked his ass
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off to do just that So without further ado, I'd like to introduce to
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you my guests today, David Richmond. Hey, buddy, how are you.
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Oh my god, you're like a you're like a verbal writer as well.
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I'm something something. I'm great. Thank you, Lindsey. Really excited
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to talk to you. Really, oh, thank you so much so.
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David is an author, public speaker, and an endurance athlete whose mission is
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to form more meaningful human connections through storytelling, and that he does well.
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His first book, Winning in the Middle of the Pack, discussed how to
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get more out of ourselves than ever imagined. But for our conversation today,
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we're talking a little bit about his second book, right. It's called Cycle
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of Lives. David shares stories of people overcoming trauma and delves deeply into their
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emotional journeys with cancer. And he continues to do Iron Man try off ones
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and recently completed What You'll Hear About in regards to the book, a solo
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over five thousand mile bike ride, which is just freaking insane, and we're
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going to talk about it. So let's get started. I'd like to roll
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out the red carpet for you, and boy do you deserve it as long
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as it's soft. I guess so our feet from all the running. Oh
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my gosh, you're insane. I can't wait to get into this with you.
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So I'd like to start talking about why in the hell did you decide
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to get on your bike and ride across the country right out of the gates.
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And let's just take it from there, okay, lindsay so honest,
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like where's your just talking? A lot of you know how? Like they
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say, like nothing good happens after two in the morning at a party,
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Yes, but only epic things happen after two o'clock in the morning, after
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things, So there's nothing good that can come out of a stupid gimmick except
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for something epic. And I just thought it was a gimmicky. I thought,
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like, here's what anything like. Humans are only connected by two things.
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We're connected by emotion. Now we might have different emotional responses, but
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we have the same basket of emotions to draw from. All of us have
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those emotions, some can't tap into them, but we all have the same
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basket. The other thing, we're connected by a story. And I don't
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know a single person alive who if you catch somebody eye to eye and you
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go, hey, I've got the story for you. Got to hear the
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story. Who doesn't stop to hear the story. We're all connected by stories,
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So I thought, after interviewing these people for a couple of years and
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thinking that we're all connected by the emotion, we're connected by stories. What
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better way to connect these stories than to get on my bike and bike zigzagging
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to each one of the participants so that I could connect those stories. So
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it kind of came as a gimmicky thing like, oh, yeah, I
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could connect them by getting on my bike. And then all of a sudden,
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I realized, holy crab, that's a fight thousand miles and I only
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got X time to do it, and yeah, it's going to be a
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pretty big undertaking. But you know what, in retrospect, it was really
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an important facet of the book. It's really unbelievable. So this guy wrote
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a book about fifteen people's different lives, right, different stories like he's talking
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about in relations to their cancer journeys, and all of them are just their
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their heart stopping there. I mean, I cried, I laughed, just
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because I got to know this dude a little bit. There was a lot
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of his smart ass ness. It really is an amazing journey, and the
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way in which you put it together was really cool. Can we actually talk
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about I'm going to backstup just a little bit because a lot of this came
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from what happened to your sister June. So can we talk a little bit
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about June for us? Sure, and thank you for that. I'll be
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quick about it. But basically, the starting point of this project, and
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you're in the starting point of the answering your question happened with me at a
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big transformation point in my life. So I was an overweight smoker, I
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was married to an use of alcoholic I had four year old twins. On
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one side of the coin, life was great. I was running a massive
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business for a big Wall Street firm. Life was good. Everything was great.
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On the other side of the coin, it was a death trap.
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I was making bad decisions. I was in a horrible situation and my life
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needed to change. And I heard kind of the right words at the right
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time and started to go on a path to change my life. Like for
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the first time ever. This was right before I turned forty. Like I
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finally like got it, Like I finally understood, Like Okay, you got
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to live with intention, you got to try to be your best self.
