Ep 24B (no music): Bonding Over Cancer and Where Have I Been?

When my amazing aunt was bravely fighting cancer, I realized how important it is to cut ourselves some slack and stop beating ourselves up.

And I'm going to confess something to you: I totally went on a sugar spree during my time as a caregiver, temporarily ditching my healthy habits. 

We’ll dive into the importance of recognizing the choices we make during different seasons of our lives and giving ourselves a break. No more self-judgment, my friends. It's all about acceptance and understanding that we're only human. 

I also share my aunt's heart-wrenching battle with colon cancer, our shared special moments, and why I decided to step away from my life. 

This episode has NO background music. If you want to walk to the beat, listen to episode 24A. There’s a bell at the halfway mark so you can turn around if you’re walking outside. 

So, grab your walking shoes, take a deep breath, and join me for a coached walk. Together, we'll clear our minds and appreciate the beauty of life.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

We're walking and talking. We're walking and talking. We're walking and talking. We're walking and talking with Helen Ryan.

Speaker 1: 0:20

If you're walking outside with me today, just start at a warm up pace, not too fast, not too slow. If you're doing this indoors, whether you're dancing in place, marching in place on your treadmill or even cleaning, just start at a moderate speed. We're not going to go all out. When we first start, you know the drill by now. Take a deep breath in through your nose and exhale through your mouth. Shoulders are relaxed, hands are relaxed, your glutes are relaxed, feet are relaxed. If you are doing this indoors, when I say go faster, you can just move side to side a little bit faster or march in place, knees maybe a little bit higher, bring your arms above your head. They're going to be some faster, a little bit harder parts, and then they're just going to be some mosey along parts warming up, cooling down and everything in between, every flavor. Now just go a little bit faster and I'm going to tell you where the heck I've been.

Speaker 1: 1:15

It's been a really long time. It's been so long. I have a mixer that helps bump up the volume when I record and I couldn't even remember, like what the buttons were on my mixer like, hey, what does this do? It's like I've never seen a mixer before. So it's been that long since I have recorded an episode and I've missed it. I've missed just talking to you guys and hopefully you're actually. You are still walking with me because I'm getting quite a lot of downloads still. Hold on to that pace.

Speaker 1: 1:43

I was so determined to record an episode for you today that I just shoved myself into the closet because I realized, when I had everything set up on my desk, that my neighbor was having a pool party. So that's where I am today. I am looking at my striped shirt. Go just a little faster and, if you're working at home, just a little bit harder. The most important thing is you just breathe. Let that oxygen flow in and out of your lungs. This is time for you. So take this time and kind of clear your mind and relax. Put your phone on. Do not disturb If somebody calls you, just ignore it If somebody texts you. That's happened to me when I'm working. I'm working out and then somebody texts me and then I get really angry because I was just in the zone or in the mood and now I'm out of the zone or out of the mood. Hold on to your speed.

Speaker 1: 2:30

So last spring I guess late spring my aunt, who I'm very close with, was diagnosed with breast cancer and like a champ she went through quite a few cycles of chemo and she just finished all her chemo and she started to have back pain And chemo was actually really brutal for her and she had a lot of bone pain. But when she started with the back pain it just kind of gave me flashbacks, because that was exactly what happened to my dad. He had colon cancer and then, once he was cleared of with that, he was diagnosed with aggressive lung cancer and he was gone five months later. So when she started to have back pain I got worried, i got alarmed. It brought me right back to that place where I was before with my dad. In December she had a PET scan and it turns out that she had a whole new primary cancer colon cancer that had spread everywhere. It had spread to her bones and spread to her liver and it had spread to her lungs, and so that was really difficult for the entire family because she was an amazing woman, amazing, just so full of love and light. Hold on to your pace, i'm not going to be super chipper, but I want you to just kind of relax and breathe, relax your hands, relax your feet. Go a little bit faster now, if you can.

Speaker 1: 3:47

In January she asked if I could come up and be her caretaker. I was glad to be able to do that for her. I feel like she's my real mom because she's like midnight person. We joke. We really enjoyed each other's company. I lived with her during the pandemic and it was a really good time. So I was happy to come up and help and it was really difficult just to watch her get sicker and sicker every day.

Speaker 1: 4:10

She did one round of chemo for the colon cancer but then she actually had a heart attack in the middle of the chemo treatment so they had to stop And then she was in the hospital. I stayed with her for six nights. We compared notes because she went to school in Norway for a few years. She was born there but emigrated to the US and I was raised in Norway. So we compared songs when we sang Norwegian school songs to see if there were any commonalities, and we found some and we would joke and we really just tried to brighten each other's moods and the moods of people around us.

