Sense of Soul - Cycle of Lives

Episode Date: December 20, 2021

We had a wonderful conversation with David Richman, he is the author of Amazon’s Best Seller, Cycle of Lives. In this amazing book, David explores 15 people’s emotional journeys with cancer (caregivers, patients, loved ones, doctors, etc.) and the various traumas in their lives that affected their experience. These stories are interwoven amongst the narrative of David’s solo 5,000-mile bike ride to go meet the book participants whom he had been interviewing for a few years. 100% of the net proceeds of the book are being donated to various cancer-related charities picked by the book participants (or their survivors) and other cancer-focused charities. David’s book is inspirational, insightful, and evocative. Cycle of Lives is a non profit, raising awareness for cancer research, learn more at his website. CYCLE OF LIVES - David Richman Please join the journey, either by: 1. Supporting our non-profit organization – incorporated in California under the provisions of 501(c)(3) – with financial donations to help us support various charities and non-profit organizations dedicated to the care and treatment of cancer patients. Donations can be made via the “Donate” button at the top right of this page. 2. Becoming involved in the project either on a volunteer basis, or as a supporting partner (contact me directly at [e-mail]) 3. Following David and Cycle of Lives on FaceBook here and help us raise awareness for the Cycle of Lives bike ride and book project. *Please go check out our Sense of Soul’s merch and workshops and learn more about us @ www.mysenseofsoul.com! Also check out and join our Sense of Soul Patreon! Listen to Mande and Shanna’s mini-series, our Sacred Circles and monthly workshops and more! https://www.patreon.com/senseofsoul **Don’t forget to comment rate, follow us so you don’t miss an episode! Happy holidays!

Hey, Sense of Soul listeners, you may remember me. I'm Kavena Sharlow, the founder of the Intuitive Path Academy, and I am so excited to announce that I will be collaborating with the Sense of Soul ladies. So right now I'm offering an intuitive meditation class and it's beginning January 11th. And you can go to my senseofsoul.com right now and sign up and get more information. And I hope to see you soon. And remember, when you change your energy, you change your life. Welcome to the Sense of Soul podcast. We are your hosts, Shanna and Mandy.

Grab your coffee, open your mind, heart and soul. It's time to awaken. Today we have an amazing man by the name of David Richman. We are so excited to have him on. David is an entrepreneur, a public speaker, and he is definitely an athlete, let me tell you. David is also an author. He's written two books. The first one was called Winning in the Middle of the Pack, where he discussed how to get more out of ourselves than ever imagined. And then his second one is called the cycle of lives. The cycle of lives is 15 real stories of trials and triumph with victory and defeat. And we can't wait to hear your story, David, and talk to you more about your new book. Good morning. How are you? Hi. How are you? Hi. All right.

How are you? Good. So David, wait, where are you at? Just outside of Las Vegas. Okay, nice. I used to live there. We moved here during the pandemic. We had a vacation home here and we decided to make it our primary residence.

Seems like a lot of people are doing that. Yeah, we left California. You know, I mean, I'm raised in California. There's a lot of great things about California, but there's a few things that make it kind of tough to live there. I'm taking my daughter out there because she, of course, is so intrigued by like San Diego State University and she wants to look at UCLA and then she wants USC. I'm like, man, I was in L.A LA a couple of weeks ago and that homeless problem. And I mean, we have it here in Denver too, but man, I don't know. California doesn't seem like the place to be right now.

Great schools. My son went to UCSD. My daughter went to Fresno state. She was a golfer on the Fresno state golf team. Oh, wow. They loved it. But man, I'll tell you no way I would let my kid go to USC. The homeless problem around there is insane.

It's so bad. It's so depressing, too. I feel so terrible. It's terrible. I drove by it because I had to see it for myself to believe it. And I was, like, shocked at what I saw. Well, and you know what I've heard recently from some of my students who are younger, who have different perspectives than we do. And they're telling me that many of these people really it's their choice.

It's like a trend. I'll tell you what, in San Diego, that's absolutely the truth. Because my wife is a chairperson of an inner city youth mentoring organization in LA, right? That's one of her side things is she does that. And she's been doing it for years and years and years. And we comment how that the homeless problem in LA is a lot of drug related. We moved to San Diego for a couple of years very recently. And everybody is homeless is young and totally on drugs. It's on like, it's literally 90%. And it's like, why are you choosing to be homeless? It's literally unbelievable.

Not to be too graphic, but I have a friend that runs all the music in downtown LA at all the different venues. And he's lived in downtown LA for maybe going on 25 years. And up until about a year ago, he, I, when I'd ask him what's going on in downtown, he would say gunshot, gunshot, gunshot every day, all day long. And now he says, he goes, David, he goes, I'm telling you, I'm not exaggerating. He said, there isn't a day go by that. I don't walk by a homeless person.

That's OD. He goes, it's all fentanyl. He goes, it's all fentanyl. He goes, it's all fentanyl. He goes, literally every single day. Oh, yeah. He goes, David, it's like in a movie. He goes, it's unbelievable. He goes, I used to just like listen for the gunshots and just go, okay, well, there's today's gunshot. He goes, when I walk around downtown, because he walks to work or to all of his different venues and stuff.

He goes, David, I'm telling you, if I don't work or to all of his different venues and stuff, he goes, David, I'm telling you, if I don't see a dead homeless person, I'm shocked. Oh my gosh. That's so scary. Over the past few years, we know so many young people who have died of just that. It's just, it's a problem. It is a problem. Well, I will tell you, David, I'm so excited to talk to you for so many reasons. I think I might've cried just reading your bio. That's so nice. Oh, don't pick up the book then. I have a, I have a friend who texted me and she said, David Richmond, I hate you. I'm not a crier. I'm 50 pages in and you made me cry twice. I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. Oh my gosh. Well, I don't hate you. I just, this, this is my jam. This is my jam.