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You gotta lean into who you could become, and you gotta let go of
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all the ship and you gotta just like just go forward. Yeah, And
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I see this big, huge journey ahead of me and like, I'm excited
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for the first time in my life of what I'm going to become. And
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right at that same time, I get a call from my sister who coming
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out of a very traumatic childhood. We were very close, very close in
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age, and had had overcome a lot of difficulty, but she was in
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a really great place in her life. And at that exact same time,
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she called me up and she said, hey, you know, I got
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brain cancer. I'm going to dice him. And I went, holy crap,
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Like, you know, the dichotomy of my finally getting this endless journey
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ahead of me where I'm kind of going to figure it all out, and
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then her having a very short and very narrow journey ahead of her, and
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it was really touching to me. So I really paid attention and I tried
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to figure out how in the world did you navigate that. I didn't know
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how to navigate either road, but I certainly didn't know how to navigate that
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road of like knowing you're going to die and having a beautiful marriage and beautiful
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kids and a great circle of friends and you're really grounded and being your best
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self and you know that's going to be taken away soon? How do you
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navigate that? And I wanted to learn And what I noticed Lindsay was that
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not just her, but everybody that was around her, or everybody that I
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encountered when I did events to raise money and I paid attention and I talked
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to doctors and I talked to nurses and whatever. I noticed that everybody had
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the same common theme at a certain level. If they could take care of
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stuff, they could deal with the tasks about the cancer, but they couldn't
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deal with the emotion of cancer. And how do you start a hard conversation
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like I can understand how to help Lindsay physically with some tasks, but how
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do I sit down and look Lindsay in the eye and go like, wow,
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dude, how are you feeling about what's going on? Like what's it
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like? Like that's hard to do, man, that's hard to do.
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It is it's very lonely in the shadows of any diagnosis that's going to affect
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you long term, whether it's I mean what my diagnosis is not cancer,
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but I it feels like a version of cancer to me because it is killing
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me and slowly and it's driving me batchtit crazy. But it's a very lonely
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place because and it's lonely for the people around you too. Like my sweetie's,
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he feels helpless and hopeless in some in some cases where it's like he
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can't do anything, in those moments where I am just dead to the world.
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I can't walk, I can't eat, I can't you know, all
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of those places when you and when you normally look at me and seeing me
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and talk to me, I'm this person right now, right right. This
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person is not here all the time. She shows up. But the darkness
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is very, very scary and very lonely. And so it's neat for people
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that even give a crop like you honestly to care to even come into those
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dark places with us, because it is scary and it is lonely, and
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it's like you said, it's lonely. It's very and not only do you
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isolate because you don't want to bring people down, and you don't want to
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get sympathy, and you don't want people to hold you at a certain level.
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I mean, there's a million things that are going on in your head
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that why are isolating, and then there's also the same amount of things that
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are going in other people's heads that are abandoning you. It's like, I
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literally just got a call from a friend of mine. He had a seventeen
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year old daughter on the phone, and she said, Hey, I need
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your help, and I said, yeah, what's up? And she said,
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my friend, his mom just got diagnosed with breast cancer. And obviously
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I can't talk to him. Obviously, I got to give him time to
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figure it out. When do I say something? And what can I say?
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And I'm like, let me tell you something, dude, Like every
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single one of his friends is saying, obviously I need to leave him alone.
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Obviously I can't talk to him, And what do you think that makes
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him feel? Like, oh my gosh, yeah, he's alone. Yeah,
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so obviously you need to talk to him right now, yeah, and
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say, I don't know the hell to say to you. I can't even
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imagine what the hell you're going through, but I need to talk to you,
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and I need to make sure you're okay, and I need to let
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you know that I care. Yeah, right, because obviously nobody else is
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doing that. So it's not only just a very isolating place people oftentimes,
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and most of the time they feel abandonment, or to prevent isolation or abandonment,
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they just lock everything up inside and never deal with it. Yeah,
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and that doesn't help us form authentic, deep connections. That doesn't that doesn't
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fulfill who we need to be in this life, and and and that can
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probably lead to more stuff. If you didn't have an outlet, if you
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didn't have somebody that could care, somebody that you could look at soul to
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soul and have some type of relief from the emotional chaos that you're going through,
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it might make things a heck of a lot worse. Yeah. I
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mean, in fact, this past couple of weeks have been fairly challenging,
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and the pain department over here, not that it isn't normally challenging, but
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it's been significantly higher over the past couple of weeks. And I know the
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reasons why, but man, I've just needed to just like sob and cry
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and yell and get mad and throw things to just like, get rid of
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some of that junk. Otherwise it's just gonna sit inside our bods like that
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book, and I say, and all the time, the body keeps a
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score, But it is totally true. It's just gonna sit there and keep
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traumatizing us more and more if we don't reach out and touch somebody, you
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know, and we have to and don't be afraid to reach out to your
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loved ones and say something. I would. I certainly would much rather have
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people give a crap and love me and reach out to me and want to
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know how I'm doing, then completely abandoned me and feel like, oh gosh,
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I've got to walk on eggshells around he or handle her with kid gloves
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and like, dude, it's me, like, no, please be invasive,
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show up, be here for me. Yeah, yeah, Lizzie.