Speaker 1: 4:41

Go a little bit faster, Make sure your feet are relaxed Off in your knees a little bit, roll those shoulders, shake out those hands. And when she was let out of the hospital I stayed with her. It took me about a month to learn how to change a bed with someone in it, so obviously I would be a terrible nurse. I had abandoned my kids and my cats back at the condo and they were holding down the fort over there And I was with her 24-7. Her daughters came virtually every day and her son came up as often as he could because he lives a little bit further away and it was just really nice to see the whole family pull together. Her brother lives two minutes from her and he was over there every day as well, and her other brother came when he could. He lives further away, so we all just tried to be there for her. Go a little bit faster if you can This time. I want you to squeeze your glutes just a little bit when you walk, so we're going to get a little warmth in the butt. Take a deep breath in through your nose and then exhale. Exhale all that air out, all that stale air out. Take another nice deep breath in through your nose. Relax your stomach, let those lungs fill up and exhale again Deep. Get all that stale air out. You can roll your neck a little bit, roll your shoulders.

Speaker 1: 6:04

So what happened during this time not a surprise is that I just completely fell off any health wagon, that I was on any health journey, healthy lifestyle and I was perfectly aware that I was doing it and it was the choice I made at the time, because there are other things that were more important to me. I just ate a lot of sugar. I was eating things because I was the primary caretaker. I was eating things that I should not have been eating, but it was important for me to do that at the moment because it helped me feel like I was being cared for and I talked about that in another episode like I felt loved and taken care of when I ate sugar, cookies, brownies, ice cream, things like that. So I didn't beat myself up over it. I was just aware that this is what I was doing and that's the season of life I was in and my focus was on my aunt and I just was okay with it. I want you to go a little bit faster, you're going to feel a push for a couple of minutes, a little bit uncomfortable, now that you're warmed up.

Speaker 1: 7:06

I was there when she passed away. Three of her kids were there and my uncle was there, her husband and we were there for her. At the end of it It was devastating. It wasn't unexpected at that point, but it was devastating for all of us, i think, to lose someone who was such a bright light, who was so positive and just so loving. I hadn't been used to that in my life and so it was really hard. But I was glad that I got to be there. Hold on to your pace and just push it now.

Speaker 1: 7:38

And right in the middle of this kind of just before she passed away, decided to move my kids up to where my aunt lived, which is five hours from San Diego. So that was challenging. I was up here, so actually my ex-husband and his husband came and helped and I hired someone to help the kids back, and the day I was supposed to move we had the blizzard in Southern California. I was not able to get down there early. I was supposed to go the day before and I drove all the way around the coast and all the way because the pass was closed because of snow. Yes, in Southern California I don't understand that, but it was. So I finally got there. Like eight hours later, we got up here and we settled in and we're just resuming life as best that we can Now.

Speaker 1: 8:21

Slow it down just a little bit. Take a deep breath in through your nose And exhale. Feel how good it feels to move your body. Everything is so good for your body. It's so good for your mental health. Really, just it's like the perfect package. Shake out your hands, get all that tension out. We store a lot of tension in our hands. We store a lot of tension in our feet And when you walk, kind of soften your knees a little bit. Take another deep breath in And exhale. Now go a little bit faster again And if you can find any hills, go ahead and charge up those hills and take those hills.

Speaker 1: 9:03

When we encounter those times in our lives where things are challenging, difficult when you have a baby, when someone's sick, when someone dies, when you're going through a divorce it's important for us to be gentler on ourselves, to not be angry that we're not doing the things that we want to be doing or we think we should be doing. You're a healthy person who is just sliding right now. It's okay to let things slide sometimes Eventually you'll get back on it if you put yourself back into that frame of mind but it's okay to let things slide because the worst thing that you can do is to beat up on yourself during an already difficult time. There's so much going on in life, there's so many challenges, and it's important to be gentler with ourselves, and I think that's a lesson that I learned is that if my shorts don't fit right now, oh well. I had that time with my aunt and I had the time to eat the cookies that I wanted, and that was then, and now I'm trying to slowly get healthier and also still being gentler on myself, go a little bit faster.

Speaker 1: 10:10

Part of being gentler on ourselves is to allowing ourselves to be sad, to be depressed, to be happy and just remember the good things in life and the good things that we do have. I got closer to all my cousins up here, which was great. I got closer to my one uncle that I actually think I met once, and now we see each other all the time and we talk on the phone, so there's something good that happens. I look back at her and I get sad. I go a little bit faster, feel a little push. But then I think about the fun that we had and the good things that happened and how lucky we were to be in each other's lives. We were like ying and ying and yang ying I don't know whatever that's called ying and yang And we were just so similar in so many ways. We had a lot of fun when I was living with her during the pandemic and that's actually when I started this podcast And she helped me write the rhyme about the podcast. I made a silly little rhyme Hold on to your pace. Now I'll see if I can link it here in the show notes.