Like I love people's raw, authentic stories about their struggle and coming out on the other side, or even sometimes not. I think there's so many lessons to be told in pain. Unfortunately, I would never want that to happen to anyone. I just, you know, sense of soul, we are about turning pain into purpose and it looks like that's what you've done. I don't know where to implement my wow. When it comes to you, I don't know if my wow should be about what you've endured in your life, your obstacles. I don't know if the wow should be about the fact that you've done 50 triathlons. Like, are you freaking kidding me?

I don't know if the wow should be the 85 mile run to Mexico. Like there's just so many wows. So I'm just going to say wow. And then let Shanna jump in. You know, it's really funny is I, I always love that part at the end of Forrest Gump when he takes that long run across America and then he gets to the end. He's like, all right, I'm tired now. He goes over and everyone's like, what are you at the Forrest Gump point where

you're like, I'm done. Not yet. I mean, just a few years ago, I did that 4,700 mile bike ride solo to meet all the participants of the book. I'm doing an Ironman on Sunday, so I'm not quite done. You get used to the fact that it's painful, like these things hurt, but it still is kind of fun to see what you're capable of, you know? Yeah. You screamed the word perseverance to me.

It kind of goes to this like theory I have about like two kinds of people, like driving through life. One's looking in the rear view mirror and one's looking out the windshield. And I feel like if you're not looking out the windshield, like what lays ahead, then you might as well just park it, dude. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. I mean, have you looked from both views? Yes, but one for his, for perspective, the others for direction. Do you know what I'm saying? Like I'm looking forward for direction because I want to see what I can figure out. I mean, yeah, we all bring what's behind us with us, but it's definitely behind me. And I know this from, you know, all the people I interact with is that if you think your best days are behind you, then they are. It's just that. And I just

don't want to believe that. I just don't want to believe my best days are behind me. So I want to believe they're still ahead of me. So that's why I keep doing stuff. I hate those cliche for some of these old quotes are just that old. I hear that a lot from elderly people where they think it's like too late to change or they're like, it's just too late. No, it's not. It's never too late. Even just one more day of moving forward, you know? Yeah. But cliches don't make sense unless you understand what's behind them. Like I think they fall shallow, right? Like what a sense of soul mean? Like, Oh God, whatever. I sense a soul. But when you get into it and you realize that it's like a 360

view and you've got like, all you're hitting this from so many different angles and it's not just the soul. It's, you know, it's, it's your mindset and you do all this thing and you go, Oh, okay. Now I get it. Like one of my book participants, when I asked her what she went through and how she got through it, she said, oh, I just put my feet on the ground every day. And I want to roll my eyes at it. Right. I just put my feet on the ground every day. But then again, you realize this woman battled five different cancers over a 35 year period. And prior to that, spent four years locked up in an abusive relationship where she was beat up mentally, physically, and emotionally for four years, sent to the hospital multiple times and thought she was going to die. So when she says, I just put my feet on the ground every day, it doesn't sound

trite to me. Do you know, it doesn't sound cliche-ish not knowing what's behind it. It's a cliche, but knowing what's behind it, I'm like, damn, I can take something from that. I kind of felt that way in Alcoholics Anonymous with the posters everywhere to say one day at a time. And I'm like, if I hear that shit again, but then when I actually tried to get sober, it like had so much context and meant so much to me. I mean, it was one minute at a time for me. And then one day at a time. And then I was like, okay, now I like it. Yeah. You know, that's what I really wanted to do with this book is to not be prescriptive with a bunch of just simple little, you know, statements or thoughts or cliches that people could take. I really wanted to go

really, as you said earlier, raw, deep, and tell people stories so that people could identify with them. So they could go, oh, okay, that's what's going on. Yeah. Well, let's go back for a moment. Who's David, your soul, your personality, all of it. We want to know David. Let's see. I grew up in this San Fernando Valley of California. I like to say everybody's got kind of a wacky childhood, depending on how you look at it. Mine was a little wacky in that when I was born, my mom was 21 and my dad was, he was almost 60 years old when I was born. My mom was 21. So there was a 38 year difference between the two of them. And I quickly learned, although I wouldn't have said it like this as a young kid, but I quickly learned that my dad was way too old to take care of kids because he was an

old 60, like not a young 60. And my mom was way too young to take care of kids and really was not happy that she had them. And so my sister and I grew up kind of navigating a world where, you know, one parent didn't really know how to deal with us and the other didn't really know how to deal with us. And the other parent really didn't want to deal with us. So that got us to be like independent, I guess, but also to rely on each other. I left home at 18 and they're not great circumstances and quickly found myself after being robbed, after my car broke down, kind of homeless and

not knowing where to go. So, I mean, I did live in a Pinto station wagon behind a grocery store, you know, with nothing to eat, but a pack of cigarettes. And I had 56 cents in my pocket and nobody to call. Eventually I get to the point where I'm working on wall street. I'm running this a hundred million dollar in revenue business and I'm hiring, you know, 50, 80 people a year or something. And I like, did you still have the Pinto? No, I changed, I changed that. It would be worth a lot of money. It's funny, but I used to ask people as part of the interview process, tell me a low point in your life. And today low point is point a today's point B

kind of, how'd you get from point A to point B. And sometimes I got some pretty crazy stories, but I think it's important. You know, we talked earlier about that rear view, you know, mirror versus the windshield. I like to remember that, you know, there's no direct path in life, right? I mean, if I'm living in my Pinto station wagon, you know, eating cigarettes, and then now I'm running a major business for a major Wall Street firm. I mean, that is not expected. And so I don't box people into what I think that they should or shouldn't accomplish. And everybody's on their own journey. I've always been intrigued with the idea of you just don't know what people have been through, right? Because I know people just have no idea what I've been through. And I, therefore I got just have no idea what I've been through. And I, therefore, I got to have no idea what they've been through. And I've kind of always been intrigued by that.