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I don't know a lot, but I'll tell you one thing I know for
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certain. Every single person knows somebody in their life right now that is going
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through something absolutely horribly traumatic. Yep, and you the listener, have not
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reached out to them because you're afraid. That's been so much time. I
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don't know what to say. I got so busy, my problems are so
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minor. If I start asking, you know, I have really good things
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happen and they know it. So now I can't call them because it's going
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to make them feel bad, Like what the hell do I say? Like,
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it's better just not to call. They'll be a better time. And
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we all know, absolutely one percent guarantee you that there's somebody that's coming up
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on an anniversary of a death of a loved one they had, you know,
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a niece that had a major problem. I guarantee you there's somebody out
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there that's going I know this person. I should call it, but I
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haven't called. I don't know what the hell to say. Yeah, and
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I'm glad that you brought that up, especially in relation to my problems are
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minor, and I would like to address that, because it doesn't matter if
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your problems are minor in comparison to somebody else, you still are struggling through
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whatever you are struggling with. Like I have people that are like got my
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backers and like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. I did not
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mean to like complain about pain, because I know you go through far more
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than me. I'm like, oh my god, no, thank god,
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someone else, is it pain? Mean, please tell me experience that you're
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you're experiencing humanity like the rest of us are, you know, Like,
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don't walk on eggscels around me and we might be we might push back at
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you though, and don't let that get in the way of you continuously coming
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back towards us and giving us love, you know, because we don't know
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how to respond either. You know, it's tough, you know, And
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I can't speak in regards to cancer, but I can certainly speak in regards
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to my version of it. So in relation to your sister June, I
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know that the outcome was not good. What happened and how did that trigger
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what you just did with this miles and thousands of miles across our nation.
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Yeah, So what happened was that she became a board study, which was
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a good thing for her because it prolonged her life and increased her care.
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I think, and you know that's such a wonderful thing. If you can
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get matched up with a you know, a provider or what you drug whatever
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that they can make a study out of you, you get more attention.
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Right there's they need you and you need them. Just matching the two is
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together. So but eventually, and not too long after her diagnosis, she
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passed, and it was really really difficult for the people around her. Her
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husband and kids were very close to her, and his family very close to
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her. I was very close to her too, but not kind of part
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of that part of the inner circle. Her friends took it really really hard.
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I mean, it was really tough because she was a force of nature,
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you know, very lively, you know, I mean, like you,
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she walks into a room and owns it right, doesn't apologize, just
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this issue who she is and and people are gravitated to her, and so
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that was kind of a bummer and it was a big loss. But we
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oftentimes, if there's a silver lining in cancer, we oftentimes can wrap things
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up. We can we have the operatunity to form the deepest, most authentic
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connection with those people. It's not going to be pleasant all the time,
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and we might still be afraid to ask questions or to go deep, but
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it does give us a chance. In her and I weren't able to talk
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about everything, but we were able to talk about a lot of stuff.
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And that was her inviting me to talk to her and me not being afraid
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to talk to her, so at least we got that out, you know,
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And after she passed, I really thought like, well, okay,
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well, am I'm making this up like that. People have a difficulty or
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talking, you know, about the about trauma and especially in relation to earlier
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life trauma. You know, how are you dealing with your chronic pain and
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the loneliness of that in relation to earlier traumas that you had, right,
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because that's very important for me to understand what you're going through. I need
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to understand what you've been through. And so I wanted to see if I
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was my optic. Was that one situation that I'm blowing up and making a
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reality or is that the reality? And I just I'm trying to like finally
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discover it. That's the reality. And everybody I spoke to had that at
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some level that they that they isolated, They've got a band and they kept
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it all inside. They didn't know what to do, They didn't know how
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to talk about it or let other people talk to them about it. Just
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we just don't have those tools. And so I'm not qualified to solve the
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answer of how do we do that? But I thought I was qualified to
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be able to open up the curtain and say, you want to connect with
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Lindsay, let me tell you who she is. Let me let me show
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you, Let me show you who she is. That way, we might
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be able to next time we run into Lindsay or somebody like her, we
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might be able to understand how to better connect to them. And and that's
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and in the end, that's all that life's about. Right. But it
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is true because you know, we meet these people in our lives, not
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unlike you and me, and you know, in our own weird way is
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through doing episodes on this show. I'm connected to these people, some more
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specifically than others that I know. I would be able to reach out to
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you in ten fucking years from now and just be like, what's up,
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Like I need an ear, and you would totally be that person and I
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would be the same. That is something that is innate in me, though,
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and I think that a lot of people struggle with that, Like you're
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talking about being able to open up and share when it came to childhood,
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trauma and trauma all the way through even my last my last marriage, how
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many times am I married? My twentieth marriage? Whatever feels that way.
