Gratitude for the Darkness: Josh Wimberly

Bunny: 0:03

Hi there and welcome to the lifesaving gratitude podcast. I’m Bunny Terry , and I’m joined by my co-host and producer. Johanna Medina. We’re talking today to Josh Wimberley , who is a friend of mine that I met at fight colorectal cancer’s, Call on Congress in I believe 2014. Josh was diagnosed with colon cancer at 30. He is a licensed clinical social worker. He lives in Alabama and this conversation… it’s tough at times because Josh has had a number of recurrences. And as he says in the interview, when we were talking during the podcast, he says , I don’t know. I may be at the end of my life. I don’t. I thought that was interesting. Johanna you’ve met him before. How was it for you to listen to this one?

Johanna: 1:11

Yeah. I met Josh, I guess, cause I went to Call on Congress the year after you. It was your second year and my first year and I met Josh and, you know, I was , finishing up my social work studies in grad school. So it was kind of interesting. I liked, you know, meeting other social workers, but I think this episode’s really gonna hit differently because he is the first person first guests we’ve had that is still in his, you know , in his journey, in his cancer journey. I say with coats and , um, you know , uh, we talk a lot, you and I, and our other guests, we kind of, we’ve talked before about, you know, not wanting to always use the word like survivor or fighting or, you know, your cancer battle because we do know a lot of people that have not, you know, quote unquote survived and we never want it to come across. Like those people who, as people say lost the battle with cancer, we never really want to you. And I tried not to say that because we don’t want it to seem like if you didn’t, again, I’m struggling with the words to say it, but , we don’t, we never want to… we are struggling with saying that because we don’t want it to seem like you weren’t fighting hard enough or you weren’t strong enough to, you know, survive the cancer because that’s never true. Everyone who’s, who has been diagnosed with cancer is a fighter and is a survivor in different ways, you know, but, but sometimes you just, you know, this, this disease takes a lot of lives and we’ve known a lot of people who, who have been taken from us from cancer and it is it’s devastating. So Josh’s, Josh’s story just, yeah, it really hits home differently. And it’s, it’s hard to know and know how much they can contribute to the world and then just be having to deal with this horrible disease.

Bunny: 3:05

Well, and the thing is that now… Because we recorded this a couple of days ago, but the thing that I’ve now told, I would say half a dozen people since I spoke with Josh, was that he talked . So frankly, first of all, about the journey and about how it’s affected his family , he’s really clear to talk about , the things he’s learned. And at one point I S I said, you know, I asked people , um, you know, are they grateful for , um, the cancer? And he is, he’s quick to say absolutely. Yes, I, and , um, any talks about being, not just, not just being grateful in darkness, in the midst of darkness during, during darkness, but being grateful for the darkness. And , um, that’s some powerful , um, it it’s so powerful and it was surprising to me. Yeah . I know that he was going to say that.

Johanna: 4:07

Yeah, I think it, I think it is surprising. And I think we also want to touch on the fact, and you mentioned it too, like not having that toxic positivity, because it still sucks. Like it’s still really crappy that Josh has this disease that he has, you know, how to reoccurance after reoccurance . And he says like, the window just keeps getting shorter and shorter. And he, the reality of it is that , um, you know, his, his cancer is not curable. He’s gonna live with this, you know, until he’s, he doesn’t anymore. And it’s just, it’s sad and it is just crappy. So we have to admit that it’s not always easy to find that gratitude and easy to find the light in the darkness. So we never want to minimize anyone’s experience in that either. So, but I think Josh, you and Josh both touch on that really well, too, in this episode.

Bunny: 5:02

Well, so I’ll just let folks know that there are moments when , I had to step away from the microphone even like now, because I get so angry at how cancer seems to diminish people’s lives. And at the same time, like, this is how life works. It’s people are empowered and then they’re sometimes physically diminished, but they’re mentally empowered. So I keep , and I keep using the word power over and over, but I don’t know a different term. Um, we both talked about joyous , um, about being joyous and how that’s, how he lives his life. Now, you know, it has these two miracle children and he finds joy in, I would say, in it on a daily basis and despite his pain on an almost momentary basis. So this is this is a really inspiring episode for me.

Johanna: 6:03

Yeah, yeah. It really is. It’s, it’s a great one. Please stick with it, it might be hard to listen to at some point, but it’s such an important message and are just on a kind of technical note as I was editing. Um, you know, unfortunately I think just because of maybe, you know, his environment and have probably having kids at home, Josh’s recording outside and there is, you know, there’s some background noise and there is a little bit of , um, kind of some noises that you might hear, but I tried to cut around it as much as possible, but just so you know, if you hear anything kind of funky, it may be last like 30 seconds. And I just really, really tried not to cut out too much of what he was saying, because it was all really important. So yeah, you might get some , ambience in the back.

Bunny: 6:50

He lives near a coast guard base. And so there are lots of helicopters and airplanes and it was raining because we’re there in the middle of a tropical storm. But , stay to the end because at the end, you, you want to hear what Josh has to say always.

Johanna: 7:08

Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Bunny: 7:10

Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening to Josh’s story. Like us follow us, review us and , we’re happy you’re here. So I’m here with my friend, Josh Wimberley , Josh and I met, we were both… we’ve both been diagnosed at some point in our life with colon cancer and we met at Call on Congress. Josh, I think it was 2014, maybe. Okay .

Josh: 7:41

I think I was trying to remember the actual date today and I couldn’t recall the exact, I’m sorry.

Bunny: 7:46

It’s okay. I think that we met in 14 and then we both ended up on the grassroots action committee of fi colorectal cancer and then did a panel , um , where one of us pretended to be a S uh, uh , Senator or, well, a Congress person and the other one was a lobbyist for fight CRC. And , I was on a Senator.

Josh: 8:11

Did I, give you a hard time as a fake Senator?

Bunny: 8:15

I think that I had to be the Senator because I was such a rookie and you were so good at it. So I can’t recall how we did that. However , so I’m , I’m reading your bio here, cause I think I’ve known this stuff , but you were diagnosed with stage three B rectal cancer in August, 2007, and you continue to walk this journey. So I, I’m just going to ask you to give our listeners , um, you know, they’re familiar with my book, the lifesaving gratitude book, but I you’ve got a completely different journey. So let’s tell folks what’s going on with you.

Josh: 8:50

Well, first of all, I’m thankful to be here. I’m thankful for your friendship. I’m glad that this journey has , um, blossomed in ways that it has for you. It’s amazing to see from a distance, even though we’re separated by geography, social media kind of keeps us all connected, which is good for advocacy and good for friendships and support. So I’m thankful for that.

Bunny: 9:09

And I think you should tell folks where you’re from because you have such a cool accent.

Josh: 9:13

Oh, I’m from mobile Alabama. So I am down here on the coast of the Gulf coast and we are currently in tropical storm Nicholas . So it’s raining a lot at home. So if you hear a drip drops in the back, it’s just the slight rain of it feels like it’s not going to end at this time of the year. The blessing is we get sunshine on the other end and sunshine and beaches are really fun. And if you don’t know, Alabama has great beaches. So if you didn’t know that, and you’re not from around here, you should look us up. We have some really family-friendly places that have beautiful beaches

Bunny: 9:43

And we have no beaches here. So..

Josh: 9:46

Yeah, we’ll come visit us, please. I’d love to come where you are. Believe me, that’s on my list. I’m actually headed to Utah and Vegas in the end of October to go to Zion national park, do some hiking with a friend . So I’m excited to get out west. That’s not, I haven’t been out there enough to enjoy the beauty with it’s out there. So I hope to be out there soon. But back to your question , um, I, my story is really long, so it’s hard to, I could take up the whole time we had one day just telling my story about cancer. Uh, like you said, I was diagnosed in 2007. I’ve been in and out of treatment a lot over the past 13 years.

Bunny: 10:26

So how old were you when you were diagnosed? Josh?

Josh: 10:29

I’m sorry. I was 30 years old. So I’m one of the early onset , uh, folks. Um, it wasn’t easy to get a colonoscopy. It was hard to get diagnosed, but when I finally got it , uh, everything started moving. Hasn’t been easy sailing since then. There’s all kinds of things that I’m sure other guests have explored other topics that come with being a cancer patient. And I don’t think it’s just unique to cancer. I think sometimes being a long-term chronic illness patient in any sense is a difficult journey. Um, cancer specifically though, has its own unique challenges. Uh, let’s see. I’ve, I’ve had, if you count major and minor surgeries, I’ve had roughly I think, nine major surgeries. So I’ve had my abdomen open completely like six different times. Um, and then I’ve had other corollary problems from radiation that have led to other surgeries. Um, I’m currently in taking a new treatment. I just started a new treatment about three weeks ago. So we found some cancer was not found. Some of my cancer that we knew about had started growing. So the meds I’d been on for a while and I got a lot of mileage out of those meds didn’t they just have stopped working, which is a reality for cancer patients. So I’m also new medications as of a couple of weeks ago. I just completed a short stint of radiation. That was my third time to do radiation. Um, and I’m doing my best to hang in there. So it’s, it’s, it’s not easy. I’m in a tough spot. I’m stage four there’s the cancer currently is, is not as it’s not curable. So we can’t surgically do anything because of where it’s at. It’s in the biggest problem, I have multiple tumors, but my problem tumor is in my pelvis and it’s really difficult. It’s sitting over my Skydeck nerve and growing into my hip. So it’s causing a lot of pain and discomfort and there’s just not much we can do. So we’re just throwing meds at it to see if we can keep it stable and extend my life and hope that I have quality of life in that time, which has become super important to me at this point in the journey. Um, difficult stuff I do. I have a six year old and a nine year old Brian and Nora. So these are just difficult times, you know, difficult topics. COVID sure as hell doesn’t make it any easier. Um, parenting is hard right now for those parents out there. I don’t care if you’re a cancer patient or not. Parenting is difficult right now, and it’s a unique time to be a parent. And I send out all my empathy and sympathy to people that are out there making tough choices with their kids right now because it’s tough. It’s hard.

