Steve Garraty’s Grapefruit Miracle: Resilience, Reflection, and Giving Back After Cancer

What if your greatest setback could become the turning point to a more meaningful and joyful life?

We ask you to tune into today's episode of Cancer and Comedy as we talk with Steve Hagerty and he reveals how his battle with cancer and a grapefruit size wake up call led to unexpected gratitude, renewed purpose and even a few laughs along the way.

Hello good people.

I'm Dr. Brad Miller and along with my co host Deb Krier, we like to bring you cancer and Comedy where we like to bring to turn the grim of cancer into the grin of a fulfilled life.

A few years ago I had to face prostate cancer myself and I had to laugh to keep from crying.

And so I turned my love of

comedy along with my 43 years of pastoral experience as a pastor and my doctoral degree in transformational leadership.

And we along with Deb Krer and

I, we created the Cancer and Comedy podcast.

We look to offer you a sense of coping with hope and humor.

That's what we do here at Cancer and Comedy.

So let's get started.

Cancer got you down Pretty grim, huh?

How about a show that turns the grim into a grin?

Way to go.

You made it here to the Cancer and Comedy Podcast, the show to lift you up with hope and humor that heals.

Hey there lifter uppers.

I'm Deb Krier, the co host of Cancer and Comedy where our mission is to heal cancer impacted people through hope and humor.

Something we like to call turning the grim into a grin.

Well today on Cancer and Comedy we're going to talk about turning a grapefruit sized tumor into a fruitful life with Steve Garrity who is the author of Great Fruit How Cancer Led to Living a More Fruitful Life.

Well now here is the host of Cancer and comedy podcast, Dr. Brad Miller.

Hey Deb, thank you for being a part of what we do here at the Cancer Comedy which is being offering an alternative to the doom and gloom that often accompanies when some bad things happen to us in life.

When adversity strikes cancer particular and we sometimes descend if we choose to and to cut what we talk the grim of that, getting that news you have cancer.

And then we like to turn around and say, okay, you got something good to live for, you got family, you got friends, you got other things in life, purpose in life.

And we try to teach how to do just that.

We like to turn this process turning the grim into the grin of a fulfilled life.

And we do so by the conversations you and I have and through the guests that we have and by offering some good things to our lifter uppers which is our people who follow us here at the Cancer and Comedy podcast.

We'd like to just encourage our folks to go to our website and be

part of our community.

Just go to cancer and comedy.com follow.

Hey Deb, how about a couple of bad dad jokes?

Are you ready?

Yay.

I'm ready.

What do Kermit the Frog and Attila the Hun have in common?

Kermie.

What does Kermie have in in common with Attila the Hun?

I don't know.

Well, Kermit the Frog until the the Hun have the same middle name.

Cute.

Cute.

Cute.

One more here.

I went bald years ago but I still carry around my comb.

I just can't part with it.

Cute.

I love it.

I love it.

Well folks, as you know following our conversation, you're going to want to stick around because we will have, yes, I promise another one of Dr. Brad's bad jokes of the day.

But then of course we have the very serious and important face it or break it segment.

Well, we would love for you to be part of our cancer and Comedy network where together we crush cancer with a message of how to cope with hope and humor.

Please follow cancer and comedy@cancerincomedy.com Follow Deb

recently I was privileged to have the opportunity to speak with a gentleman name of Steve Garrity.

He's in the business world but he had been had great success in sales and so on so forth.

But the topic we talked about was called Great Fruit, a book that he came out with not too long ago that was been in process of him writing for 30 plus years and interesting story that he had to share because the the context of the story is that he was diagnosed with cancer at age 18 and had a rough way to go and had to deal with chemotherapy and a number of other things that were changed his life completely.

But he likes to say that that kind of saved his life because he had a grapefruit size tumor removed from his body and he was able to journal about it and do some other things and 35 years or so later put this book out called Great Fruit how cancer led to living a more Fruitful life.

And the what he shared with me and with our with our cancer comedy listeners is his conversation about how he's changed his life around.

But it was a evolving process here.

So give me some of your impressions about what you learned about cancer.

But Steve Garrity, you know, he's just

a wonderful man and, you know, what he, you know, his experience.

And I just can't imagine, you know, being 18 and being diagnosed and, you know, he lost his girlfriend, he lost his friends.