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Some days. But you know, going back to all of the different things
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that I've happened in my life, Like you're saying, you have to understand
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where you came from to understand where we are. And that's a challenge because
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it is hard to open up and be vulnerable and share. And that's something
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I had to learn to do to do this show because I was like,
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if I'm not going to be real and authentic, then I might as well
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just stop this immediately because it would just be a lie. And so it's
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been challenging to share some of the dark and dirty and twisty stuff that I've
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done or things that have happened to me. And I feel so much better
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that I'm doing it. Doesn't mean that it's easy. It's fucking hard.
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It is hard, and it's sad, and it's challenging. But man,
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am I feeling more blessed that I've chosen to go that route than do what
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I've done my whole life, which is stuff it down and hide it and
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pretend that nothing was going on. Yeah, and if you're not able to
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lean into that like deep real self, I mean how many times I do
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this? Oftentimes I wonder, like, you know, like I knew that
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person for twenty years and they're not in my life anymore. And you know
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what, there's nothing I'm missing. I don't have a single, deep,
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meaningful like memory of whatever, and I wasted twenty years. And then I
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think about this one tiny, little five minute interaction with some stranger that has
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never left me in twenty years, and I go, oh, my god,
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like, how ridiculous is it that you can have that shallow of a
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connection on purpose and that deep of a connection on purpose, And it doesn't
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matter if it's five minutes or twenty years, right, And so that's what
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I was fascinated by, is just the ability to see someone and the honor
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that I got in writing this book really was not everybody could do it,
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and I certainly couldn't get everything out of everyone, and not everybody could could
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could come prepared to give me what I needed. But everybody that made the
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book. Multiple times in our conversations they would look me in the eye.
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Well, we were always talking on the phone, but I could tell they
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would be looking at me, and if we were sitting next to each other,
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but they took a deep breath and they went, you know, I've
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never really ever talked about that. It's empowering, isn't it. I've never
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dealt with X. I've never told it. Can I tell you something I've
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never told anyone? Yeah? Yeah, I need to know that because I
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read on that and I loved that about the book, because you went through
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the motions of that in the book, talking about how you got people to
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tell their stories and how they were you know, like, oh, I'm
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not sure about the hesitation that so many of them had, and you chose
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fifteen different stories. I can't imagine how many you act really had. As
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I was reading that, I was just like, oh, my gosh,
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like he's he must have like more and more and more. How did you
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go about finding the people for I'm just going to call them guests, the
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guests in your book, the stories, the stories in your book. How
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did you go about finding these people and how did you choose I mean,
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my gosh, so these stories are just I mean, you must have just
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heard, well, at least from my experience reading your book, you heard
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the stories and stories and stories that weren't even part of your book, but
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you you know, you threw in you know, here and there where you
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talk to somebody else that was telling them about a story that helped you.
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Even in that bike story, you got to talk. There's so many things
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I want to talk about. You were going all over the place. No,
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no, I understand your question. So let me tell you what my
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thought process was. So I figure, if you talk to fifteen women about
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breast cancer and how they dealt with breast cancer, that it would maybe give
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you a wider perspective on dealing with that. If you dealt with fifteen people
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that were encountering early onset Alzheimer's, you could kind of maybe get a better
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My thought process was this, I don't want to solve for a problem.
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What I want to do is I looked at it. Imagine up wheel on
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a bicycle. That's a cycle of lives. I imagine a wheel on a
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bicycle, and it's separated into a million sections by all those spokes in the
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wheel, right, And so what I wanted to do was to fill in
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each one of those sections by going I want young, old in between.
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I want patient, doctor, nurse, caregiver. I wanted them to encounter
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cancer at a young age. I wanted to have them encounter cancer at an
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old age. I wanted it to be just a fear of cancer or having
22:36
lived with cancer five different times in their adult life. I wanted all types
22:41
of cancer, severity, everything that could so I could shine a light on
22:45
as many facets. And then what made me pick the people was to fill
22:49
in more spokes of what kind of traumas did you overcome? Because I can
22:53
identify with failed marriages, I can identify with being in an abusive relationship,
22:59
I can identify with having shitty parents. I can identify with a lot of
23:02
things. I might not be able to identify with what's it like as a
23:04
woman getting breast cancer? Okay, but I can understand how maybe because you
23:10
were you grew up in a household that was brutal, like my household was
23:14
brutal, I might understand how you might not be able to open up about
23:17
things I might understand, you know, So I wanted What I wanted to
23:19
do is cover as many sections in the in the wheel as possible, so
23:25
that I could fill it all in so we can understand the human experience.