Me too. It's kind of funny because we're all just passerbyers and everybody else's reality. And if you just stop for a moment and take a look, you could really uncover some pretty amazing things. And I didn't do that to try to figure out myself until my 30s, my late 30s. I was in an abusive alcoholic relationship, had young twins. I had to get us out of there and stresses at work and the whole thing. And then my sister called me and told me that she had terminal brain cancer. And so I was at a point where up until then, I don't think I ever really looked in the mirror real hard. And I started to look in the mirror and I said, shit, I got to start to change things. So that was kind of the start. That's who I am. That's

a little bit of framework for it. And that was kind of the inspiration for me to get into endurance athletics, you know, publish one of the more favorite books that I, that I've done is called winning in the middle of the pack. And then my sister's cancer led me on this journey of understanding that people are not equipped to talk about the difficult parts of trauma. They're just not, you know, people self-isolate to keep it hidden. They have shame. They have guilt. They're embarrassed. They don't want to ask for help. They don't want to accept it sometimes. And it's just because all of the trauma that they've been through in their past doesn't let them know how to deal with the emotional side of the issues that they're going through. And I saw that people just weren't equipped to have those hard conversations. So I said, what could I do to, to maybe shed some light on it? Well, it's just, it amazes me how just society is set up. America is set up this way, you know, just to only celebrate the triumphs and the victories, shaming trauma. It's amazing to me.

I just had this discussion with my nine-year-old this morning. She feels bad if she needs to ask for help. And I have not ever made her feel bad for asking help, but in school, that's where she feels it. How lucky is she at nine to be able to ask that question and find an answer to it? Because I pretty much lived my whole life thinking that if I asked for help, even if I was like, you know, we've got 30 people over at the house and I'm cooking and I'm making drinks and I'm entertaining and I'm picking the music and I'm doing all this stuff. I'm not really doing it to control it, but I'm just doing it because I enjoy doing it and people want to help. And I don't even ask for the help. And finally,

my wife pulls me aside and she's like, dude, you know what? It's not bad for you to ask for help. They want to help you. You're not giving them what they want. People want to help other people. They want to help. Right. So just allow people to help you. I'm like, oh, you mean that doesn't make me weak. That doesn't make me incapable. It doesn't make me not able to handle what's on my plate. Oh, ask asking people for help or allowing them to help me is a good thing. Got it. Like, I didn't know that. Right. I mean, I just didn't because I was used to doing everything on my own. And I totally love that you're teaching your nine-year-old daughter that asking for help is actually,

or allowing people to help you as a sign of strength. That's, that's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. It's a hard one. You know, I even, I get into these places where I decide I'm going to do it. I'm going to ask for help or, you know, put myself out there and then I don't get it. And then I get all butt hurt better and like get into this place where I'm like, well, then I'm never ever going to ask for another thing. This is ridiculous. Look, it's not ridiculous. I've recently, and way too many times quoted a friend of mine who is a therapist and coach, whatever. And he says, we're all just little kids and big kid bodies using big kid words. And it's the truth. And when you think about it, do you know what? When people say, oh, your kid's this and your kid's that, how did you raise them? And I said, the only thing I wanted to give them was a safe environment, just safe to be them. Doesn't matter. I just want them to be safe. Not walking one day and do these three steps and your parent

is happy and walk in the next day and do the exact same three steps. And your parents yell at you. Like, I don't want that. Like I want to just write for them to be safe. And when you're thinking about somebody who won't ask for help or is nervous about asking for help, what might be behind that are things that we have no idea. For example, it could be behind that. The fact that, that you've been abandoned at the biggest times of need in your life, you've been abandoned. Okay. Maybe the two or three times that you actually really, really needed help and you put it out there, the person wasn't able to give it to you. And in fact, maybe even shut you down. And I totally understand how it is really hard to ask for help because you don't have a safe space to be able to ask for it because it's not safe. It's a hard thing for you to do.

And when you have somebody that's going through trauma and you ask a simple little, you know, yes, no question, which is probably the wrong way to ask the question, but it's safe. Oh, how are you? You know, do you need anything? You know, right? No, no, I don't need anything. I'm good. Okay, good. All right. All right, then. Well, let me know if you do. Okay, I will. That doesn't help anybody. Right. And it gives them a way to not have to go offering you a lot of help. And it gives you a way to not be vulnerable to say, yeah, I really do need X, Y, and Z, but I'm not going to tell you because I know you don't really care and I'm not going to take a chance that you're going to say no anyway. So yeah, I'm glad that we didn't have to have that conversation. Yeah. So, I mean, how, how do we, how do we go about it then? Like how,

if someone's in the middle of a trauma or a crisis, how do we reach them? From my experience, it's not a linear answer, right? There's several parts to it. And I talked to way more than 15, but 15 made it into the book. And I talked to them literally for a couple of years, right? I was on the phone with them sometimes weekly, sometimes monthly, but for a very long time, hours and hours and hours and hours and hours. And I got super deep into those questions because I wanted to let people know if somebody's going through something difficult or

has gone through something difficult, like cancer, maybe losing a loved one, abuse, suicide, whatever, what the heck, How can we relate to? How can we understand what the heck is going on? You know, so it's not such a simple answer, but I would say a good starting point is one, you have to listen because when you listen, you're letting people know you care. Yeah. And when people know you care, they feel safe. Right. So you have to develop a way

to listen. Part of the way of listening. When you guys do this, I've listened to your podcast is ask really good questions because if you're asking really good questions, that gives you the ability to listen. If somebody is being vulnerable, you have to be present. I mean, you have to be present I mean yeah you have to be present oh my gosh you know uh uh listen Shanna I know you really had a tough day and I really want to hear about it so oh my god what happened to you at the hospital today and as you start talking I'm looking at my phone what are you kidding me right so I'm you know it's not it's not a linear answer but i think it has to be involved with listening showing which shows people you care asking good questions right being present and i think what's really important and we don't always have the time to do this and and maybe not

everybody can engage in it very easily but it's to start the difficult conversations with open-ended questions. Yeah, I agree. It's kind of like right now, I feel a little bit of anxiety in my stomach because I have a question for you and it's a hard question. So that's what happens is a lot of people feel that anxiety and it's like fear. And then they don't end up asking it right because it's uncomfortable and it is hard miracles happen in that discomfort of course you also have

to be able to use intuition and feel out a person's personality i mean if they're not being super vulnerable and then and you're listening well then you'll know they're not ready to talk using that discernment and being kind with their boundaries, right? Respecting the timing of their grief. Don't let any hard questions remain a pit in your stomach. Go for it. Just ask whatever. It doesn't matter.