He lost the way that he was living his life in order to survive.

And what he talks about is the fact that he could have kept going down a pretty dark path, but he turned it around.

And, you know, and.

And he now looks for ways to be grateful.

You know, I. I loved how he talked about the movie It's a Wonderful Life.

Right, right.

And that was the story of, you know, starting over.

And he also kind of talked about COVID like that too.

Right.

We can look at the negatives and feel horrible and awful, or we can try and find, you know, we can turn the lemons into lemonade, so to speak.

Yeah, I think I love the metaphor.

He kind of went this thing for you.

He went through the why me?

Process.

I think a lot of us go through that.

Why me?

What happened now?

What do I do now?

And that in the movie A Wonderful Life, he really resonated with the character Clarence about help him to clarify his purpose and meaningfulness in life, to see your life not as a curse, but as.

But as a blessing in disguise.

And so I think for many of us who deal with cancer, the things like that, we've, you know, we know that cancer is a major deal to deal with, but how we look at it makes all the difference.

It's kind of reframe framing it.

Would you.

Would you agree?

Right.

Oh, yes.

You know, how do you react to adversity?

You know, and it's natural for us to get angry, to be mad, you know, to feel bad, you know, all of those things.

But, you know, Steve really talks about how can you turn it into a positive, you know, and to really have perspective on life.

Well, I think he also talked about how he learned empathy, and he learned it because he.

His trajectory in Life.

He considered 18 to be on a bad path with some bad behaviors and acting out and so on.

That was going to be destructive.

And we'll let people tune into the interview here, directly from Steve here in just a moment to hear the details about that.

But it was a bad place, but he was able to change his trajectory because he found himself being empathetic towards others.

His mother was helpful with that and things like that.

So let's talk about your reaction to the.

The power of empathy when we finally learn it and apply it to our life.

You know, I think it's very important.

You know, one of the things that, that he's going to talk about is the fact that we don't know what other people are going through.

And so, you know, think about that when maybe they're having a bad reaction, they're angry, they're, you know, as, you know, just something's not going right.

You know, have empathy for them because we don't know what they're going through.

Yeah.

But some good stuff here.

And I think people are going to enjoy this interview and I'm not going to give away everything here.

Debu, he's got a pretty funny story

about going about, going to, about.

You need to tune in the story

about going to the sperm bank.

I'll just put it out that way.

And you'll have a lot of fun with it.

And so I did want to mention that his book is called the the Great Life How Cancer Changed the Course of Steve's Life into To a Great Life There.

And so, and then his website is stevegarrity.com and how about we give a listen to the conversation I'll be able to have and we'll come back on the other side and have some more conversation.

Hello, good people.

Welcome back to the Cancer and Comedy Podcast.

This indeed is a podcast where we look to offer people who are impacted by cancer and other adversities in life to cope with hope and humor.

And we're really excited today to have Steve Garrity as our guest.

Steve Garrity is the author of Great How Cancer Led to Living a More Fruitful Life.

Steve transformed his life after a cancer diagnosis and the lessons he learned formed the foundation of being a husband, a parent, a business leader, and living a more fruitful life.

He got a degree in finance from University of Georgia and spent 20 years in leadership coaching and developing others.

Lives in Tampa, Florida.

You can find him at stevegarrity.com Garrity is spelled G A R R A T Y dot com.

Steve, welcome to our conversation here today, my friend.

Thanks, Brad.

Thanks for having me on the show.

Excited to be here.

Awesome.

Great to make your acquaintance.

Get learned to know a little bit about your story.

A little bit.

And there's some unique aspect of it, but it really starts when you were a pretty young man.

We're getting to what your age is now, but you were a pretty young man when you heard those three terrible words that many people who come on our show have.

And those words, you had cancer.

So let's go back for a minute.

Tell me a little bit about that story.

Set the framework of what we're going to talk about here today, about how things started when you were kind of a young man and kind of set the framework for us.

Sure.

Yeah, I guess.

For reference, I'm 58 today, and this happened when I was.

Well, happy birthday, my friend.

Thank you.

It'll be.

Well, sorry, my birthday is not today, but turning 50, 59 this year, so I'm currently 58.

Okay.

It's been 40 years since I was diagnosed, but, yeah, a little backdrop.