23:27
And so when I when I picked stories, they needed to have enough differentiation
23:33
from all the other stories that that that it would cover the whole human experience,
23:37
because I don't want to try to solve for a problem. I just
23:40
want to be able to show people what what lies behind the kurt, what
23:42
what have people gone through? And what are they going through? And boy,
23:45
we have no idea? Yeah, well you accomplished just that. And
23:49
I'm not blowing sunshine up your ask your buddy. It tickles, but no,
23:57
it was. It's just a remarkable idea if I believest from my perspective,
24:03
and I really enjoyed it. Was there any story, particularly in your
24:07
book that stood out more than others? I mean, I know that's a
24:08
tough question. They're all they're so sad and so tragic, and also at
24:14
the same time so incredibly uplifting and positive. I'll tell you the one I
24:18
think that really gave me a new way of thinking about everything was the story
24:26
of a woman who when she found out that she had been diagnosed with brain
24:32
cancer a tumor the size of a grapefruit, and that she was being wheeled
24:37
into surgery which she might not come out of, and she was going to
24:41
leave her husband and six kids behind. And when her husband told her what
24:45
was going on, because they had no idea, when her husband told her
24:48
what was going on, she said, thank God, it's cancer. And
24:52
her greatest emotion from cancer was gratitude. And I'm like, how is that
24:57
even possible? Right? And it's not. It's just it's not right.
25:03
It's not possible. How could it even be possible? And don't give me
25:06
something like, oh, you know, God gives you what you can handle
25:08
them. But but literally she cried tears of joy and gratitude for hearing that.
25:14
And I couldn't wrap my brain around it until I really understood the story.
25:18
And each story kind of gave me that, like when, like why
25:22
can't you have a positive emotion like gratitude knowing that you are being willed into
25:26
surgery, and like what's the story behind that? The story, to be
25:30
really really brief, is twenty five years of a marriage, tons of therapy,
25:36
six kids, lost one at eighteen months. I mean, they have
25:41
come through the ringer of these people, and they're very fortunate, very successful
25:45
in life, financially and otherwise. But she started going downhill mentally, and
25:51
so much to a point that she decided, in a moment of clarity during
25:56
a tremendous amount of casts, that she was the problem and the only way
26:00
that we can keep our family together is to put me in a mental institution.
26:06
Well, and she's the one that had to come to the realization that
26:10
she was going crazy, she was the problem, and she had to extricate
26:14
herself from her beautiful life and put herself in a mental institution to get better
26:18
because it was her. And when they put her in the institution, they
26:22
put her through a battery of tests. Within twenty four hours, they called
26:26
up her husband and said, she's got a tumor the size of a great
26:29
food. It's always going to make me cry. And she said, thank
26:33
god, it's cancer. Oh my gosh. So how are you not going
26:37
to allow somebody to feel gratitude? How are you going to tell them how
26:41
to feel about what they're going through because you have no idea what they're going
26:44
through. And so those are the kind of stories that made me think,
26:48
like, like, if I can tell the story the way that it needs
26:52
to be told, which is let's just strip it all bear and tell everybody
26:56
what you've been through, it might make me understand next time when you say
27:00
something I think is freaking stupid, like, oh my god, I'm so
27:04
grateful that my leg got cut off that I'm not going to look at you
27:07
like you're like you're a moron. Yeah, I mean it's even like even
27:11
when I use this example here and there, but it's like when we're driving,
27:15
we all get pissed off of people that are on the road. Right.
27:17
People are doing stupid shit left and riving around us. They're texting,
27:18
they're doing their makeup, they're shaving, they're drinking, they're eating what they're
27:22
like doing an entire day's work in their car while they're driving. It drives
27:26
me nuts. But you've got some people that you know, their hands are
27:29
on their wheel and they're speeding through and I keep thinking in my head like
27:32
maybe their wife is in the backseat giving birth and they're on the ray of
27:34
the hospital, or maybe they just found out that they have cancer, or
27:37
maybe they just found out that their daughter was in a car accident and their
27:40
rushing. So, I mean, there might they might not all be assholes
27:42
around us, right, Like, we all have to give each other some
27:45
grace that there might be some stuff going on in their lives that are causing
27:48
them to behave this way. That doesn't necessarily give everybody a free pass to
27:52
drive like an a hole. But I'm just saying it is a good representation
27:56
and an example. If we don't know what's going on around us, we
27:59
just don't, you know, and we need to be a little bit more
28:02
loving in regards to it, that's for sure. I just kind of started
28:06
being able to verbalize this lately. But the universe is a great mirror,
28:11
right, and it reflects what we see. And if I see people as
28:15
one dimensional, then the universe is going to show me that people are one
28:18
dimensional. And that's okay because that's that's just the way I'm viewing the world.