Well, so I've lost a sibling myself. So I want to take a moment to honor your sister. Tell us about your sister. Tell us about what she was like. If you could share with our listeners about this incredible commitment that you made to her when she was in the last few weeks of her brain cancer. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I could talk about that all day. Well, you know, I, and I didn't know until I went on the bike, right? Like I, so I interviewed these people for a couple of years and then I

said, well, if we're connected by story and we're connected by emotion, and I got this whole cycle of lives thing going on and bicycle and connecting and all, what the heck, I'll just jump on my bike and bike to everybody and meet them for the first time. Right. So this was this kind of like my goal was to do that. Okay. So I take off on the bike and I realize, oh my gosh, well, this is going to give me a lot of time to think about my own crap too. And I'm used to doing that on endurance athletics or

whatever, but not for like 45 days in a row for, you know, 12, 14, 16 hours a day. Right. And one of the things that I discovered was, and I don't know the circumstances behind your loss of a sibling, but I was past the losing of June. She had died 10 years before, and we had talked about a lot of stuff, and I was pretty good about it. But what I figured out on the bike ride was that I didn't just lose June. I lost the only person that knew me as a kid and knew the crap that I had gone through. And I knew the crap that she had gone through, but you know, she wasn't around anymore. So she didn't have to still deal with it. I did. And I didn't have her there to understand, like, I mean, we're all formed by what happened in our childhoods, especially if it was traumatic. And, um, you know, I got nobody to share that with that. That was a, that was a really like,

like baseball bat of grief, right to the head. Right. Cause it's That was a, that was a really like, like baseball bat of grief right to the head. Right. Cause it's like, Ooh, that's another sense of being alone. Yeah. So that's what I learned about it. And I think that's what Lou, you know, losing a sibling is no different or more special or harder, easier than losing a spouse, child, a parent, a loved one, a friend, or whatever. Every one of them is individual and unique and comes with its own special set of circumstances, right? And one's no less traumatic or more traumatic than the other. They just are what they are. So I don't want to minimize it or make it bigger than what it is. But losing a sibling, I think does take away that like little bit of that joy over your youth because you got nobody to share it with, especially if,

you know, you're the last one that's there. So that's what I learned about losing a sibling. And I don't know if you feel that way, but it certainly is the way that I feel. So he was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. And about three years later, she was reaching the end and she was really determined to make it to this, uh, this American cancer society relay for life to cheer on the team of June buggies. Her name was June. And people used to call her June bug. So the June buggies were going to be out there at this American cancer society relay for life for 24 hours to like honor her and support, you know, brain cancer research and all this stuff. And she just didn't look good, man. And I told her, I said, June, dude, if you're going to try to get out there for 24 hours in your condition, I'm going to run the whole 24 hours. So we made a deal and I thought, okay, that's,

that's pretty good. That'll be a great way to kind of end this thing. Unfortunately, two days before the relay, she died. So she wasn't able to make it there, but I had made that deal. So I, you know, I'm not going to not do it. So my kids and I, they were nine at the time. Now we just went and we were on the track for the whole 24 hours. Even my kids. I mean, Shanna, if you could imagine nine, my kids were nine, a boy and a girl twin, and they did this whole thing at school. They made little posters and had all their friends sign it.

And they made all these little circles for each circle was a mile. Right. And so I told him to draw an X into each circle so that it would be each circle was how to X. So it was quartered. So each quarter was one lap around the track. Great. They could do that math. They ended up doing, if you can imagine at their age, 34 and 35 miles in 24 hours, 35 miles, they did. It was unbelievable. Did they sleep for like four days after? Well, they slept on and off right that day, but oh yeah, they were wiped out for a couple of days. Yeah. So was I. I was out there for 24 hours too, but we all did that. And it was really

kind of sad and heartbreaking and, you know, but also inspiring as well. Cause a couple of things happened that night that would just just they'll just never leave me. That was really planting the seeds for me. What I saw that day for what led wanting to do something, even if something little to try to help people with these hard conversations, you know? I love when we're able to bring our kids into those things, because I'll tell you, I feel like my parents always really tried to protect me from that. And I, we've, I, we've heard stories and I can't remember who it was, but

I remember someone even saying like, they weren't even allowed or, or they, they weren't even invited to go like to the cemetery, you know, or like the funeral because their parents were trying to protect them, you know, and stuff like that. And that happens a lot, even with just day-to-day stress, you know, parents, you know, I know my parents anyways, were for sure, you know, not letting me know, you know, what was going on in their lives, if it wasn't happy. Well, it's only one side of the equation, right? I believe in this like wheel of emotion thing. And, and we all have as humans, the same basic emotions, but there are two sides of the spectrum, right? How are you going to understand, you know, safety, happiness, if you don't understand fear, how are you going to

understand joy, if you don't understand pain, it just, it doesn't make sense to me, how are you going to understand compassion, if you don't understand loss. And so, you know, I'm not trying to preach or tell anybody, I know anything more than anybody else. But I'll tell you what, man, you can see if you give your kids the opportunity to put them into, you know, really unique situations, they're, they're amazing. And we can use them as examples. I'll tell you a super quick story from that night. But it's a story that's never left me. And I told the story 1000 times, it still gives me chills when I tell it. And that is, so the kids are walking around the tracks and times they're running and they're doing whatever. And, you know, we're all just kind of navigating this loss and watching all these people and

doing all this stuff. So it's very, it's really charged up with a lot of energy and compassion and confusion and emotion and whatever. And if you ever been to a Relay for Life at nighttime, around nine o'clock at night, everybody lights these candles in these bags that they've written notes on or put pictures on people that they've lost. And there's this big inspiration things everywhere. And there's all this different stuff, right?

And we're walking around the track. And all of a sudden, this woman is sitting down by her bags, trying to pat them out because they've both caught on fire. And she's patting them out. She's bawling her eyes out. And I want to go talk to her. But my son runs up ahead of me and he tries to help her pat him out. So I stand back and I just watch. And then my daughter goes up and put her hands on her shoulder and they start talking to her.