Johanna: 13:12

Well, and you’re , you , have a doctorate in , social work.

Josh: 13:18

That’s right. I have a PhD in social work, although I don’t practice now , um , given where I am in my cancer journey, I’m on disability and no longer a practitioner, but it’s very important to my heart, like social work and my identity are certainly still connected.

Bunny: 13:34

I’m wondering if that training helps you in any way in this journey? I mean, you know , I would think an engineer with cancer maybe has a different mindset than say, I mean, you’re a cousin , I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m saying, but it feels to me like being, having that background in social work , um, maybe gives you a different viewpoint.

Josh: 13:53

I don’t know . I think it depends on where you come from. I think we all come to our disease journeys with different expertise, right? So I have certain expertise that others may not have. I certainly don’t believe I have something that others can’t get. Um, so maybe I have a toolbox that has skills that make certain parts of it easier. Um , my wife has a social worker too, so we’re a social work family, but it certainly has a it’s a double-edged sword there. So I could point out some my new things and other social workers would appreciate that sometimes create obstacles as well as being helpful, if that makes sense. Um, but it’s, I, I would agree that the toolbox, you have to have to be a practicing social worker , can, and I think in my case has helped me be a better cancer patient. I think there are certain parts of stress management and problem solving and how you manage emotions when you don’t have solutions. Um, because at the end of the day cancer, if you’re on it for a long time, it’s just a journey of diminishing options. For a lot of us, it’s just this slow Trek of I’m running out of things to do. And there’s a authenticity and honesty with that, but there’s also some fear and unknown, and that’s not a problem you can fix, you know, social workers are problem solvers. That’s what I used to tell my students as an educator at the end of the day, I think social workers are just problem solvers. They’re there to help people think about how to solve their own problems. And in that way they become active agents in the problem solving process. And so when it’s yourself, you’re having to use the things you’ve been telling people forever, you know, like, okay, well, one of the problems with trying to solve problems is that you don’t always have a solution. You know, you don’t cancer that I have, can’t be cure . I can’t fix that. The tumor in my pelvis is, is not gonna change course. It’s going to be what it is. I can’t fix that. So I need to move that away from the table of the things I’m trying to fix that I think I can fix and move it into the area of, okay, this is just a problem I got live with. This is just a reality that you’re going to have to accept and deal with it as best you can. And believe me, I am not successful all the time at that. It’s hard. And I think that gets to where I wanted to talk about today, which is how do you sit with, with hard stuff, you know, and how do you, how do you maintain that practice of gratitude? If the theme of what you’ve written about and what I’d like to talk to you about is gratitude, man, it’s hard. It’s hard to practice because my belief is that gratitude is a practice. If you see it as a destination, you’re only going to lose it when you feel like you got it. And the more you say, okay, I got to do this all the time. Boy, does that get challenging ? When things suck? I mean like, how are you supposed to be grateful for being stuck at home for two years with COVID because you have a compromised immune system. You’re surrounded by people in a certain region of the country that don’t seem to take it that seriously. And the risk to you to getting an opportunistic infection is really high. And you throw that in the middle of, okay, you’re at the end of your life. Holy. That’s really running up against this idea that you should go live your life to the fullest while you got time. Because that just means I’m throwing caution to the wind and putting myself at risk of some other disease that could be the end of my life. And so it’s really complicated, you know, and then you throw in your kids. And so it’s hard to be grateful at times, but I think there are gyms that I’m sure we’ll get to in a second that have come out of all that. And the more you practice it, I like to believe the better I get at it at being able to be grateful for the moment. And what’s being presented to me in my life in certain circumstances.

Bunny: 17:50

Well, I think this is a really… It’s a really timely topic because I, you know, when I started this , um, and in fact, if I was going to go back and write the book again, I would rewrite it even I just, which was just published in January, but at the time. But, but I, I think that what I, what I’m wanting to say now, or what I’m learning is that, it’s just what you said, gratitude is a practice and it’s not a, you know, it’s , I , I never, ever want to come across as being a toxic, toxic, positive in a toxic manner. I never want to diminish what people are feeling at the moment. I never, I , I, I never want to take away from , um, any sort of darkness or difficulty. I just want to say, I do think that what I know about gratitude is that it’s a choice on a daily basis. And some days it’s a really hard choice. I would imagine for you. It’s, you know, when I was in the middle of it and my dad would call and ask me, what , what are you grateful for? I’d be like, really? Cause because I feel like jumping off a cliff, I can’t think of anything. And so I, and your situation is certainly progressed to a much further state than I have. So I think it’s good to talk about right now. And especially during COVID, we had a guest Daphne Miller a couple of weeks ago, and she talked about how , um, we have to learn to be emotionally agile. That’s it’s you just said, it’s really hard to control your emotions when you don’t have a solution to a problem. So I’d like to kind of like to circle back to that, what is your , what what’s the gym that you’ve gotten or that you’re getting? Yeah .

Josh: 19:50

Whoever your friend or colleague, whoever said that about emotional , uh, flexibility or agile agility that’s that really goes hand in hand with, I guess, as a social worker, what we know about resilience, right? Like you need, you need to be able to handle multiple circumstances that are going to get thrown in your life. And I don’t think cancer patients are unique to that. Like, we all have struggles, we all have problems and sometimes life throws us curve balls and we have to be ready and agile for that. And the more rigid we are, I think it goes along with what we know about emotional intelligence, right. Are you able to , uh, and a lot of that comes in my opinion, from your ability to build compassion and empathy, not just for other people, but for yourself that , so that was a really hard lesson for me. So if I had to talk about answering the question you presented originally here, it would be, man. I had to really , uh , I had to sit with myself more to develop that condo gratitude and difficulty, you know, there was so much I’ll call it garbage or baggage I had to work through. Right. I had to get rid of a lot of you talked about toxic positivity. I think a lot of that was having to shed some of that because a lot of that, if you buy into it can really lead to a lot of guilt. If you’re in a bad spot, right? When you get bad circumstances thrown at you in life and everybody around you is throwing toxic positivity at you. If you buy into that, you’re setting yourself up to feel like crap, because you’re going to feel like you’re supposed to feel good all the time. And you should be grateful about all this crap that’s happening in your life. And that’s not fair to yourself, right? That’s not practicing compassion and empathy for where you are and what the circumstances are at your life in your situation. So a lot of that I had to learn and practice and just keep honing those skills. I think, I think along the way on your journey, if you don’t develop a respect for, like we said, gratitude, being a practice that you get better at, if you, and it’s almost like an ego thing too, the more you think you’re good at it, I think life’s ready to throw you something else and say, well really, are you really, can you be grateful for this? Like, okay, we got you in a place where you were grateful for what was going on in your life, even though cancer, you were at the end of your life and you’re making these tough choices. Well, how about COVID, let’s throw that in there. You know, can you be grateful now? And it’s so it’s like, you better be careful about how you approach gratitude, because I think there are lessons that the circumstances we find ourselves in life is trying to teach us. And I don’t know who that teacher is. I can tell you my spiritual autobiography and I could explain to you that, to me, that’s rooted in my Christianity and my walk with God, but I don’t think that’s something that has to be the same for your body . I think whatever faith tradition or non-faith tradition, whatever your life perspective and philosophy is. I think there are some valuable lessons that we all share about how we face adversity, how we come out of that because our character develop the skills we use to cope with strategy or adversity getting better, right? Are we leaning on the same strategies over and over and over again? Because if we are, I think we’re setting ourselves up again. And so sometimes you have to both sharpen the knives and the tools you have, but you got to look to other people who are wanting to help because other people have toolboxes too . And those toolboxes may have things in them that you don’t have, or you don’t have the capacity to have . And it’s not that you have to build your own or you just got to borrow it. But the only way you’re going to be able to borrow it is to ask for help. And boy is that hard. Most people will tell you that most people will say, yeah, that’s no problem. Well, let’s put you in situation and see how well you’re able to put your pride aside and ask for help because that’s a difficult life lesson.

Bunny: 23:53

Well, that was one of the hardest things for me to learn. I , you know, I’d always been the person who did stuff for other people. You know, I’m always the one who showed up at the hospital. I was always the one who brought food when you had a Memorial service. And I was always, that’s how, you know, I was raised in a Southern tradition too. And I come from a Christian background and to, to be in a position where I had to start asking people for help was really, really challenging. So

Josh: 24:22

Right. I had to be put in my place early in my journey. It was, I still remember the day because I was being so stubborn and one of my mentors sat me down and just looked at me and said, you realize you’re robbing other people from being with you on this journey when you don’t ask for help. You’re, you’re not, you’re robbing those people have the opportunity to help. You know, it’s not, it’s not a weakness as much as it is. Honestly, if I look back and I’m honest, a character flaw, right? Like an inability to say, boy, you need some healthy to ask for it. Um, because there are so many people waiting to help. And then with cancer and boy, I don’t know if it was for you too, but you’d be surprised at the people that show up to help. And the ones that you thought were going to be rock solid. That aren’t, I guess, and I don’t mean that in a mean way. I really don’t because cancer is hard and people are having to deal with their own mortality. When they look at you and you have an illness like that, there’s a whole lot going on in the dynamics of relationships when you have a terminal illness. Um, but I think there was some truth to that. I was quite surprised at the number of people that were willing to step up and help me to this day as I speak, I could not be here without the help of other people.