28:22
That's what I'm seeing. So that's what get reflected back on me.
28:25
If I have a deeper understanding that people are multidimensional and that there is more
28:30
to the story and that maybe I don't know everything, then guess what,
28:33
the universe is going to show me that people are multidimensional. I don't know
28:37
that, right, and so so it's it's important. And each one of
28:42
these stories has given me at least one, but probably two or three or
28:48
four really points of reference to how amazing people are and what the things that
28:52
they've gone through. And I tried my hardest in telling these stories so that
28:57
people could sit back go oh yeah, So when you say you're okay,
29:02
it really doesn't mean that right now. Of course. It's just like when
29:04
women say to you, you men in our lives were fine, We're fine,
29:11
I'm fine. That does not mean we're fine, by the way.
29:14
I mean could very rarely, very rarely, very really. So okay,
29:18
So let's get to the actual biking part of this, because that is like
29:22
a whole other part of this book obviously, because you're telling these stories of
29:27
these people and then you're getting into the nitty gritty of what you're doing on
29:32
the daily. Well, first of all, let's talk about why you got
29:33
on a bike and why you wanted to go do this crazy ass thing that
29:37
you just did and put it into this book. But why did you get
29:41
behind on a bike of all things? Because I hate cyclists, by the
29:45
way, and I'm pointing out him, I love you, but I'm like,
29:48
come on, I don't want to share the road with you. Drive
29:49
me crazy, But why why you did this? And give us like I
29:56
want? I wanted you to tell the story about the Texas and the bridge
29:57
because that is just insane. I literally felt like I was there with you.
30:00
You wrote it so eloquently. Okay, So, first of all,
30:04
one out of every ten drivers is a total jerk. Let's be honest.
30:08
Okay, only one. Let's be honest. One out of every ten cyclists
30:12
thinks they own the road. I feel like it's nine out of time.
30:15
No, it's really not. It's really not. Not focusing on the one
30:19
and take care for the nine because okay, carry on the road. It
30:23
is scary reading this book, maybe not want to ever be on the road
30:26
outside of a car. And I've driven through every state in this nation,
30:30
as well as all through Canada, so I understand the open road is scary,
30:34
that's for sure. I'm still traumatized by it. But again, in
30:37
the in the vein of not wanting to be myopic and creating my own reality,
30:42
I said, okay, well you got these all these stories and okay,
30:45
yeah there, okay, but maybe you attracted those stories and there's really
30:49
only fifteen people that have a deep battle with the emotional chaos of cancer.
30:56
Right, And then I said, well, if you get any bike and
30:57
you go check it out, maybe maybe you'll find out if you're right or
31:00
wrong. And every single day, lending every single day I ran into someone
31:04
or multiple someone's who was like, you know, I was at work the
31:10
other day and somebody told me that their uncle got cancer and I don't know
31:12
how to say, so I just laughed and I tell I'm avoiding them.
31:15
What the hell do I say, right, or something like that, And
31:18
it was just shocking to me that, I mean, every single day,
31:23
I can't even tell you, the stories are endless on everybody resonated with this
31:29
idea of I don't want to say to people or I don't know how to
31:33
let people say something to me, like I'm not going to open up to
31:34
them because I'm not going to bring them down and I don't want their sympathy
31:37
and right yea. So it was kind of cool because on the bike ride
31:41
I did that, I discovered that we're all just that we're all just that
31:47
we just don't know what to say, we don't have the tools, and
31:48
so that kind of fueled me to continue to do the bike ride. But
31:53
I was on interstates most of the time because I had to get from point
31:56
A to point beach day. I was on a schedule. The hotels were
32:00
mostly donated. I think all but one or two nights were donated, and
32:05
I was visiting a lot of places along the way and a lot of people
32:07
along the way, so I didn't have a chance to take an extra day
32:10
off or whatever. So I had to get from start to finish each day,
32:14
you know, in a very specific manner, which made it really,
32:16
really tough. It made it really tough. And I learned a million lessons
32:21
out there, and other lessons that I had learned in life were exclamation point,
32:24
you know, like underlying bold yep, yep, that was the lesson
32:29
that you learned, and it's more true now, yeah, And being alone
32:32
with yourself and in your head and you know, in the dark and in
32:36
the rain and all of the things that you went through, like whoa like
32:38
that, being with yourself takes a lot of It actually takes a lot of
32:43
strength to be alone with yourself, at least from my perspective, it does.