I was not the best teenager brand, and a lot of people might say that.

Like, they might say they're not a good golfer, but I truly was not a good teenager.

Was getting in a lot of trouble my junior and senior year, experimenting with substances I shouldn't have been.

Just was.

Was really headed down a bad path.

And I had a lump forming in the side of my neck and kind of ignored it and didn't feel any pain or discomfort.

It just was starting to extrude out the side of my neck.

And so went in and got a biopsy done on July 3rd of 1986.

And the next day, the surgeon called to say those three words you just mentioned, you have cancer.

So found out I had Hodgkin's and then went in and got some CAT scans and MRIs and X rays, and they determined it had spread not only to my neck, but my chest and stomach, making it stage three.

And then I embarked on a year, about 10 months of chemotherapy.

So how would you describe kind of your emotional state?

How would you describe that moment?

What was going through your mind, your

body, your head, when the surgeon called to tell me?

Yeah, yeah.

Probably a testament to where.

Where I was in life.

But one of the things the surgeon said was no drinking and no partying for the next year and maybe forever.

And that got your attention, I assume, right?

That's what upset me.

And so we were sitting around the kitchen table, and my mother and father and two siblings were all distraught over the cancer.

I was distraught over the no drinking and no partying, because that's pretty much all I cared about at that point in my life.

Well, you even said something to the effect of you were running kind of full speed over a cliff.

And this experience kind of came a turning point that eventually led you to making some changes in your life and eventually writing a book, which you've done here relative to it recently, but that was an interruption in your life.

So tell us a little bit about the.

About the chaos you might have gone through or the sense of punishment or a sense of losing out.

What kind of things were you feeling that time and how did you start to deal with it, good or bad, in those early stages?

Yeah, I would say, first of all, Brad, I was, you know, being that I was going down this destructive path, I was hanging out with a group of friends that were probably not the best, you know, group to be hanging out with for the most part.

And at 18, I think everybody.

We had all just graduated high school, so everybody was enjoying the summer and celebrating and going to parties all the time and.

And ready to go off to school, to college in the fall for most folks.

And so after I was diagnosed again, partying was kind of everything to me at that point, so I had to give that up, even though I tried to cling to it for a couple weeks.

But most of my friends are, you know, drinking buddies, if you will.

Right.

Disappeared as soon as I got sick.

And so, you know, in the very beginning, it was.

It was a pretty lonely, lonely start.

I had a girlfriend for a couple years.

We break up and get back together.

But we lasted about a month or two, maybe a couple months after I was diagnosed, and then we broke up.

She actually called it off.

And so it was.

Yeah, I would say socially, it was changed, you know, everything that was important to me from a social standpoint, and just.

Yeah, it was kind of.

Kind of devastating to go through that.

And then when I started chemotherapy, the first session I didn't get sick and really started to, you know, I felt invincible before the surgeon called to say, you have cancer.

And after that, after that first treatment of chemotherapy, I felt like, hey, this is going to be a breeze.

This is.

This is not going to be as bad as everybody says it's going to be.

And then on the second chemo treatment, it.

It was.

I was vomiting halfway through and sick all day, and then kind of knocked

you in your butt, it sounds like.

Really, huh?

Yeah, absolutely.

Well, it's my understanding then, you know, you go through this bad time, you're a young guy, you're no longer partying, your world's been turned upside down.

Lose the girlfriend, the whole bit here, Several bad things happening to you.

And yet I understand that.

Was it through both your parents or maybe your mother kind of got you started journaling, and that was maybe a part of the process to get you going in a different way by writing things down.

Tell a little bit about that, how that got started, and if that's still a part of your life.

Yeah, so it was my.

More my mother that probably pushed that, but both my parents had suggested Keeping a journal again, really, because I didn't have that many people to turn to early on in the, in the, in the process.

And so it was kind of a way of, you know, it was therapeutic to write down what I was going through and what I was feeling.

And, and so by the end of that 10 months or so that I went through chemo, I filled up a pretty thick notebook of my thoughts, feelings, experiences, everything I was going through.

And so that helped quite a bit.

Once I was declared cancer free in the spring of what would have been my first year at college, I went off to college and that journal got put aside.

I didn't touch it perhaps for probably about five, six years.