And I just sit back and I go, I just want to see what the heck is going on here. And my son comes back and he goes, Hey, can we walk with her? And I go, yeah, you can walk with her. And so they went ahead of me. Sorry, I forget a little emotional, but they went ahead of me sorry i forget a little emotional but they went ahead of me and each one was holding her hand and they walked around the track with her and i'm just sitting there going oh my god what the heck and so afterward 15 20 minutes later the woman walks up to me and she said your kids are so sweet she goes i lost both my parents, the cancer this year. And I wrote them each this beautiful letter and I put it on this bag and they caught a fire. And now my parents are never going to know what I wrote for them. And your son came up and said to me, they know. And I was just like, oh my gosh. Right. So

they have another kids have another level of compassion and openness and willingness to, I mean, if I saw somebody walk through the store, you know, missing a leg, I'm not going to run up and go, oh my God, what happened? Right. But they may, that thing they need the most is to be asked that question because they're tired of people looking away. A kid will run up and go, oh my God, you have one leg. What happened?

Right. Unless, and if we stop them, we're not going to learn. And I learned so much from that experience of, I mean, what she needed the most was to hear that. And I wouldn't have been able to tell her that I would have said, oh my God, I'm so sorry. I know what a walked away, right? Kids, they want to hold her hand and walk around the track. I wish kids wouldn't grow i wish they would just stay you know what this morning my daughter she had a hard morning she actually did go to school because she was so just going through a lot at school she's very shy and she knows it her teacher's pointing that out and really calling her out on it and she's just

she literally said to me i don't know why she's uncomfortable with that. I'm shy. You know, I know that. And I'm okay with that. Like, why isn't she okay with it? And so she's crying in front of her school this morning. And she's like, I just don't want to go in there and say, mommy. And I was like, well, what do you need? She goes, I just need you to comfort me. Oh, you know what? And she's going to remember me. I was like, you know what? And she's going to remember that 20 years from now, she's going to remember that. And it's going to be safe for her to ask for somebody to comfort her when she

doesn't feel comfortable. And that's a really good thing you're giving to her. I mean, that's really awesome. I mean, we can learn from kids. Yeah. Give ourselves a chance to, they're kind of amazing. And that was also one of the really sad things about losing my sister. Cause she had young kids. And at the time, I think her daughter was 11 and her son was 14 and she had great marriage, you know, great job, great friends, you know, great everything. And, you know, one of the things that she told me and I'll, you know, I don't remember the exact way she put it, but I do

remember the look on her face when she said that thing that sucks most about, about dying is I'm not going to see my kids grow up. That's my greatest fear. I mean, I have more fear about that than probably anything else in my life. Yeah. It's understandable. And I don't disagree with the idea that you should lean into that. I think you should lean into it. If you know the stakes and the stakes are, we're not in control and tomorrow could see you gone. If you lean into it, then you're going to do the best thing that you should do, right? To close your eyes to it, pretend it's not there. It's just not dealing with it. And hopefully you'll see her granddaughter get married. Right. But you just, you just don't know. I guarantee. I don't know if you ever saw that movie step-mom with Susan Sarandon and Julia

Roberts. Oh my God. I think that's why I'm traumatized by, you know, that fear because I mean, I'm telling you like snot bubbles coming out my nose, like hyperventilating. Oh. Hey, did you know that Sense of Soul now has a Patreon where you can get exclusive episodes, mini series that Mandy and I have been working on for a long time that we can't wait to share with you, monthly readings, Sense of Soul sacred circles, workshops, behind the scenes clips, and much more. Hop on Sense of Soul Patreon rightcles, workshops, behind the scenes clips, and much more. Hop on Sense of Soul Patreon right now and sign up. That's how I felt when I just read the small paragraph on, was it Kimberly that was in your book?

Oh my gosh. Yeah. Talk about Kimberly's story. Kimberly's story is literally, it's kind of unbelievable. I'll tell you when they were going through what they were going through, I was introduced to them as potentially people that would be a great story for the book. And the husband said, no, we don't want to do it. You know, she's dying. You know, we're just not in a place where we can talk about everything that's going on. And I respected, I said, okay, about a year later, the person that introduced me to them said, hey, several months ago, I was at her funeral. There's a story you got to hear about that. But I think that their family might be ready to talk about things. And so I reached out to

her husband and I said, hey, are you interested? And he said, yeah, okay, let's talk about it. Now, I spoke to her sisters. I spoke to her mom. I spoke to her husband. So I got a really 360 view of what was going on with them. And basically the way I start telling Kimberly's story when I'm talking about it is to say, can you imagine that you get woken up at three in the morning by your significant other, and they proceed to explain to you that you're going to be wheeled into surgery because a grapefruit sized tumor is in your brain and it needs to be removed. They've assembled on an immediate basis, a top crack team of surgeons. You might not survive the surgery. And beyond that, it's probably not going to look good. And could you imagine your response to hearing that is to smile and have

tears of joy come out of your eyes and to look at that significant other who told you that and say, thank God. Could you imagine that? And people go, oh, no, that's bullshit. There's no way I could imagine that. And then when you find out her story, you go, yeah, oh my gosh, that's what we mean by you never know what the hell people have gone through. So what she had gone through was a wonderful, beautiful, incredible life, right? She found her soulmate. They had their ups and downs, but man, they made it through a lot of stuff, including kids, including losing a baby. They lost a baby at 18 months.