32:47
And I learned a lot out there. I definitely learned a lot,
32:51
and I saw a lot, and I'm very grateful for the opportunity. I
32:52
learned two of the most valuable lessons of my life out there. One of
32:58
those was that I had perfectly fine grieved my my sister. I was totally
33:06
fine with having dealt with that loss, right, Like, I felt pretty
33:08
good about it. But I realized that the one thing I didn't grieve was
33:14
that nobody knew me as a kid, right, Nobody knew what I had
33:20
been through, and it was not good. She was the one person.
33:22
She was the one person that I could have said, hey, you remember
33:27
when we were a little kid and this shitty thing happened, and how nobody
33:30
nobody else get that. That's one of the things about sibling loss. I
33:34
mean, every kind of lost is brutal, but that's one of the things
33:37
about sibling loss is that the people that know you as a little kid and
33:40
know what you've been through, and like, you don't have to convince them
33:44
that what happened happened. Yeah, yeah, you know, your parents didn't
33:49
see it that way, your friends didn't see it that way, the grandparents
33:51
didn't no way. So I had to grieve that and that was a that
33:54
was a really eye opening thing where I was just like, Okay, I
33:58
gotta figure out what it's like that nobody but the person that's dad will ever
34:01
know what I went through. You've got to tell the Texas Bridge story.
34:05
Come on, oh, my gosh, all right, well insane. It
34:09
was after Texas. It was in Louisiana. Oh, Louisiana. Texas was
34:14
a long road. Texas was a long that was nine or ten days biking
34:19
through tech Yeah, because through I dig Zach through Texas as well, but
34:23
on a bike in September in Texas and the heat and the wind is just
34:28
gross. But the four mile Bridge so really quick. So what happened was
34:31
because the four mile Bridge. Yeah, I'm on I'm on the high I'm
34:35
on highways, and so, uh, there's no shoulder, there's no sometimes
34:39
there's your shoulder. But when I get on this this bridge, like I
34:44
feel like I'm gonna die. Like I literally feel it because it's ominous.
34:49
There's these thunderstorms and you know it's like cars are barreling by, and I'm
34:52
like, what the hell? And there's got to visualize this. So as
34:55
I and my buddy it called me ahead of time and told me, hey,
34:59
there's there's just like Harry Bridge, a couple of miles long. Don't
35:01
worry about it, you'll be fine. So when I get on, I
35:04
realized there's no shoulder. And I don't know if you know this, but
35:07
pay attention to this next time you're driving. When you're out in the rural
35:10
areas, nobody drives in the left lane. Everybody drives in the right lane,
35:14
which if there's not a shoulder, means they're driving over you, right.
35:17
And so what I had to do was I had to get off my
35:21
bike. I had to lift it up. It was big, a heavy
35:23
metal bike. I had to step onto a little tiny little curve that's protecting
35:28
a bridge that if I fell over the bridge, I'd fall into the swamp,
35:31
you know, one hundred feet below me and get eaten by alligators for
35:35
sure. And I had to lean my bike over the bridge and let the
35:38
car pass me so it didn't swipe me. And then I put the bike
35:42
down, buckle back in, and then and take off again and look behind
35:45
me. And I got driving rain coming at me, and I'd look behind
35:47
all ship there's more cars coming. I had to hug jump up onto the
35:52
curb, lean over against the rail, not too far because I didn't want
35:53
to fall over. And then I'm like thinking to myself, do I text
35:58
my wife so she knows where I died? Do I just like making a
36:00
mystery, Like how am I gonna give her a closure, like like like
36:07
a is it gonna torture her? And know I died from the fall or
36:09
I got to eat by alligators or I got hit by a card and then
36:13
all of a sudden, trucks are coming and it's raining and it's like,
36:15
I think I'm gonna die. And I finally get to the other side of
36:19
the bridge. It took me like a half hour or something because of all
36:22
that popping on and up. And I talked to this this lady at the
36:25
convenience store. I'm just wiped out. It's like eleven o'clock at night.
36:29
I'm just fried. I think I escaped death like three times. And I
36:32
said, man, that that two mile bridge was tough, and she goes,
36:36
you mean four mile bridge And I'm like, yeah, because your buddy
36:38
said it's two miles Like whatever, dude, whatever. She's like, and
36:43
she goes, she goes, she looks at me like this. She goes,
36:45
uh, so you cannot go across that bridge on your bike And I
36:50
go, yeah, but I just did. I go You'll be crazy.