And then eventually I picked it up and started cleaning it up, if you will, and kind of organizing it.

And it, it eventually became the framework for my book that you mentioned.

Yeah, well, yeah, so basically you've spent 30 plus years, in a sense at least, writing down thoughts that eventually made it into your book in some form or another.

Is that a fair framework?

Yeah, the.

The book is part one and part two.

Part one is kind of what happened in that experience, what led up to it, the experience itself.

And I would say the journal is what became part one.

Part two is because it took me 37 years to finish the book and publish it.

Life kept getting in the way.

So I'm in sales.

I lead sales teams.

I've always traveled a lot, have two kids, they're grown now, but with them, with sports and school life just getting in the way of writing.

And so I would pick it up and then I would put it down for a few years and not touch it.

But it, eventually it became an idea to, hey, I'm going to turn this journal into a book.

And then it became.

And I'm going to leave it to my kids because I wanted to leave my story to them, but because it took me so long to write.

Part two was kind of the post cancer.

Like, how did I.

How did it affect me as the husband I would become, the father, I would become, the business leader I would become, how it affected my faith and philanthropy.

And so part two really wouldn't have happened had I just finished the book with the journal, you know, say, in my 20s?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So hindsight, I'm kind of glad it ticked so long because too, it's like how it impacted my life.

So it's not just your story of your cancer journey.

It's what you've.

How you've been able to turn that around to give back to Serve the greater good in some form or another and how you're putting that out there.

One of the things I find very interesting about our conversation that we had, Steve, is you do what I've done some of.

And I know my partner here on cancer and comedy, her name is Deb.

She has done this.

But you gave a name to your cancer, and so tell me about that.

What's the name you gave to your cancer?

And we'll go from there for a minute.

I'm sorry, when you say name the cancer, you.

You.

It was similar conversation.

You described Clarence.

You use the term Clarence from the movie as a wonderful life is kind of a descriptor of your.

Of your cancer.

Yeah, so.

So as I mentioned, part one was like the cancer and the experience and what led up to it.

There's a chapter in my book called It's a Wonderful Life.

And the story behind that is, if you and your viewers have seen the movie, it comes out every Christmas.

One of the most popular.

I had never watched it until my first Christmas post being declared cancer free.

So I was coming home from college, my first year at Georgia, and a friend of mine, a new friend I had met in school, had said, hey, have you ever seen this movie?

No, I hadn't.

I went home and watched it, and it just.

It resonated with me after having just been through, you know, a year of hell.

And the reason for that is in.

In the movie, the character, the main character, George, has a lot to be thankful for, but he's.

He's always wanting what he doesn't have.

He wants.

Yeah, he lives in a small town.

He wants to leave the small town.

He wants to go experience the world.

And a number of things happen.

In middle of the movie, he wishes.

He thinks about taking his own life, and he wishes he was dead.

And this angel named Clarence that you mentioned comes wishes, gives him a wish of, I wish I had never been born.

And the second half of the movie is how life would be without him in it.

And it just really resonated with me.

And that started a perspective of how I viewed cancer, and that cancer was my clearance in that it gave me kind of an opportunity to start life over and live it with more gratitude and more appreciation.

So I started looking back in hindsight as the.

The experience with cancer as, how can this benefit me?

How can the experience provide value in the way that I lead my life?

And that movie was the pivot.

And so, yeah, when you mentioned.

Yeah, so there's that metaphor there of Clarence, the angel Comes in and kind of gives clarity, if you will.

Clarence gives clarity, if you will, to the character George.

And it sound like this was kind of a moment of, you know, direction.

You at least had some direction to go and some meaningfulness in your life as opposed to a sense of meaninglessness, which I think is something that your book speaks to now about how people can find a purpose and meaningfulness, even in spite of their adversity, be it cancer or something else.

Yeah, I think, yeah.

It took you 35 years, as we said here, to complete this book.

And so tell me about the moment when you finally said, okay, I gotta get this done, I gotta finish this daggone thing, or, you know, was there some pivotal moment?

Was there some moment when you just said, this has gotta happen and then you went ahead and got it done?

Yeah, great question.

It was a little pandemic we experienced called Covid that provided the.

Was the catalyst for finishing it.

50, 60% of the book done, maybe 65% of the book done when Covid started.