It was the most heartbreaking story ever. I'm not going to bring you down by telling it to you, but it's just terribly sad. And if what happened to her had happened to her just even months later, she would be alive and well. It was just bad timing. And they went on to have another kid. Kimberly was 49 or 50, and it was another little girl. And it was just like this little angel that came along. But the problem is their relationship started to break down and the stresses of life got in the way and they started to fight a lot

and they went to counseling, but the fighting got worse and they went to counseling and the stresses of life got in the way and they started to fight a lot and they went to counseling, but the fighting got worse and they went to counseling and the fighting got worse. And finally the fighting got so bad that they were really going to determine how do we make it through getting our kids out of the house and then we can be done with each other. It got so bad that one night Kimberly just went off and she went on a 10 hour rant and she wasn't coherent and she was angry and she was violent and she was not able to be consoled. And it was just horrible. And at the end of that 10 hour night, she looked up at her husband and she said, you know what? It's me. I'm not myself. I've been going crazy for five years and I've been trying to pretend

that I'm not. And this is my break. You have a window of time to get me to a mental institution before I ruin our goddamn family. Check me in, please have them make me better. So could you imagine a wonderful mom and a wonderful wife begging her husband to put her into a mental institution because she's gone crazy? So they put her into that. They drive her down. They admit her. her into a mental institution because she's gone crazy so they put her into that they they drive her down they they admit her one of the things that they do when they admit you at something like this is to do full medical tests they found this tumor in her brain they call up her husband

they say get back down here and tell her we've assembled a team she might not live but it's a oh my god tumor it needs to be removed today like right now we're wheeling her into surgery and so he wakes her up and he tells her this and she's like thank god it's not me right it's not so you can understand what i mean when i say oh it sounds tr Oh, you never know what people went through. No, you don't know what people have gone through. And for her to have felt relief at knowing that it was a tumor and not her was so powerful because she had been willing to throw away her 25 year marriage that they had gotten through so much. She was willing to walk away from her kids, you know, all of these things because she thought she was gone crazy and she wasn't, it was,

it was a cancerous tumor. Now it eventually did take her not, not too long after that, but she was able to really go through and do some wonderful end of life talks with her wonderful family and her mom and her sisters and her husband and all of her kids and friends and everything. And she was able to get to a place where she could die in peace and give them a little peace through her death. So that's her story. Very powerful. Wow. I know what you said. It's's very sad story, right? But it's also inspirational. And if anybody's going to read the book, I won't ruin the ending, but there's a story about butterflies and her little daughter and all this great stuff that really gives it an inspirational twist.

And it's, it's just shocking because it's amazing that every one of the book participants was hesitant to tell me something that they thought was either crazy or not important or nobody would believe or whatever. It was unbelievable to uncover some of the deepest, darkest items. I'm not going to say they're all secrets, but deepest, darkest items that were in people's lives. I think that's what makes the book and the story so moving and relatable. David, you know, after my dad died and it was so devastating for me because he was such

my rock and I worked with him my whole life and he was just a big part of my life, such a wreck. But then I came to this place where it was almost like part of my awakening. And I always say that had he not died, I wouldn't be where I am today. But yeah, it felt uncomfortable to say that at first. People would be like, that's crazy, you know? But yeah. You know what though?

And look, we're all just pastor buyers in everybody else's reality. So you're living your life. It doesn't really matter what people think, but I understand how, how it is a difficult thing to say. Like one of the other book participants, Bobby, his story is kind of amazing because it's tragic yet inspirational at the same time in that he was not lovable and he didn't know how to love. And he was just a wreck. He meets this wonderful, wonderful woman who, as he states it, makes him wear glasses for the first time, right? He sees the world clearly for the first time in his life. And they have this just beautiful love affair. It's like everything that each of them wanted. Shortly after they start dating,

she gets breast cancer. He says, I got to know Brandy sitting with her while she was in chemo, while she was in the chemo chair. And I just thought, wow, that's pretty beautiful. So a year later or so, they decide they get married right before the cancer comes back and it comes back pretty aggressively. They get married, they go off on their honeymoon, they come back for treatment. And within a couple of years, she's gone. And it's unbelievably tragic, right? During the year or two that they fought this as a married couple, they talked everything A to Z, Shannon, everything, right?

In fact, she at one point said, you know, I'm just pissed off that I'm dying because you're your best you. Somebody else is going to enjoy all the work I've done on you. Right. And he's like, no, I'm never going to find anybody again. She's like, don't be stupid. You need somebody in your life. It's just now you're going to be like a decent, wonderful person. And somebody else is going to get the joys of all of my work. And and he even he even promised to her that he would go to therapy for six months after she died. But you could imagine, right. When he first told me this,

I kind of went, when he first told me, look, I met somebody shortly after Brandy and I'm still with her. It's the greatest thing that's ever happened in my life. And I'm just like, Oh, my original thing was just to be like, what? But when I started talking to him, he told me, he goes, look, dude, we talked everything A to Z. Like we were so far beyond the fact that she was going to die. Cause there was no doubt that she was going to die, that we had reconciled everything that we could reconcile. And he goes, and I just couldn't handle people looking at me with these puppy dog eyes and this sympathetic, you know, approach to, oh, you lost your wife. Well, no, I lost my wife a long time ago. Right. I know she just died. I got to move on with my life. I got

to do what Brandy wanted me to do. I got to be my best self. I got to whatever. So he would fly to another part of the country to hang out because people wouldn't be looking at him like he's an idiot. And so when you say that about your dad, Shanna, I totally get that. Like, like your journey is your journey and anybody could judge you for whatever, but how unbelievable that you could use such a terrible situation for personal growth or to be a launching point to a better life. At the end of Bobby's story, he said something to me that was just so powerful. And he said, look, dude, he goes, the worst thing that ever happened to me was Brandy dying. And if she didn't die, I would be married as happy as you could ever imagine.

I probably have kids. He doesn't have kids. He said, I have a couple of kids. I would be the happiest guy in the world. He goes, but that didn't happen. He goes, that didn't happen. He goes, I am married now. And I couldn't trade it in for one second. I'm the happiest guy you ever met. My wife is the greatest person in the world. Now, I wouldn't trade that in for anything that I wish that what happened happened. Of course not, but it did happen. And where I'm at today, I wouldn't trade it in for anything in the world. And I'm just like, Whoa, that's powerful stuff. Right? Yeah. Because immediately our egos want to implement judgment, right? Be like,

how could you move on so fast? You know, it's not ours. It's not our journey to judge. We're not living their life. One of the stories I named in her shoes, because there's no possible way we could understand what it's like to walk in somebody else's shoes, right? There's just no way. Now look, there are people that break a fingernail and think the world's ending. I'm not saying that everybody's doing their best, right? But most people are doing their best. And I have a friend who made it into the book.