36:53
You're crazy, David well Man. There are many many stories like that throughout
37:00
the book, and it just it makes it so interesting because you're not just
37:02
talking about cancer. You're talking about the entire journey of your bike ride and
37:06
how you were processing all these It's such a wonderful read. And I'm not
37:09
just saying that because you know, it's not like I'm making any money off
37:13
of this. Well, also, you look at one hundred percent of the
37:15
proceeds from the book go to the to the cancer focused charities that were chosen
37:20
by the book participants. Or I'm not making any money off there. You
37:22
took that from me. I was going to say that, well, well,
37:25
as long as we were talking about who's making money, Yeah, that's
37:29
solid point. Solid point. But yeah, so Cycle of Lives is the
37:32
book, guys, and you absolutely need to grab a copy of it.
37:36
It's on Amazon. What have you all? Have? Everything in show notes,
37:38
how to find him social both of his books. Do you have anything
37:42
else coming up for you? Are you writing more? Are you writing as
37:45
well as writing? What are you doing? What's coming up for you?
37:49
Oh? Well, so yeah, I'm always writing books. I've got like
37:52
four or five in the in the works right now. I had written a
37:54
few others too, and some of them were industry type books and durs atalytic
37:59
type books or what ever. But yeah, I'm hopeful that one of these
38:01
days I'll have more time to folk make it the focus of my life.
38:05
But there's there's no money in books, you know, unless you're freaking Stephen
38:08
King or something like that, you know, or James Patterson. There's no
38:12
money in books really, or you know, if you're open winfree you and
38:15
then you write a book about running a marathon, is open winfree You've got
38:17
ten million in sales already, so right, yeah, yeah, so there's
38:21
really not a lot of money in books. And I would love to you
38:23
know, I mean, when you do something well and you love doing it,
38:25
but you also have to make money at it, so yeah, yeah,
38:29
whatever whatever, Yeah, but it is. It's been so wonderful a
38:32
to meet you and bida, have read your book and c to have been
38:36
with you today. I mean, this is just wonderful. I mean I
38:37
could talk to you for like another two hours, so well, I can't
38:40
do that. I can't do it when it's relevant. We'll talk some more,
38:45
right, it sounds good. Thank you so very much for joining us.
38:47
Is there anything that you'd like to leave our listeners with before we hit
38:50
the dusty trail here. Oh my gosh. I could leave them with a
38:52
lot of nuggets. I'd say one is, if you do read, thank
38:55
you for reading. There's the only way that we are inspired as writers is
39:00
because we think that maybe somebody out there could be touched by what we write.
39:04
So if you do read, let the author know that you appreciated their
39:07
work. Unless there was crap, then just don't let them know it was
39:09
crap. And U yeah, so I guess that's it. Just keep doing
39:14
what you're doing. Look, people won't talk about hard subjects, and the
39:17
last thing that I think you would want from the little bit of time that
39:21
we've I've known each other is for somebody to look at you all puppy dog
39:24
eye going oh I'm sorry. Oh yeah, you're dealing with that, right.
39:29
I literally like to put yourself out there and allow people an opportunity to
39:34
understand how to relate to you. Gives you a better opportunity to relate to
39:37
them. And honestly, isn't that The greatest joy in life is to is
39:40
to do that. So keep doing what you're doing. It's really amazing.
39:44
I love that. Thank you so very much. I appreciate your time today
39:47
being with us and you guys. I like I said, I'll put everything
39:50
in show notes for us and in social media you can find his book.
39:53
It's called Cycle of Lives. Again, one hundred percent of the net proceeds
39:57
go to support the charities that were chosen by the participant that we're within his
40:00
book. You can find him on social I'll put that in social media as
40:04
well. You can find him at David Hifen Richmond dot com as well.
40:07
All the information is there about him being an author, a motivational speaker,
40:10
and trainer and consultant, and you can find more about him and his journey
40:15
across the United States of America talking to all of these wild and crazy people
40:20
and opening up their hearts to him. And I'm just grateful for the people
40:23
that did that for you and for us as well. So thank you so
40:25
much for your time today. You are exclusively invited to share this emotionally chaotic
40:30
VIP pain journey together. Let's get to the heart of how to heal with
40:36
you by my side. Do you know someone who is living in and with
40:39
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40:44
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40:46
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40:52
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41:15
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