And so Covid, I. I say Covid for a couple reasons, Brad.

One, as I mentioned, I've always been in sales and leadership.

I'm always on a plane almost every week.

And so when Covet happened, I was grounded.

I wasn't able to travel.

So I had a lot more of my evenings free.

And we at work, we pivoted to a virtual environment.

Also, my kids had both left the house.

They were in college.

And so that, you know, I didn't have kids, sports and activities and events to go to anymore.

But I would say that the.

The themes of COVID or the way that Covid impacted us in a positive way, or at least the way I looked at it.

There were a lot of themes that resonated with my story, such as, you know, life is short, appreciate what we have.

I think for a lot of us, if you were willing to look at some of that, Covid kind of changed our perspective.

And there were some benefits, as bad as it was, that came out of that experience and that that's what my book is about.

Regardless of what type of adversity, we all go through stuff in life.

How can you come out of it and have it impact your life in a more positive way?

And so I was looking at Covid as that.

Yeah, I was frustrated.

I was stuck at home.

We couldn't go.

Go out to eat.

My daughter's college graduation was kind of, kind of ruined by Covid, and she didn't get to have a ceremony.

So there were a Lot of things glass half empty you could focus on.

But I. I tried to focus on the positives.

And one of those was, I'm going to use this opportunity to finish my book.

And so I started telling everybody, I'm going to finish, I've been writing a book and I'm going to finish it.

I would say 90% of the people in my world, close friends and family, knew I was writing a book.

But people at work, acquaintances, they didn't know.

And so I just.

I think it helps stating a goal.

It puts accountability on yourself.

By going public, you made yourself self accountability, self reporting, as it were.

And I think it also, it sounded to me like you gave you a sense of urgency, you know, if not now, when, you know, if not me, who.

That type of thing.

I know that.

I think that experience Covid and other things surrounding that certainly gave things a perspective.

I know you mentioned about your daughter graduating college during that time.

I remember my son was in college and three months from graduating and had to move home after being out of the house for several years.

And that had its own share of dynamics, let me tell you.

He had, you know, his graduation ceremonies that I walked across the stage was our living room, you know, getting the envelope in the mail.

So.

But my point about this is, I think I sometimes call it cancer time when people get that word, you have cancer, and they get a diagnosis.

In my case, I was told, well, if you don't do something about this, you got two or three years.

And so that gave me a sense of urgency.

I got to do something here, not only for myself, but for any kind of impact or legacy I may want to have on my grandchildren or anything along that line and sound like this is a part of what you had the incentive of and it led you to write your book.

So tell us again the title of your book.

Book.

And we're going to talk about that here for a few minutes.

Yeah, so it's great fruit.

It's a little bit of a play on words, but it's G R E a T F R U I T, all one word.

But it.

It came from a friend of mine, actually.

I was struggling for six months.

Again, probably part of the reason it took 37 years to finish this thing, but I was struggling for a title.

And a friend of mine read the book, and he's kind of more of a marketing guy, but the surgeon removed a mask the size of a grapefruit out of my.

Okay, all right.

And then, you know, cancer, you know, basically the message of the Book is cancer ended up being a blessing in hindsight.

It saved my life, putting me on a.

A better track.

And then also it, it changed, like I said, the ways that I live my life moving forward.

So he came up with, you know, grapefruit.

And so that's.

That's how the title came about.

Yeah.

And that's.

Hey, my friend, I just wanted to share with you that here on Cancer

on Comedy, we have a special gift for you that's going to help you

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I knew there had to be a story about that somewhere.

Are you familiar with, maybe familiar with the comedian Jim Gaffigan?

Are you familiar with his wife, Jeannie Gaffigan wrote a book called if life.

Life gives you pears, Something like this.

Anyhow, they took.

She had cancer and they took a mass out of her head.

Brain tumor the size of a pear.

And so the title of her book is whatever, when life gives you bad stuff, make a pair out of it.

You know, like gives you pears.

But it has the same sort of vi that you're talking about there.

And Jim Gaffigan talks about it in some of his comedy routines, and she does too, in her book In Depth and so just reminded me of that.

And so it sound like this effort here and great fruit is your effort then to give something back, to speak something good to the values, to the situation, to the impact you would have on family, your friends, leadership, business, paying it forward, your family, your spiritual life, all those things.