She's an OBGYN surgeon, wonderful person. She's got some physical issues, but her debilitating thought was that she's gonna get cancer and die. Now she's had some tumors, but but her debilitating thought was that she's going to get cancer and die. Now she's had some tumors, but they're non-cancerous tumors. And these tumors have really just totally jacked her life. It's taken away her profession. It's given her unending pain and brain tumors. And it just really totally affected her. But if you told me that somebody's just a fear of cancer would be debilitating to them, I'd be like, get on with it. But knowing her story, I'm like, wow, I can totally, totally relate to it because it's as real as anybody who How am I going to judge her that she shouldn't be as fearful of it? Well,

guess what? One of the little things that makes her fearful of it is when she was growing up in Vietnam and she escaped right before the fall of Vietnam with her family. One of the last barges, the night Saigon fell, they were out of, but her dad used to tell her bad things happen, that those were a cancer. She was sent by her mom to kind of like spy on her dad. And when her dad was doing bad things, he said he would look at her and he said, don't say anything. You will create a cancer. You will create a cancer. And so this tiny little thought in her head was anything bad that could happen to me would be cancer. So she escapes Vietnam. She grows up to be a doctor against all this racist behavior, right?

She's got all this wonderful stuff, but she's got this fear of cancer in her head. Then she gets tumors. Now, granted, they're not cancerous, but she's just physically debilitated. She has to navigate a really rough time with her kids and her husband because of what she's going through. And it's this fear of cancer. It's as real as anything you can imagine. But if you told me that somebody was debilitated partially because of their fear of cancer, I'd be like, get over it. But, but not now I don't do

that. And so I think it's, yeah, it's living in her body, in her muscle tissue. It's literally living in her subconscious mind. And that's, yeah, that's amazing. That's a good story to just show that how very real, you know, stuff like that can be. I'm wondering, and you don't have to give it away if you don't want to, but I'm wondering after she discovered that this fear was within her, was she able to heal just by the awareness and connecting those dots? No, I think, and it's very complicated story. And I think the fear has gone away a little bit, but one of the other things that was manifesting was her, that no doctor could figure out what the

heck was going on with her. She had this ridiculous pain, like literally where she, and this was after she was even diagnosed with the tumors, but she had horrible migraines. In fact, they used to come over to the house. Her husband used to come over to the house. He's a doctor as well. And he would bring a wooden mallet and he would tap on her head for hours at a time. Cause that was the only thing that would kind of relieve the pain. Right. I mean, unbelievable, but nobody could figure out what's going on. She couldn't handle light. She couldn't handle standing up. She couldn't. So sometimes she was stuck in her bed for months at a time. Right. And she was even suicidal at one point and her kids and her husband were kind

of getting to the point, like, dude, there's nothing wrong with you, right? There's nothing wrong with you, right? This pain in your head, the light sensitivity, the whatever. But over time, they had to realize that she was not making it up. It was very, very real. She's learned how to deal with it and deal with the fact that it comes and it goes over time. And sometimes it's really bad. And she's got to hide herself in a bedroom and lock the curtains for a couple of days or weeks. And sometimes she can go a couple of weeks and she doesn't have the same issues, but they're very, very real, very, very physically real. They're not mental issues. And I think having her come to some reconciliation with her husband and kids and their understanding that her pain is not made up. It's very physical.

It's very debilitating for her kind of allowed her to realize that, yeah, this is just her life. Now she's got to deal with it. It's not an emotional issue. It's not emotions that she's going and her culture is also, you know, not one of those that are going to speak about their feelings and get all that stuff in. I mean, that's just generational, you know, not one of those that are going to speak about their feelings and get all that stuff in. I mean, that's just generational, you know, as well. Yeah. I can't tell you how many times she told me, David, I'm going to tell you something, but you can't put this in the book. David, I'm going to tell you something, but you can't tell my husband. You can't tell my kids. They don't want to tell you something, but I want this to be just between you and me.

Holding a lot. And it's, where do you think it goes? And this is what I explain to my clients all the time. Like, where do you think it is? It's still in you. So what do you think it turns into? It's going to scream at you and scream at you until you address it. But sometimes we don't even know it's there. We don't know what it is. You know, I hope that she's able to overcome that. Yeah. She's, she's in a really good place and still a good friend. And I'm, I have just unending admiration for her because, you know, she's just a wonderful, gracious, you know, super interesting person. And, you know, when, when I was talking to her and she said, I was asking her what it was like to have to walk away from her practice.

And she said, you know, the hardest thing for me is she goes, David, when you got to understand when a patient comes in to see me, I'm not a doctor. I'm just a human being. And I hold their hand and I cry with them and I laugh with them and I'm part of their life. And she said, that's what I miss. And I'm like, no doctor talks like that. No doctor holds their patient's hands and laughs with them and cries with them. And I'm like, no doctor talks like that. No doctor holds their patients hands and laughs with them and cries with them and spends as much time as

they need to with them. And that human connection. We need doctors like her. I know. It's hard to get back in. I know she can't, but, but, but I mean, that was so touching to me that that was the thing that she missed. It wasn't, yeah, she missed surgery too. She said, I love being a surgeon, but it was that connects that human connection that she missed the most. And she's a very compassionate and wonderful person, but still very closed off. Like I didn't know anything about her until we started doing the book. And then I could ask her all these tough questions and I was just like completely blown away. And it's like, man, once you start peeling the onion, man, I don't care who you are.

There's some serious layers there, right? Facts. Shanna at one point was taking on all of her clients pain and it was manifesting in her own body. I mean, as an empath, maybe that's what was happening to her, you know, like she's so compassionate that she was like literally taking on her patients pain. Yeah. The best of her.