Bunny: 25:37

Well, that , that’s a hard one, but I, you, I just, I have to talk again for a minute about this, having compassion and empathy for yourself, because I don’t know about your journey, but there was a point in time where I was really ticked off at myself. I was I and my body. I was angry with my body as well. I thought, wait a second. So I didn’t get a colonoscopy at the moment that I should have. Um, I didn’t pay attention to signals that I sh I , and I wasn’t forceful enough, or I’ve heard this from other cancer patients. I wasn’t forceful enough with my doctor. And so there’s, there’s all this sort of outside anger, swirling. Well, it’s not, it’s not outside. It’s internal anger at your, at yourself and your system and your body for , for getting you into, you know, for lack of a better term, getting you in this mess . I mean, did you have some of that?

Josh: 26:32

Some, I think early in my journey, I think maybe, and I’m going to S we’re friends, so I hope we can speak freely. I think that sometimes when you’re, I think sometimes when your cancer journey is divergence, like ours has that having to deal with it over and over and over again, really wipe some of that out. Like some of those early feelings I had, I had to let go real quick, because if you’re going to be successful with dealing with cancer over and over and over again, you better stop blaming yourself. Because if you keep blaming yourself for getting cancer or buying into this idea that there was something different you could have done, because believe me, I made those same mistakes. It wasn’t like I was, I, you know, I had all this tale tale signs that I kind of overlooked for a couple months thinking it was something else. Um , but I can’t harp on that. It’s been 13 years. I can’t look back on that and , and look at it that way. I have to tell myself you had cancer years before that you just didn’t know. And so that’s where it becomes, excuse my language. I’m I’m of , I tell people all the time that cancer is a mind. Like there’s so many things that just flip upside down when you have cancer. And that has happened to me so many times where I’ve had to readjust my mental framework to survive. I’ve had to just let go of maybe how I saw certain things before. And I think some of that stuff you’re talking about with some of those times where, okay, the cancer’s back a third time, you’ve got a new tumor. You going to do this all over and you’ve done this twice in your life. Now we’re having to do it again. You’re going to have to have another surgery. You have to just accept that this is going to keep happening. And I accepted that a while ago. And , and the harder part with the compassion is that the hard part wasn’t accepting it. I think the harder part for me was having compassion with the fact that the windows of wellness, what I call them, those, those windows of, oh, in between the moments where cancers come back and you’re having to fight again, those kept getting shorter over time. Those windows just keep getting shorter and shorter, you know, because now like the law come down to like, what eight months between the last time this has happened. And it just keeps getting shorter and shorter and having you can’t, I guess I could choose denial if I want it . I learned a long time ago, denial doesn’t work and I’m sorry, denial works. It’s just not successful. But you can’t ignore that. You can’t ignore this like narrowing window of wellness. You keep having and having to have compassion for myself in the midst of that is my biggest struggle because I keep wanting to say right now where I am, my hardest struggle with compassion is figuring out if choosing to not do treatment anymore is the more compassionate choice. And that’s a really hard place to be like, trying to figure out, like, what is, what’s the more self-compassionate choice here? What do I really want my life to look like at the end? And am I making that a reality? And if I’m not why, and if I’m not, what do I want to do different to make that world more a reality? Um, and I don’t know what that is, because again, it’s complex and it’s multimodality because you got a family system that’s involved. It’s not just me. I got friends that support me. And it’s just difficult to be compassionate with myself right now, because I’m struggling with the weight of how heavy these decisions are. I got kept talk about putting off heavy decisions. These are some of the ones that I didn’t necessarily put off. Like, I didn’t think about them. Like I ha I’ve been ready. We’ve my family. And I have been ready for this moment. We knew these moments were coming, so it’s not like we ignored them, but when they get here, how do you, how do you really make it happen? You know, when you sit down and talk to your spouse or your loved one or your family about here’s how I want my life to look at the end, boy, how do you, how do you make that a reality? And how do you do it in a way that’s compassionate to who you are and who you want to be, because circumstances change. And how you think about your decisions before you find yourself in that firing line. Aren’t the same, you know, hypothetically thinking about a situation and being in the situation are different. It’s easy for me to say. I don’t want to feel like crap at the end of my life and keep trying things over and over and over again, aren’t going to be successful that are going to make me feel like crap. It’s easy for me to say that when I’m not at it, because when I’m at it, I’m looking at my two kids, right? And that’s a difficult decision to make when your six year old and your nine year old are playing games with you and you’re spending time with them. So those are, it’s just hard. Compare self-compassion is hard, but I do recognize that as one of my weaknesses and one of the things that I wish I was better at.

Bunny: 31:45

So you’ve done this amazing. I mean, you did this really amazing , sort of physical. I mean, it seemed to me like it was a transformation, this physical transformation where you made a decision about three or four years ago to take this body that that was still seemed to be fighting cancer on a , you know, on an, on again, off again basis. And you really got in your body , uh, about that. Can, can we talk about that for a minute? Just because I think that’s, that’s really gotta be helpful in some way.

Josh: 32:23

It’s I think it’s very helpful. It’s a catch 22 for me right now, because I can’t do any of that stuff right now. So if I get emotional about it’s because I’ve lost it and I’m experiencing loss about that right now. I didn’t know that my, oh , it’s okay. My pain, just not letting me do what I want. And I’m still kind of struggling emotionally with how life has changed so quickly and everything’s escalated so fast. Um, I wasn’t ready for that. This time. Things escalated and changed really fast for me. Like I’m talking like over three weeks, I went from feeling great and being as strong as I’ve ever been in my life to doing radiation, having a big tumor in my pelvis that was pushing into my hip and causing me lots of pain. And I couldn’t do things. So that’s where I am now. But I, you know, I think it was a process of seeing how other people who were in this situation were handling it and feeling inspired by that. I mean, I could name quite a few people. Who’ve inspired me and say, Hey, you still got some life in you. You know, why not make the best of it? And the best of it , uh, meant , uh, trying to get in better shape physically. Like if I’m going to survive, I think I need to give my body a chance to survive. And when I started that journey, I thought back then three years ago, almost four years ago now I thought once again, that I was at the end, right. My cancer had come. I think that was probably the fifth time I cancer come back and I’d had an emergent , all this stuff happened. And I ended up with an ostomy and had another surgery. And I was like, how this is just, just keeps happening. And I was like, but I got, I came out of that fog. I’d , I’d been running for a while. And I started taking some medicines that didn’t allow me to run because they were messing up my feet. And so I lost that and I got sad kind of like where I am now, it’s pretty similar. And some friends just told me, you should try this new kind of sports thing, or it’s called CrossFit. And I was like, man , I cannot, I can’t do that. Like that’s well, lo and behold, I just decided to give it a shot. And I went into it thinking , uh, at the time when I started that journey, I knew I had a surgery coming. I knew eventually I was going to have another surgery. It was just a matter of time. Right. We knew it was going to happen. It was just a matter of when. And we wanted to put it off as long as we could. So I knew that I was going to have a surgery and I was like, you know what, I’m going to make that my goal, but I get in shape because geez , this is going to be my fifth abdominal surgery. Like I know how they go. I know how difficult they are. I know what recovery is when they cut my belly wide open. And, you know, you have to use your core more than, you know , it’s, you know , I just know what that means. I think sometimes when I didn’t ever know what surgery was like, how confident I would be, the things are going to go fine. And the more they happen , I’m like, holy crap, these are really hard. And this is going to be difficult. And I’m aging and recovery doesn’t go easy. So I knew I needed to increase the likelihood that I would be strong enough to recover from those surgeries. And it also just became a place where I was able to do set goals and accomplish them. I think I’d missed that. I think in professional life in , and I just , you didn’t, you don’t get that kind of stuff in life, you know, and it’s nice to set goals for yourself and accomplish them. I don’t care where they are. And I just, that was part of that journey and it helped me emotionally and it still does. And I don’t, I’m praying and hoping that that is not gone. Um, but I just need to rethink what the, what that looks like. I don’t think I’m going to be able to maintain the frequency and the duration and the load of what I did. Cause I was, I’m still very proud of where I got, I had no idea. I would be able to do some of the things that I did. I’m thankful that I got coaches. That was one of the biggest decisions I ever made that helped was finding people that had expertise in that and asking for help. Again, it was that practice, right? Like we have to do this and other parts of your life. You can’t just do this with cancer. You know? Cause if anything, cancer puts a big a mirror on you , right. And says, Hey, here’s all the crap. That’s wrong with you when you really start self-reflecting and you have to deal with that aspect of it, all that, oh, here’s all these things that you don’t like about yourself that you keep hiding from other people. And so asking for help extended beyond the cancer journey. And it was like, okay, you’re not good at these things. Let’s find people that are and see if they want to help you. And , and behold, they did. And I got better at things and it felt really good to be strong. I spent most of my life obese before cancer. Um, so to be strong enough to do things also became an aspect of it because the people that inspired me to get fit were also the people telling me, you’ve got to live your life to the fullest. You know, these people were grabbing life and saying, Hey, let’s, let’s live. It . Let’s be grateful. And live with the time we got, except I had to ask myself, could you do those things? If someone called you and said, let’s go do this. Right? Like if someone said, Hey, Josh, you should climb a mountain. You want to go do that? I’d probably have been like, that sounds like a great idea, but I don’t know if I would have been physically able to do that. And so I started thinking, what are all these things you want to do with your life? And that are going to bring you joy and can you do them physically? Can you accomplish them? And then I started thinking, what are the things you’ve told the better I got, boy did it open up questions that were like, well, what are the things you’ve told yourself? You can’t do. You know, like how, how much time have you spent in your life telling yourself I can’t do that because that’s how I started with that journey was, oh, I’m glad that other people can do that, but I can’t do that. And so then when I spent time doing it and I figured out I could, it was like, oh, what else have I spent my life saying, oh, I can’t do that. But maybe I can . I just got to try it. And so then through the process of leaving work and struggling with disability, I had more time on my hands. I had more ability to say, Hey, let’s, let’s focus on stuff that makes you happy. You know? And , and as difficult as it was to let go of a professional identity, it’s probably the best thing that ever happened to me. It’s, it’s not easy, but, but not being in that rat race and having time to focus on things that bring me joy, things that make me happy and really like spend time with that is part of that compassion journey to that self empathy of, yeah. These are the things that , that aren’t the , that you don’t like about yourself if you want to change, but where are these places if you’re really going to change those things, boy does that, that seems like a heavy Debbie downer trip. Let’s just work on these. No, you got to do that in conjunction with stress management and, and investing in the things that bring you joy. Boy, let’s celebrate all these things that are awesome, you know, and let’s try to find more of these so we can multiply this because the more I multiply this, that other stuff is kind of taking care of itself. And I don’t have to spend so much emotional weight and time and energy trying to say, Hey , I’m I , how am I going to fix this about myself? That I don’t like, but let’s, we’re going to do that. We’re not going to ignore it because that would be that it would be being a bad husband and a bad father, but I want to concentrate on some of these things that made me happy. And that’s what I’ve tried and been doing for the past year and a half, I guess, trying as best as I can.