Speaker 1: 11:08

You wouldn't treat your friend or your kids the way that you treat yourself and you wouldn't put them down. You wouldn't go through a rough patch. You wouldn't say, oh, you're not motivated, you need to snap with it and you're not taking care of yourself. You wouldn't be angry at the person. You would understand and you would help them in a gentler way. And you want to help yourself in a gentler way and talk to yourself in a gentler way because you're more apt to get back to the healthier lifestyle. If you're gentler with it during your slide, you're not a bad person. You're not a lazy person, you're not an unhealthy person. You're a person who encountered difficulty and you are coping with it, especially with the benefits that you can. And it's just a season. It's just for a period of time in your life. Go a little bit faster and I want you to push it. I was reading that Jennifer Aniston is going more towards gentler workouts. It's nice to see when celebrities also are gentler on themselves And they said an example of you don't have to do high intensity interval training every day.

Speaker 1: 12:08

You don't have to do jumping jacks. You can do different things that are a little bit easier on your body. Even this interval that you're doing right now, you can push it as hard or as not hard as you want. Squeeze your glutes, lift that chest, lift those boobies, shoulders down, hands are relaxed. Feel that pace. Now You can focus on how your body is moving, how it's working. Everything's working together. Right now You're pushing. You're going harder. If you're doing this at home, you're bringing your hands above your head. Maybe You can put a little air on your step. If you want to Take a little jog you can. I stopped jogging running a long time ago but if you feel like that's what you want to do for that push, you just go ahead and do it. Push a little bit more now. Your legs are strong, your gaze is strong, hold onto it, breathe, your upper body's relaxed. Push it, push it And slow it back down a little bit.

Speaker 1: 13:04

I think today was more like story time, telling you some of the things that have been going on and just reminding you to cut yourself some slack. Take care of yourself, understand that things happen And you are in a phase. As long as the phase doesn't last like 20 years, just get back to healthier habits as soon as you can, little by little, step by step, day by day, walk by walk. Okay, one more time. We're going to push a little bit faster, be strong, and this time I want you to just focus on how good it feels to move your body, feel how strong your legs are, feel your breath coming in and out of your lungs, fresh oxygen going everywhere in your body, your head's clearing, your thoughts are clearing. You feel strong, you feel happy And that's what it's all about. It's about feeling strong, feeling healthy Little bit faster.

Speaker 1: 14:03

You got this, push it, push it. If you come to a light, just march in place really fast. If you're doing this at home, just step side to side, lift those knees up, pull those arms over your head. Free your mind when you're walking, breathe, get that oxygen flowing everywhere Almost there And then slow it back down. Deep breath in through your nose And exhale through your mouth. Shake out those hands, roll those shoulders, roll them back. Listen to the words that you tell yourself And if you start beating yourself up for something you're not doing you think you should be doing, knock that shit off. You want to be kinder and gentler and treat yourself like you would your child, a friend, and not like Ursula from The Little Mermaid. Slow it down a little bit more.

Speaker 1: 15:01

I just wanted to get back in the game and I was determined to get you something. I was determined to get back and walk with you. I want to slowly get healthier again. I don't have the desire to be super buff like I was when I first embarked on a weight loss fitness journey Little bit slower now. Oh, the other day I moved my knees out of her dorm and she was on the fourth floor, no elevator, and I was going up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down. I actually was able to do it. I didn't feel any discomfort, except two days later. Now my calves are really sore. I guess once you have strong spin thighs they always stay strong, but my calves are like we're not going to let you walk like it looks all natural. It looks more like hobble, hobble, hobble. But I was pleased that I was able to do it and that is why we exercise. Slow it down a little bit more.

Speaker 1: 15:51

We exercise so we can do things in our daily lives Like that go up all these flights of stairs, up and down with heavy things, we can climb up ladders, change our light bulbs, we can carry our groceries, we can play with our kids, our grandkids. And this is why we exercise. Aside from, you know, getting healthier overall is just to be able to do the things that we want to do and do the daily things. That will make life easier for us. So we're down a little bit more now and when you get back inside, do some gentle stretches. If you're doing this at home, do some gentle stretches too, and if you feel like you've kind of fallen off and you're in a different season.

Speaker 1: 16:34

Feel free to reach out to me. You can find my information. Send me a message on walkingandtalkingshow. Is that even the website address? I don't know. I'll put in the show notes again. It's been so long I don't remember. Oh, i did create a Facebook page. You can message me there. I think it's your walking podcast, and I have an Instagram your walking podcast which I haven't updated either because I haven't done anything. But that's okay, not mad at myself, just trying to get back into it. And this was the first step. See you guys next time you.