Oh my gosh. So David, you remind me so much of my father. He loves biking. He's all about I mean, he ran a marathon for his 60th birthday around a track. Like who does that? It's like his therapy it during the winters here in Colorado, you can see his mood shift because he can't get outside and he can't run and he can't bike and he's 82 now. Your book is really around like a lot of these accomplishments and athletic endurances. I mean, for God's sakes, you've ran from what Cancun to Tulum in the heat of the Mexican summer. You don't know that I've ever ran more than a mile or biked like a block. It's just not my thing. I mean, hands down to you,

like with my asthma, you know, I use that as an excuse actually, but let's get honest. Your cover is, is I'm assuming it's you on the bike. Yeah. How does this play into all of this? Why is this so important to you? Did it help you through your grief? What does it do for you? Well, it helped me get through that really low point in my life that I was talking about, right? Yeah. I'm an overweight smoker. I'm unhappy at life and I'm in a bad personal situation. And I just hadn't looked in the mirror really and said, what are you doing for you ever? And so I just said, let's just start. And my first start was to try to run two minutes. Could not even run two minutes.

It was ridiculous. Like literally, my running was a 12-mile pace, pretty slow. I couldn't do it. How old were you when you started running? I was 37. Oh, damn. Okay. Couldn't run two minutes.

What I found out in business, long before I found it out in my personal life, is that people set their goals too low. And if you strive to achieve X, if you're an overachiever, you're going to achieve X. And if you strive to achieve five X, if you're an overachiever, you're going to achieve five X. And if you strive to achieve 50 X and you're an overachiever, you're going to achieve 50 X. It's like, you got to set the bar higher. And so I just said, okay, so you can't run two minutes. Okay. Sign up for a 5k, which is 3.1 miles. And I can sell three weeks to train for, to run 3.1 miles. And I did it. And then I said, okay, well, that's not high enough goal. Go do a 10 K. That's not a high enough goal. Go do a triathlon. That's not a high enough goal. Do a triathlon that's not a high enough goal do a half marathon

and by the end of eight or nine months my goal was to do an ironman and I said okay well then I went to the ironman and I go okay well do two do three in a year run 50 miles run 100 miles and I just said well these goals aren't high enough and so one of the things that I've learned through endurance athletics is that you can push yourself if you want to. And if you have the means and if you have the time or want to make the time, you can push yourself in ways that you never thought. Right. Yeah. You think, I mean, Shannon, he biked from California to Florida, to New York. I know. What the hell? It was actually stupid, but I did it. David, I love you.

I love your story. You're my people. I love your inspiring, deeper human connection to your life-changing stories. I love that you're able to ask these hard questions. That's how I am too. I thrive on getting to know what people have been through. I remember I was

sitting at the mall the other day and I was like, all these people were walking by and I'm like, I want to know her story. I want to know her story. I want to know her story. Like that's what I live for. I just want to know. And then I want to know how I can support you. And, and so thank you for this book. I wanted to share an inspiring story with you. My best friend from childhood that I grew up with lives in California in Encinitas and her husband grew up in Temecula. He is like a famous motocross racer by the name of Jeremy McGrath. I know Jeremy McGrath. Yeah.

So Jeremy's wife, Kim got breast cancer and then she had to battle it again. And Kim was told she had six months to live. And now she'll be going on 10 years next year. So I during her breakdown, she was like, Why me? Why me? She had two young toddlers. And she was obviously just devastated with all of the health issues. She had to live in a bubble in a hospital without contact. And she figured out her why. And her why was that Jeremy set up a tent at the races. And he also he does a lot of bicycling as well, like you like 1000s and 1000s of miles, and he's in retirement from motocross. But let me just tell you her why. Her why was that yesterday I talked to her, they have found 19 matches through Be The Match for Bone Marrow through Jeremy's races.

Now, 19 doesn't sound like a lot. That is a lot coming from one person's events. You know, their story is so inspiring. They live to help others that are battling cancer. I'm going to send him your book. I think he would really enjoy it. His go-to now is biking. That's his thing. He loves to bike. My son was a motocross rider and aspiring to be good, but oh my God, McGrath and a few others were his idols. He's only 23 now, but we would go to all the parks that they all know. And oh my God, literally last night we were watching a race on YouTube.

Oh my God, if he goes, oh, you were talking to somebody new. McGrath, are you kidding me? He would go double backflips, man. One of the things that they'll like is that each one of the 15 book participants earmarked a cancer focused or other charity about 11 different organizations i think nine of them are cancer focused and 100 of the proceeds from the book are going to support those organizations so he'll know this that the money that you raise really isn't doesn't make a dent on anything because corporations can give them

a thousand times what we could ever raise in our lifetimes, you know, just by writing one check, but it's those little things like matching 19 people or inspiring somebody to believe that a six month and your dad diagnosis doesn't mean that those are immeasurable, right? You can't put a dollar figure on those type of things. They're unbelievable. They're unbelievable. So you can pick up David's book called Circle of Lives. It is available wherever books are sold, or you can also pick his book up at his website, david-richman.com. And you can follow him on his Facebook, Circle of Lives. Is that right? Yes. And we'll put all that great stuff in the notes.

And now it's time for Break That Shit Down. You know, I've learned through this project to try to come to as many interactions as I can with as little judgment as possible. It's hard to do. Right. But I try to do that because you just don't know what people have gone through. And you know what? We're not living their life. Yeah. You know, I always try to share it with my children. You know, you run into somebody at the grocery store and they're a complete asshole. Think that, you know, they need to be first and get out of my way or run you over. Most people's first action is like, what a asshole.

And I am so empathic that my first reaction is, oh my God, what is he going through? It must be so bad. You know, he may really need to get somewhere fast. We have no idea. I mean, his wife could be dying of cancer beyond her last breath. You know, we just never know. Right. Right. Yeah. Thank you for this book. Thank you for being that guy that was, you know, able to reach these families. I'm sure you made a huge impact on them. Thank you so much, David. It's been a pleasure. It's been so nice meeting you. I appreciate your, your sharing your story and everybody else's. Such a great book, david-richmond.com. And we'll put all that great stuff in the notes.

Thanks for being with us today. We hope you will come back next week. If you like what you hear, don't forget to rate, like, and subscribe. Thank you. We rise to lift you up. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.