Bunny: 39:58

Well, I think that , recently, you know, everybody does this thing where they pick a word, you know, pick a word for the year. I’ve never been good at that because I, you know, at the beginning of the year, I always think, oh , I can’t make that choice right this minute. But recently I thought my word now for my life, not for the, not for a year, but the word I want to use in my life to remind myself, to make the right choices for my life is joyous. I want to use, I, I apply the word. Is it joyous? Does it create joy? Does it? And, I, you know, I want to talk for a little bit about your kids because I know that , um, I remember when your daughter was born, that it was, that was sort of a miraculous, I mean, I mean, can we talk for a minute about your kids and how you’re raising joyous kids?

Josh: 40:53

Sure. I mean, both of my , both of my kids are , are miracles to me in my life . I wasn’t, I wasn’t supposed to have children. So, you know, early in the cancer journey, we save sperm and , uh, you know, they knew cause I was going to radiate my pelvis. And so they had me , uh, bank, my sperm for later in life, which we did. Um, and then the time came to try to have kids that way, because I wasn’t able to have kids the natural way we tested and tried, and it just wasn’t happening. Um, and we used everything that we saved to try to get pregnant. And none of that worked through IVF. We did three rounds of IVF and in Alabama, that’s not covered by insurance. So all of that was just, oh yeah. So three separate rounds just out of pocket . And it didn’t work. So we were like, okay, you know, you’re depressed about that. Sad, but we were social workers. So we would adopt, you know, it’s no problem. We’ll just adopt that’s okay. Um, we knew we wanted children. We knew that was part of our journey as a married couple. We wanted to have children together. So we decided to adopt, but by that time, we had spent all our money doing IVF that we, you know, adoption’s expensive too . We had no money to adopt. Um, so we went with the Catholic social services locally in Alabama, where we lived at the time , uh, operated on like a sliding scale fee. Right. So they operated an adoption service that wasn’t based off of a set fee. It was based off of what you made and a percentage. So we got with them except they had a wait list, right. So you had to, you had to wait. So we were on the waiting list for about a year, I guess, wait, we thought we were going to hear from him and my wife got pregnant with our son. And so we, my son was born and it was a miracle and we still celebrate him and everything was going great. And then same thing happened three years later, I got pregnant with my daughter. And so now we have two kids that are just miracles to us and beautiful children. And , uh, they’re really, they’re really much more mature than how old they are. And a lot of that’s because of cancer and because of COVID and because of the intersection of cancer and COVID, and having a parent that’s ill. So they’re really , I’m so, so proud of how mature they’ve handled the past two , two years now, right? Cause they’ve been at home, they have lost so much over the past couple years because of me and having to be a parent and watch that is very difficult. But to see them at such a young age, wrestle with the reasoning and to be able to make an informed decision about, Hey, we’re doing this because we want to protect dad, man, that you wouldn’t talk about tearing your heart apart. Like that’s, you know , you , I don’t think some people have adult children. So having a six-year-old and a nine-year-old, that are mature enough to sit with that decision and make an informed one that takes into consideration, compassion and empathy for their parent, man, it’s heavy. It’s really heavy. And you don’t talk about gratitude. Like he’s , you’re just staring at it. Like you’re just looking at it and face.

Bunny: 44:31

Well, so I mean, we began this, you know, let’s, we want to talk about gratitude in a dark place, but I mean, you know, we have a lot of listeners that have, have, you know, I had , uh , I interviewed someone who lost a child to suicide and I, you know, we’ve, we’ve had we’ve we have people who are in dark places or who will be, you know, it’s, it’s like we talked about last week with my friend David Baker, who said you can’t, you can’t , um , shield your kids or the people you love from suffering. I mean, love and suffering go hand in hand. And so , um, it’s, it’s, I , I don’t even know really where I’m trying to go, except how do you , um, what , what, what, what would you, what sort of tips do you give people who are raising their kids in, a little bit of suffering? Not a little bit, a lot.

Josh: 45:33

Yeah. I think that’s where all parents are right now. Whether they’re honest about it or not. We collectively, if you asked me because of COVID are all grieving a loss, a sense of loss that most of us haven’t processed. I think those of us that have been in loss and experienced it can see it for ourselves, but we can’t make other people aware of that collective sense of how much we’re all hurting. Um, so I think that’s where all parents are. So I’m careful about giving any advice because I’m no expert in how to deal with this. I do know that our strategy and the strategy that I would give advice about is honesty. Like I can’t, I, I told my kids, you know, up until about, I don’t know, four months ago, our policy for the most part about dad and everything else was just to answer questions as honestly as we could. So if our kids came to us with questions, we answered them as honestly, we could , we didn’t keep anything from our kids, but we , we didn’t really expand on it. Right. It was whatever was enough of an answer for the, our child, whichever one, it was to feel like their question had been answered. And if there were other aspects of it that were heavy, maybe we shielded them a little bit from that, but we didn’t lie. There was no outright line. I would never tell anybody to a lot of their kids. I think that is counterproductive and will not help you in any way. I used to do family counseling and no. And so, you know, lately we had to sit them down and we had to say, really what’s going on and , and explain what’s really happening. Uh, because just because of the probability of what could happen in the short term and over the next 18 months or so, just trying to be honest with them. So that’s my main advice. I don’t think there’s an answer, I think in many ways. Um, and I say this carefully , uh, because I think my parents’ generation, I, I think what this generation of parents is going through is unique. I don’t think we have much to say, Hey, here’s how they did it. Here’s a good, successful strategy of how to do this. Like, so I’m trying not to judge other people’s decisions because all these decisions are just so complex today. Like, like, you know, like for instance, our kids are still virtual school. Like I can’t send my kids to school yet a because I’m at risk and if they bring home something, then I’m probably not going to , I could potentially have bad outcomes. Um, but also because I keep asking myself as a parent, would I have gone to a school with 1200 other students who were not wearing masks because at the beginning of the year and where we live , there was no mask policy for schools. So like, what if I was making that decision for myself, would I go to a school unvaccinated around, over a thousand other unvaccinated people right now? And my answer would have been no. So at the end of the day, I’d say, why would I let my kids do that? But then again, that opens up me to say, I’m judging all the other people that are having to do it. But what I don’t see is that they don’t have childcare like me. They have to go to work. And so there’s just all this mismatch of difficulty right now. That’s really difficult to be a parent. But at the end of the day, I think my answer is just to be as honest as you can, age appropriate. I don’t think there’s a need to put things above someone’s emotional intelligence, which isn’t always tied to an age. Right. So age appropriate, emotional intelligence, appropriateness honesty. And I think you can’t, I don’t think that’s necessarily anything that’s going to lead to something wrong. I don’t think that’s possible. I don’t think you can be honest about any circumstances with anybody and have a bad outcome from that honesty. It may be hard, but I don’t think it’s going to be bad. It’s just going to be honest.

Bunny: 49:51

So do you have some sort of a daily gratitude? I mean, what do you , what do you do on a daily basis with them or on your own, I mean, or is that daily or is it just sort of unconscious?

Josh: 50:07

I think the daily things I do with the kids, it’s just try to be okay. So one of my struggles right now , um, that I put myself under the microscope about is, is being present. Uh , I’m having some difficulties with feeling present because I’m here, but because of my pain, like I’m on morphine now. And there are just times where I get, I mean, I’m really, I’m dealing with , side effects of radiation. So I’m just really tired a lot. So I have to take lots of naps and there are just times where I don’t feel present. And I don’t know if that makes sense. I’m there physically, but I don’t feel present. And I feel like that’s unfair. So I feel bad about it. And I have a lot of emotions that I’m having to manage with that, but I try to be present. I try to make a concerted effort, whether it be play a game with them, my daughter and I lately I started baking cookies. So , just, just trying to do something with them, cause we’re both home. We’ve been home together for two years. We’re , I’m pretty sure we’ve gotten past the being tired of each other. And we’re so close. I feel like kids being vaccinated, it’s really so close and I keep telling them, we’re almost there. We’re almost there. Um, that our lives might resemble some kind of normalcy. But I just, I try, I try to be present. That’s my practice. Now, my practice personally, not collectively with my children. I am Jesuit educated. Uh, I was an educator also in a Jesuit institution. Um, the order of Jesuits as a Catholic order that was founded by St . Ignatius. And he has a spiritual practice that he promotes, which is the examine. And that’s a big part of my spiritual life and a big tool for my growth and this idea of who I’m becoming even in difficulty and really important for gratitude because the examine a good part of it is at the end of the day, you’re trying to ask yourself, how did the day go, right? Were there places where you let people down, were there places where you came up short, where there places that needed to be celebrated and , and how do you at the end of the day, think about that and reflect on it. It’s not asking you to make changes. There’s, you know, maybe you did somebody wrong and you need to go apologize, but it’s more just thinking those places where I came up short, what could I have done different? Right? What did I do today that helps somebody, if anything, and just trying to be aware of how your day goes, you know, how , and I think the more I practiced it and appreciated it, the more I was able to develop the ability to be grateful in the moment like to be.

: 52:48

And that gets back to what I wanted to talk about today, because there’s an aspect of this. We haven’t gotten to that if we have absolutely talking about.

Bunny: 52:54

We can talk as long as we, want.

Josh: 52:55

Which is I had to. So the more I practice and you can find out information about it, there’s all kinds of stuff you can read about it. It comes from St . Ignatius , spiritual exercises. I came to this appreciation of gratitude in that moment. It was so easy when I was younger. Or maybe if you think about gratitude on a developmental kind of scale, it’s not really tied to your age, it’s just tied to how you understand it. And how have you developed your practice? It was easy to be grateful about things in hindsight, right? Look back and be like, oh, I’m so grateful that happened. I’m so grateful. This person came in my life. I’m so grateful. They helped me yesterday. It’s really hard to have that sense of gratitude when it’s happening. Right? Because part of me in my spiritual journey says that my gratitude is connected to my prayer life with God. And when I gratitude is an outcome of my love and my compassion for myself and for others and for all living beings. And so when I feel it in that moment, I personally, from my faith perspective, feel like I’m , I’m , I’m close to God. Like I’m , I’m in that moment where I’m grateful right at that very second. And when it comes to my topic today, there’s another aspect of darkness that has hit me over the past year or so with these struggles lately, which is how do I be grateful for the darkness? Not just grateful in the darkness, but how do I practice being grateful for the fact that darkness happens in my life that I get in situations where this is hard and I don’t want to do this. And these decisions make no sense. And if I don’t choose anything, that’s the worst possible choice I could make. Uh , because then I’m just stuck here because for all up until a year ago, when I started thinking about it, like that gratitude in darkness was about the hope that this darkness is not going to last. Right? So much of that practice when I’m in darkness is telling myself and mantras of this is going to pass this too shall pass. Right? How many times do you hear that? When you’re in dark places, it makes me sick. Sometimes I hear it all the time for people like this is going to pass because I’m sitting here with stage four cancer. It didn’t in my life. Like maybe not, you know, this may not pass. Like this could be the time that’s the end of my life. And that darkness is going to be here until that happens until I find that light that I’m seeking for. So how am I, I need to rethink gratitude in that darkness and ask myself if I really have gratitude, if that’s something I had as a goal, and I want to practice and have as a character trait, am I thankful for bad? You know what I mean? Like, am I really so grateful that I could sit in that darkness and say to myself, not all the time, but at least part of it be like, Hey, I’m glad that I’m here because I that’s hard. But to me, if I really am grateful, I have to be grateful for everything I can’t pick and choose what I want to be grateful for. That’s not how gratitude works in my mind. And from where I come from, it tells me that if you’re grateful, you are grateful for it. All. Every part of it, self-acceptance all that bad crap you have in your life, all your trauma, all your baggage, you bring all the flaws you bring to relationships. You have to be grateful for that because if you’re not you’re , I would say in a nice, careful way that your developmental sense of gratitude hasn’t graduated yet you haven’t matriculated to the next step or whatever those steps might be. I think we all walk that journey differently. I don’t think it’s a linear path we’re on, but I certainly think there are developmental milestones along the way. And those aren’t tied to your age or your life course point. They sometimes can be tied to circumstances. We have to think about how adversity comes to us when it comes to us, how it comes to us, what it looks like. And eventually if we can be grateful in the moment saying thank you and being open to what it’s trying to tell me and teach me if I believe I am becoming something that I’m on this path of always trying to become me, right? Who am I? And who am I trying to be? If I believe that to the core, I have to be thankful for the hard that has carved out this person. That’s Josh Wimberley , right? Because without it, I’m not the same person, right? I’m certainly not Josh. When really today, if I haven’t gone through cancer for 13 years, I don’t think I’m the father I am, or the husband. I am, I may not be a bad, it could be different. There may be a universe where that Josh exists, but in this universe where we are right now on this guy , that’s had cancer for 13 years, but I’m still a human being. I got all these flaws and this junk that comes with being human. And I have to be grateful for it because that’s who I am. And , some of it I can change and I try to, because that’s part of becoming a better person. And I think we’re all called to that. But some of it’s just the muck of life, just the dirty mud and stuff we bring with us. And we’re so grateful that other people put up with it, right? Like we’re so grateful to have those loved ones in our life. They’re like, you know what? I don’t, I don’t love you because of those things. I love you in spite of those things and I can look past them and see the majority of that, goodness, that is you. And that’s honestly, that’s, I’m lucky to have a spouse that, that does that caregiver and a spouse and children.

Bunny: 59:09

So people say , people will say to me now, they’ll say, so, are you saying, you’re grateful that you got cancer? And I say, I say, I just like my friend who lost her son. She says, I am not grateful for the loss of my child, but I am grateful for who I am today because of the darkness and the light.

Josh: 59:41

I know that’s hard and I’m sure there’s a listener out there. That’s your friend. And I’m so sorry of how hard that is to hear, b ecause I don’t want anybody to be thankful for losing someone to suicide. I don’t want anybody to be thankful for loss t hat that’s not what I’m advocating. And I don’t think you are either a m. I have to be careful to qualify that because that can be hurtful to those people b ecause it minimizes their pain. But I , I do believe fundamentally that if you were to ask me today, there would have been points in my journey where if you asked me if I was thankful to get cancer w ould h ave said, no, but if you a sked me today, just like I said a second ago. Absolutely. I am. I would absolutely. Am I thankful of how difficult i t’s been? Not really. I’m not, it’s hard, but I’m grateful for the lessons. It’s taught me to think the people it’s brought into my life, the ability to easily ask for help now and not feel prideful about that and put my ego aside a nd have those support systems that are there to help. Yes. I didn’t see those things before cancer. I didn’t know that. I didn’t know, you know, my spiritual journey. I didn’t know Jesus, the healer until I got sick, there was a whole part of my spiritual journey that I had no idea what’s going to open up when I got diagnosed with a terminal illness. U m, and I’m not, again, I ‘m, I’m not, I don’t put my beliefs on others. So I’m careful to say I’m coming from a Christian tradition. I don’t want to minimize anybody else’s perspectives lately. I’ve had to tell myself the hard part lately is how y ou s ee I’m smiling. So I want your listeners to know I’m smiling. How awesome is it that at the end, if this is the end of my life, how awesome is it that a global pandemic came around that forced me to stay at home with my family for two years. If you had to talk about what you were into y our, t o L A, what y ou’re into your life would look like, wouldn’t you want to be around your family as much as possible and how a ll, I mean, what, what a crazy thing to happen, right? If this is the end of my life, what a crazy thing that a global pandemic that has never happened in over a hundred years, what happened at this moment? And I have spent the last two years with my kids a lot, and I’m sure my kids would have a different, different feeling about that. And I hope that when this is all said and done t hat I hope that it’s not the end of my life, but if it is, I hope they can see that later in life. I hope they can be like, wow, how amazing the universe did that, that, that happened. COVID sucked. I had to be home, but man, we got to, we got to be with dad for like two years. Y eah. I mean, I know that sounds crazy to people that, y ou k now, to the kids, like i f my kids heard, t hat’d be like, yeah, w e’ve been with dad for two years. I ‘d say it like that. You know, l ike, g eez. Yeah. Dad’s been getting o n t o us for two straight years, but you know, just to spend time with t hem is just absolutely m e a nd my wife t oo. My wife’s been working from home. So she’s a therapist. So when she’s not seeing somebody w e’re sitting in the living room together, there’s just all this quality time that happened because of a global pandemic. And I try to be happy about that.

Bunny: 1:03:03

Well, I’m like you, Josh. I hope this is not the end of your life. You have been so present while we’ve been talking. Um, I thank you for that, but I really, I mean, I’ve, I got to work on the gratitude for darkness piece in my life.

Josh: 1:03:23

Yeah . I don’t mean to speak like an expert,

Bunny: 1:03:26

But I, what a great point. I mean, I, you know, we’ve had a lot of loss in our household lately. A lot of friends who have passed away and it’s, it’s that’s I want to talk about that some more. Can we do this again?

Josh: 1:03:41

Yeah, of course.

Bunny: 1:03:42

Okay. Okay. All right. Well , thanks.

Josh: 1:03:47

I just want to leave with one final point.

Bunny: 1:03:49

Please do.

Josh: 1:03:50

So my dissertation and my research when I was an academic was about hopelessness. So I hope that anybody that’s listening to this and having a deal with darkness knows that there’s hope I do fundamentally believe that no matter what circumstance we find ourselves in, there’s a path to a better future. And the minute we let go of that, that hope that seed, that, that it, that it will get better with work. That yes, even if this is the end of my life and I can’t solve this problem, there’s a better future for me. My family has a better future. It’s it’s it will happen. It’s not going to be easy. And so I want anybody that’s listening to this to know that there’s help out there, that if you’re in darkness and you’re in a tough spot, you’re, you’re not alone. I think w e’re, we’re all struggling with that feeling right now, some of us better than others. And I think a lot of people feel alone right now, even if they’re around people and in proximity to people, they still feel alone because of what’s happened in the world. And we all need to be honest. There’s that word again? Honesty. We need to be honest about that so that we can help each other and say, you know what, what’s that, what is, I’m a big fan of Brene Brown. What does she say is the most important thing when someone’s in darkness i s, you know, me too, me too, t hat, that you don’t have to do anything else. You just have to look at somebody and be present and say, yeah, it sucks sometimes. And it, but it can suck with us together. You know, maybe I can make it suck a little less. And if we can just hold o n t o that, I think we can fight that monster. That’s hopelessness. That’s kind of seeps in when we’re not thinking about it. U m, because make no mistake, gratitude is not the antidote to hopelessness in my mind. It’s a good part of it, right? But gratitude is not enough. It’s not sufficient to help someone that’s in a really, really tough spot. And we have to be ready to share our, u h, love and our acceptance. U h, that brings somebody to a place to where they can be more grateful than they were when we tried to help them. U h, but we have to, we can’t just look at someone and tell them g ratitude’s enough, because if they’re in a dark place, you can practice gratitude and try to get out and dig. But it’s probably g oing t o take some other tools. And if you don’t have those tools, just like we were talking earlier, find somebody that does, you know, and ask them for help, b ecause I think you’ll be surprised.

Bunny: 1:06:25

Thank You, Josh. Thanks.

Josh: 1:06:28

You’re welcome. Thank you.

Bunny: 1:06:30

That’s all we’ve got today. Friends. I want to thank you for joining the life saving gratitude podcast with your host bunny Terry , that’s me and my producer and assistant Johanna Medina. We feel like we’re in the business of sharing the stories that save us, and we hope you’ll share as well by letting your friends and family know about the podcast follow and like us wherever you listen. And please take the time to leave a review, whether it’s a stellar comment or a suggestion, we are open to suggestions all the time. Also follow us on Instagram at life-saving gratitude pod. You can also follow me personally at Bunny Terry , Santa Fe. You can sign up at my website at bunnyterry .com to receive weekly emails about how to become the ultimate gratitude nerd. Thanks so much for checking in.

Bunny: Hi everyone. This is Bunny with the Lifesaving Gratitude podcast. Just in case you don’t know me, I am a stage four colon cancer survivor and the author of Lifesaving Gratitude, which is a book about how gratitude helped me kick cancer’s ass. 

Today we’re going to talk to a special guest about how marketing and marketers can use gratitude to create business and connections with clients and also for themselves to create a really positive way to do their job. But first, I just want to thank you for being here and ask that you download the podcast if you’d like. And certainly subscribe wherever you listen to other podcasts. But enough about me and enough about the podcast. 

I want to introduce you to my special guest, who’s also a friend. Craig Cunningham is currently a realtor with Keller Williams, Santa Fe. And that’s how I met him. However, this is a recent career for him and he was, and correct me if I mispronounce the word, but you were a hotelier. Is that the way to say that?

Craig: Yes. 

Bunny: Yes. He’s spent 30 years in corporate sales and marketing. He’s traveled extensively. I’m going to let him tell you all the places that he’s been to, but he is the founder and principal of Cunningham + Colleagues marketing consultants. He was in the past the VP of marketing and quality for Seaport Hotels and World Centers and the VP of marketing for Core North America. So welcome Craig Cunningham.

Craig: Thanks so much for having me on your podcast.

Bunny: I’m excited. I know you have some great tips for all of our listeners. When I think about these podcasts, I always think about the people that are going to want the information we’re offering. I mean, we’re here to help people and we’re here to figure out how gratitude can make everyone’s life not just easier and simpler, but also fuller. So why don’t you start, Greg? Just tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us how in the world you ended up in this completely different career? And yet the truth is we’re still just marketers first and realtors, second. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Tell our listeners.

Craig: Yeah. So, as you said, I’ve been in marketing and sales for more than 30 years. I actually started off with an advertising and PR agency and then had the good fortune to be hired by my hotel client at the time, Wyndham hotels. At that time it was a North American chain and it’s now international. 

But from then on, I was in the hotel business. It’s definitely a career where if you are not focused on client service and the whole concept of gratitude, you’re not going to be successful. I always thought of our job as just surprising and delighting our guests and making them feel like they chose the right hotel to be with. And so it was always about waking up every day and saying, “What can I do to make somebody’s day and to give them a great experience?” And, of course, to do this you have to be grateful because they opted to choose your hotel over the million other choices that they had. 

So when I retired from the hotel business two years ago, I was trying to figure out what else I wanted to do with my life. I started doing more volunteering. I volunteer with Kitchen Angels here in Santa Fe to deliver meals to people who are not able to leave their homes. But I also started thinking of whether I wanted to do something else from a professional standpoint and the real estate business seemed like a natural extension, because it’s all about client service. You have to figure out ways to make people feel like they’ve made the right choice in working with you. So it’s all about being grateful every day and figuring out what can I do to help them today. How else can I extend what I’m doing for them in a way that they will appreciate and know that I appreciate them. So that’s what it’s really all about, because of course they could work with a million other other people

Bunny: Right. And let’s talk for just a second. Don’t you think that marketing has changed over the 30 years that you’ve been doing this? I mean, it seems to me that when we were kids, which was back before the crust cooled, we were sort of marketed at. Just talk for a minute about how marketing is different now than it was 10 years ago or 30 years ago.

Craig: It’s funny, because I was going to say the exact same thing. Back in the day, you were running a TV ad or a radio spot or a print ad and it was passive in that you just presented the information, unless you were direct sales. But really with the advent of so much digital media, you are instantly able to forge a relationship with customers through social media, through Facebook, Instagram, where you’re having a dialogue with them from the very beginning. This allows you to work in a much more personal way and to be able to find out much more quickly how you can serve those people. 

So I think it’s changed completely. Before you just sort of put it out there into the ether and hope that something worked, and now you’re able to engage. And I’ve found that so much in real estate where I’m getting emails from folks and then it evolves from the email into a phone call or a zoom call or something like that instantly. I think that’s so much better for both people. Especially for somebody like me who wants to find ways to engage with people and to be of service to them, it makes it a lot easier and more rewarding.

Bunny: I just think about the ways that I connect with my clients. It’s as if you’re somehow conveying to those people that you’re grateful that they showed up.

Craig: Yeah, exactly. I mean, my whole thought is that it’s not a transaction, it’s a relationship. And that relationship can be multifaceted. Once you’ve sold them a house or sold their house, I like to think that we’ve formed a friendship and a bond and that relationship is going to continue. And honestly, I don’t even care if I ever get another piece of business for them. Now think of them as friends. I want to have them to my house for dinner or go have coffee or something like that. 

I think that kind of thing that makes a difference for people in wanting to work with me.  It’s coming from a position of wanting to be of service to them and wanting to make them happy and finding the right solution for them. I’m working with some first-time-buyers right now and I kind of feel like they’re my kids. It’s about, okay, how can I really help them with this? And they’re grateful for the counsel I’m able to give to them, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to work with them. So it’s very rewarding. I think if you approach business relationships in the same way as you would with your friends, it’s a win-win situation for everybody.

Bunny: Well, talking about those first-time home buyers, I mean, that’s one of my favorite deals. You never make the most money from those transactions, but I’m so grateful to be reminded that we are providing the American dream when we’re selling real estate. Yeah. It’s amazing. It’s my favorite experience.

Craig: Yeah. I mean, for somebody to have their first home and to be excited about how they’re going to decorate it and what they’re going to do. And with this young couple, seeing them excited when they see a house brings out all my empathy and makes me want to really go the extra mile for them to make sure they find the right house at the right price for them. And then I just never want to stop. So then it’s like, “Okay, now I’m going to find this person for you to do the plumbing, and I’m going to find this person, etc, and I’ll be with you with you  to help explain things.” I just want to really continue to be of service.

Bunny: I talk a lot, especially on my blog, about Judy Camp, who was one of my first real estate mentors. She was a great friend and Linda Gammons partner for a long time before she passed away. But Judy Camp always says, “If you come from contribution, you can’t help but be successful.”

Craig: Yeah. I mean, just as I was saying, you can’t think of it as a transaction. I think, coming from contribution, how can I help you? How can I make this a better experience? How can I make this work? Because, especially in a real estate transaction, it can be stressful. It’s the biggest financial transaction for the majority of us. So how do you take the burden and the pressure away from them and sort of guide them through the process? I just think the main thing is that it’s much more fun, whether you’re doing volunteer work or in business, to wake up every day and figure out how I could make it fun for somebody else. Because then it’s fun for you and it gets you excited and passionate about what you’re doing.

Bunny: Well, it sounds like our big “why’s” are really similar. I certainly don’t want to put any words in your mouth, but it sounds like your big “why” is just to make the life of the people you come in contact with better.

Craig: Yeah. Of course making money is nice, but there are lots of ways to make money. It’s more about whether you are getting energy from it. And I think you really get energy when you’re working with someone and trying to figure out how you can help them, how you can make their day better, how you can make the service that you’re providing better. And also just doing things that saying, “What about if I do X, Y, Z?” and they’re  like, “Oh, you’ll do that for me?” And I’m like, “Of course.”

I have another set of clients where the transaction was fairly complicated and we were looking at lots of properties. Coming from a corporate background, I love to do spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations—things like that. And so after about the third thing we had to do, they’re like, “Oh, how are we going to organize all these bids?”  And then one of the guys said to the other guy, “Well, Craig’s going to do a spreadsheet for us. He’s probably already got it done.” So it’s that kind of thing where you’re looking for ways to make their experience better.

Bunny: So this is always a funny question for me to ask, because I have such a loose gratitude practice other than just waking up in the morning and saying, “thank you, thank you, thank you,” and then writing things down, but do you have a practice that you follow that helps you both in your business and your personal life?

Craig: Well, since I came into real estate with Keller Williams, which focuses a lot on being servant leaders and helping people, I’ve gotten into the habit of writing three things I’m grateful for that day. It could be that it’s a beautiful day or a dog or my partner or the opportunity to help somebody or the coffee’s really good that day, but waking up and appreciating what you have in your life is a good way to get in a good mindset for the rest of it.

Bunny: Oh, absolutely. Something I always say is that we kind of rewire our brains. We do. We create new neural pathways every time we say that we’re grateful. So in terms of nuts and bolts, is there a way that you let your clients know? I mean, I find that there are a lot of young people, young entrepreneurs or people who are new to business, who forget how to tell their clients how they’re grateful for them, even if it’s a line in an email. Do you have something that you do specifically over and over?

Craig: I think for me, it’s maybe more in the actions. I think of “This is really going to be helpful if I do this or if I provide this information.” I think it’s always in my voice and the way that I write. I try to always communicate openly and in a friendly and conversational manner. But then I also think “It would be really cool and really helpful if I did X , Y , Z.” I created a whole PowerPoint just on the neighborhoods in Santa Fe, because if you’re out of town it gets confusing. And that came out of a client saying, “Well, I don’t really know the neighborhoods.” And I thought that this would be a great tool for them. So I created it and then I was able to use it with others. 

So I think for me, maybe it’s sort of on the fly. I used to say in the hotel hotel business, “How can I make this a wow experience?” Because the other way to think about it is that every relationship is with people. When you’re in a service business you’re really in the business of creating memories. You can create good memories or you can create bad memory and it’s much more fun to create good memories.

Bunny: And that just comes from a spirit of generosity. I mean, you obviously want this to be the best real estate experience they’ve ever had.

Craig: Right. Right. I’m very grateful for the people that have helped me along the way. I’ve been very fortunate in my career to always work for people who were concerned about my career development and my personal development and became dear friends. And I’ve had a couple of bosses that have hired me twice in two different jobs. So I’m always grateful for the things that other people have done for me. 

So then I want to pay it forward. When I came to Keller Williams and I was introduced to the team here, there was so much openness and willingness to share and help and support. It has been fantastic. What strikes me the most is how grateful I am for what other people have done for me. And how do I pay that back?

Bunny: I mean, this is not a podcast to plug Keller Williams. It’s really more to talk about mindset, but the place where I learned it was sitting in that training room and learning that my mindset was the secret sauce. I mean, that’s the success piece, right?

Craig: Yeah, exactly. It’s not just about production and everything. It’s about weight and having a sense of gratitude and contribution and a sense of abundance. And I don’t mean that in a monetary way. It could be abundance in your health or your friends or all of that kind of stuff. And I think back to you. Your experience with cancer was far worse than mine, but I did have prostate cancer about nine years ago. Everyone I worked with during that entire time when I was going for radiation every day for 10 weeks was so supportive. And then on the last day of radiation, there was this very important meeting, and everyone knew it was my last day.My whole team had a celebration for me on my last day. That was turning something that was obviously a challenging situation into something where I knew they really cared about me and supported me.

Bunny: Wow. I’m interested to hear how your mindset was in the middle of that? 

Craig: I’m just by nature, an optimistic person. So even though it was scary, I felt like I was in good hands from a medical standpoint and I just felt like I was gonna beat it. I had done the education that I needed to and then it was really about having a positive mindset. 

This is probably too much information, but I’ll say it anyway. You’re doing the radiation stripped down to your boxer shorts. And so I jokingly put this Facebook thing about the fact that I needed a new pair of boxer shorts for every day. And people started sending me underwear—different pairs of boxer shorts for every day. So while I was sitting there in the big machine, where you’re sort of in there and it’s buzzing and scanning and all that kind of stuff, it got to be kind of a joke with the techs:  “Oh , what’s he going to be wearing today?”

Bunny: I love that.

Craig: That was a way to keep my spirits up. And also during that process, I really learned how to be very focused. I was in a waiting room with people that were going through, frankly, worse things than prostate cancer. Don’t get me wrong, prostate cancer is pretty serious. It is. People die from it. But I was seeing so many other people that were having a much more challenging time than I was. And we became a family. We all bonded together during that process, because we were all waiting, sometimes for an hour. So it’s things like that. And also things like the kitchen angels service, where it helps reboot you every day for how grateful you should be in your own life and grateful for the opportunity to help other people.

Bunny: Right. There are tons of people who do get what a gift it is. People who don’t even have a specific gratitude practice, but at least an attitude every day that you’re going to figure out something. I just wrote a blog post on limiting beliefs and one of the things that I wanted to convey is that we get to choose every single moment how we view the world. And maybe for somebody out there who’s brand new in business or who’s starting a new business. I just read a statistic that said that the entrepreneur demographics are changing. And now like 48% of new entrepreneurs are over 50. So hooray for the old people! 

But I know that there are people out there right now who are thinking, “Well, I’m not any good at marketing. I’m not any good at that piece of it. I can sell stuff, but I’m not good at the marketing stuff.” I’ve got to tell you, I’m married to a guy who doesn’t believe in self promotion because he came from a generation when you played down your assets, instead of being grateful for them and talking about them. So I’d love to hear what you have to say to somebody who has that limiting belief that they can’t market. And they can’t promote themselves.

Craig: You know, we could all market ourselves, and we do it every day in our interactions.  Whether we think of it as marketing or not, we’re marketing ourselves all day long in how we react and treat other people. The thought I had as you were talking about your husband thinking self-promotion sounds like a dirty word is that it doesn’t have to be you talking  about “me, me, me” and “I did this million dollars in revenue.” This is kind of a turnoff in some ways, because you’re talking about yourself. But if you’re talking about how you can help somebody else and how you can provide a good experience for them with your information and knowledge, you’re not talking about yourself in that context. You’re talking about how you can be of service. I think that’s a much easier way for a lot of people from a generation where we weren’t really supposed to be talking about ourselves.

Bunny: Well, it was pre-social media. Our face wasn’t out there. We just weren’t trained to tell people, “Here’s the reason you should hire me instead of the other person.”

Craig: Yeah, exactly. I mean, now we’re all our own brands on social media. But I think that rather than saying to somebody, “Here’s why you should hire me versus somebody else,” you should just talk about how you can be of service in what you do in an authentic way. Then people are more likely to want to work with you, because you’re radiating a sense of positivity and an interest in them. And they’re not thinking that you just look at them as a transaction and then you’re onto the next person.

Bunny: I frequently use with my marketing coaching clients the example of a dinner party. If you went into a dinner party (and this is for people who are just beginning in whatever business they’re in, especially if they’re self-employed), you wouldn’t simply walk in, take your coat off and say, “Hey, I’m selling something, come and talk to me.” Right? I mean, that’s what you don’t want to do with marketing. You want to start by building a relationship. Can you talk a little bit about that? 

Craig: I think it goes all the way back to Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People. People do like to talk about themselves. And so the first thing is you should be listening. That was one of the first things I learned in marketing client service. You need to ask questions and learn from your clients. Focus on what they need, as opposed to talking about yourself. You really want to establish a dialogue with them about their wants and needs and hopes and fears and everything else. Then you can talk about how you can address them. But nobody wants to go in and all of a sudden have you sit down and say, “Here’s my PowerPoint about me and what I’ve done.” It should be more of establishing, from the very beginning, a relationship of openness with folks. Then, after hearing from them, you can say “Well, here’s how I think I can you and here are some ideas that I have that I could share with you.” So I think a key thing is really listening from the very beginning.

Bunny: I even found that to be helpful when I used to first go on listing appointments. I was so nervous that I would sit down and I would immediately try to book an appointment. You know, if you’re not in real estate, a listing appointment is just like sitting down with a prospective customer. I would be so nervous in the beginning and really coming from a place of scarcity where I thought, “If I don’t get this listing, I’m not sure I can pay the rent next month.” And if you’re coming from a place of scarcity, you’re likely to self-sabotage. But that’s such good advice because things changed when I finally learned how to sit back and listen: “I’m here to help you. Tell me what it is that you need. Talk to me.” It’s so powerful to give a client time to talk to you. And I think people forget to do that, right?

Craig: Yeah. And I think sometimes we do it because we’re afraid. What I’ve learned so much over the years in business working with people is that people are terrified of silence, so they will immediately start talking. If there’s a second of silence, you jump in and start babbling. Lord knows I do it. But if you just let somebody talk and let it sort of sit there for a second and not just try to be filling in all the time. It drives me crazy when people are doing that. It’s much better if you can have the client talk and then ask some more questions and then be warm and reflective about it. Back to the Dale Carnegie thing, I think one of his first points was if you’re at the dinner party, ask people about themselves. Most people do like to talk about themselves. So ask them and don’t just start talking about yourself. 

Bunny: I think that even people who would say, “I don’t like to talk about myself,” really do want somebody to ask them and listen to them.

Craig: Yeah. And it’s not just asking them to go on and on. It’s more meaningful questions about, for example, why they decided to move here. Just those kinds of questions that get them thinking. Growing up in materialistic Dallas, the joke was that the questions at a party were like, “Where do you live? What do you do? What do you drive?” And so it’s not questions like that. It’s asking them more about their life experience,

Bunny: You just brought me to another completely different point, which is for any realtors out there listening: I think it’s really important to convey to your clients how grateful you are for where you live. I mean, if our lifestyle is such a selling point, don’t you think you should share that?

Craig: Oh, yeah, exactly. I mean, living in Santa Fe there’s so much beauty. I’m looking out my window right now at the beautiful blue sky. When I leave my house in the morning and I see the mountains, and then when I’m coming home at night and the sun is setting over the mountains and I see all the different colors and everything, it’s just breathtaking. It’s great to live in such a great and wonderful environment and in a place that is very spiritual, going back with the native Americans—respect for the earth and nature and all of those things—I think it does help center us more than a lot of other places.

Bunny: How do you convey that to your clients? I know you’re doing something really cool online that’s different from some other realtors.

Craig: Well, I’m not just posting on my Facebook page,” Hey, I just sold this house or just sold that house.” Well, that’s great. But I’m more talking about new experiences in Santa Fe: new restaurants, or a new place to go hiking, or something exciting that’s happening at one of the museums or things like that—enthusiastically talking about the experience of living in Santa Fe. And if down the road, by the way, you’re looking at this stuff and you decide you want to buy a house here, I would love to help you. But it’s more about conveying the reason why we all want to live here

Bunny: And tell us about your blog, because I think it’s amazing.

Craig: So I created this blog, which is called Santa Fe Scenes. It’s that same kind of thing where it’s just talking about having fun in Santa Fe. One of the things was, you know, we’ve got the old Santa Fe trail and we’ve got the old Pincus trail, but did you know that we had a Margarita trail and a Chocolate trail? Stuff like that. Just being whimsical about it and talking about some of the things are unique about the city and sharing my own passion for Santa Fe. I was very fortunate to be able to do a lot of international travel for my job. I was grateful for the opportunity that I was given to see places that I wouldn’t have seen otherwise from Bogota to Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro and Beijing and places like that. So I’ve always been enthusiastic about travel and now living in such a beautiful place like Santa Fe, I want to share that enthusiasm with people.

Bunny: And you’re getting some good feedback on that I bet, right?

Craig: Yes, I am. I’m getting good feedback on it. It’s been a wonderful thing to reconnect with friends who are saying, “Good for you, you old dog! You’re back out there trying something new.” Because whenever someone says, “Oh, you’re a new realtor,” I say, “Well, I’m an old new realtor. I’m 61 and I’m starting this for the first time.” But it’s been great from that perspective and the support that you get from your friends. Then people are saying, “Oh, well, I know somebody who might be interested in sending you that information.” I think that’s one of the positive things that social media has done where we’ve been able to reconnect with so many people that we might have completely lost touch with.

Bunny: Oh yeah. I did a post not very long ago about how grateful I was, and it was in the middle of all the fear over Facebook and Twitter. And I just said that it’s such a great platform for reconnecting with cousins that I haven’t seen since I was six. I mean, I just turned 60. I’m an old dog and this is a new trick for me, but I think that if you use it the right way, it’s a real gift. I also think there are so many realtors, like you said, who just post either pictures of houses that they have listed or their accomplishments. And I think they’re really missing an opportunity.

Craig: Yeah. Because then you’re just talking at someone. You’re not sharing information and excitement about things with them. People don’t want to look at that stuff. They want to look at things like the fact that there are like six great chocolate tiers in Santa Fe. And then the next time I’m in town, I want to go to each one of them. Or discovering an amazing new hiking trail or a beautiful image of a shop window or a piece of art or something like that. 

Bunny: Yeah, it’s so much better than “I just listed this house at 123 main street. Don’t you wish you owned it?” Exactly.

Craig: Exactly. I think more people would react to it. I’d really like to have some of that green chili chocolate over at The Chocolate Smith or whatever. It’s much more interesting than a picture of a kitchen that has granite countertops. Oh my goodness.

Bunny: And, you know, Craig, I found that people will call me and they’ll say, “Well, I’ve been following you on Facebook for two years. And I feel like you’re my best friend. I think you’d be the right person to show me around and help me find a house.” And I bet that’s happening to you too.

Craig: Yeah, exactly. It’s funny, you mentioned that. One of the people I’ve been mentoring told me a story about how she posted a lovely picture of herself and then somebody called her and said, “I feel like I already know you because you just look like a nice person and I feel like I can trust you.” I think also that it’s our eyes and our smile and everything that conveys so much of what you’re talking about. If you have a spirit of gratitude and service and a sense of abundance, not scarcity, it shows in your face, your eyes, your smile, and your whole persona.

Bunny: Well, we’re going to have to wrap up here in a minute, but I would love to hear if you have just three great tips that you would give to somebody who feels kind of stuck in their marketing. It could be what you’ve learned in 30 years or in the last three days, whatever it is.

Craig: I think one is changing your question from “How do I market myself?” to “What can I do for this client?” or “What can I do that’s going to excite the people? How can I make them feel appreciated and valued?” And this can work in cases where you’re actually working one-on-one with a client or cases where you’re trying to figure out how to promote what you’re doing. How do I find ways to surprise and delight people? So I like to do that with social media buys, where you come up with quirky, little things to talk about that are authentically Santa Fe or a funny picture of my dog or something like that. You want to put a smile on people’s faces. And social media gives us so many opportunities to be able to do that in ways that we couldn’t before. So the main thing at the end of it is to put your client first, and then I think everything else will come from there.

Bunny: You’re absolutely right. I think as long as your passion is helping people, then success is just a natural by-product of that.

Craig: Exactly. People feel that energy and then they want to tell their friends about you.

Bunny: What I’ve found is that people want to be able to trust somebody, especially in this business where they’re making possibly the biggest purchase of their life.

Craig: Right? I’m thinking back to these younger clients. We were touring houses, and they were interested in one particular house and I was like, “No, I’m not going to let you buy this. This is not the right move.” And I think all of a sudden they’re like, “Wow, he really cares. He’s not just thinking ‘Tick tock, tick tock. We’ve seen three houses.’” This is not House Hunters International where there are the three properties and you have to buy one. So again, it’s not a transaction. It’s a journey. It’s a relationship.

Bunny: I think that’s the most important tip for somebody to take away. Whether you’re selling widgets or earrings or house cars or houses, this is not a transaction. It’s a relationship. We want people to trust you and come back over and over. I don’t know how you can love your job if you’re not doing it the way we’re doing it.

Craig: Yeah, exactly. And have fun with it. We get to meet interesting people all day long. We get to see things. We get to use our own creativity to express ourselves. I know there are people that are in jobs that don’t have that. But I also read things about  the janitor in an elementary school who takes real pride in what they do, and they are going to do the best job that they possibly can. So I think in almost everything, you can come at it with a mindset of “How can I make this a great experience for me and for others?”

Bunny: That’s great stuff. Tell us where people can find you and where they can find your blog.

Craig: Well, probably the most fun thing I’m doing is the Santa Fe Scenes blog. 

Bunny: Okay. And we’ll share that on the information page for the podcast. And then, of course, if people want to buy a house from you, they can find you through there?

Craig: Yeah. All my information is on there. So one stop shop.

Bunny: Craig, I’m so excited that you were here. This was fun. I think we could do it again.

Craig: Yeah. Yeah.

Bunny: Because I think this is the place where people get stuck. People who are self-employed get stuck in this part. And so I think there’s a lot of stuff that we can talk about.  But I’m of course really grateful that you agreed to talk with us.

Craig: Oh, thanks. It’s been a lot of fun. I appreciate it. 

Bunny: And to everybody else, thanks for being here. This is once again, the Lifesaving Gratitude podcast. I’m Bunny Terry. You are welcome to go to my website if you’d like to learn more about me and about buying my book, which is all about gratitude and how gratitude helped me kick stage four cancer’s ass. And we’d love to have you follow us and subscribe on spot Spotify, Apple, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Thanks so much, Craig.

Craig: Thank you. Next time.