So say a word about that, about how this your kind of your new mission or your new.

You knew sense of meaningfulness comes out of this.

Yeah.

You know, I would say my, my hope with the book, and I've experienced this, the book was released last March, so it's.

It's coming up on a year.

But my, my mission with it, or hope with it, was that people reading it would have a different perspective.

I'd say perspective is a big word with the book.

It's having a different perspective on some of the worst things that they've been through not just cancer.

I think when I was writing it, my thought was helping cancer patients or cancer survivors in the way that they view the experience, trying to look for the glass half full or the silver linings.

Since the book came out, though, it's had a big impact on people, not just cancer.

A couple examples had two ladies who both lost their husbands within last couple years.

It really resonated with them because they're struggling with life, you know, post.

Right.

Loss and their grief.

And so both of them reached out and it really helped.

And then, you know, of course, there's been.

People impact.

Everybody's impacted by cancer, and one way or another.

Right.

You either experienced it yourself or.

Or, you know, somebody who's been through it.

So I've had a lot of those people, you know, lost somebody who went through cancer or they've experienced cancer.

And so that's been really gratifying, is knowing it's making an impact on people and helping them with their perspective and maybe looking at adversity with more of a glass half full mindset.

Love that, because the glass half full reminds me kind of the theme overall of cancer comedy podcasts is kind of seeing things from a bit of a positive perspective.

When bad things happen to you, you don't have to go bad with it.

And we like to talk about seeing life with hope and humor, with humorous therapy as a part of it.

I just wonder, in your experience, in your perspective, did you have anything in your journey that was kind of ironic, maybe struck you funny or kind of a you gotta be kidding me moment, or where something of this nature kind of helps you cope?

There is.

There's a.

There's a chapter in the book, Brad, that highlights that.

So there was.

When I was diagnosed, I was told there was a 70 chance I wouldn't be able to have children due to the chemotherapy.

And I could have cared less.

I was 18 years old and that was the.

Having kids or even getting married was the furthest from my mind.

My parents, on the other hand, were very concerned about that.

Knew.

Oh, okay.

They wanted the grand.

They wanted the grandchildren too.

Right.

So.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And so.

So anyways, one of the options was that the oncologist presented was going to a sperm bank and having my sperm frozen.

Okay.

And.

And so there is a chapter that I debated long and hard about putting in the book, but a couple times, a couple friends read it and said it was very funny, and they're like, you got to put it in there.

But it was in Atlanta, and I'll just I'll just say this much for.

Hopefully your.

Your listeners will get a copy of the book and read it.

But there's.

The scene is.

If I can paint the scene for you.

I go with my father, which was impossible.

Oh, gosh.

We're sitting in the lobby and the door swings open and it's.

It seemed like it was like half of the Georgia Tech football team all wearing their leather.

I think they were all in there to, let me say, donate, maybe.

Yes.

I was in there under the worst.

Worst.

So.

Oh, my gosh.

Wow.

At the time, it was mortifying.

Ironic.

It was mortifying.

I was like, like, what else can kind of go wrong in this journey?

Later, I, you know, when I went off to college and I. I look back on it as a funny.

And there's more that happens with it.

Sure.

Oh, my gosh.

I can only imagine.

There's.

Yeah, there's more that happens.

There's like, that's part one and then there's a part two of it.

But anyways, at the end of the day, I was never able to.

I won't spoil why, but I was never able to have my sperm frozen.

And luckily the oncologist ended up.

I fell into the 30% or he was wrong.

But I ended up having two.

Two.

Oh, we are sometimes put in these positions.

You go, how'd I get here?

You know, in my case, I deal with prostate cancer, which means impetus and other good fun stuff and all kinds of goes along with that.

So there is some.

Some unfun hilarity that goes along with that one too.

Let me.

Let me tell you.

But there's stories to be that.

I'm just trying to imagine you walk into that doctor's office, man, and with your dad.

With your dad.

Oh, my gosh.

I can only imagine.

So that's something that kind of gives you a sense of perspective.

You got to think about things.

Okay, well, here we go.

You know, and you mentioned it before, you got to have perspective on things and to kind of see things with a little bit of a positive life.

And so I would just say just a little bit more about that.

Do you think having a perspective from time that's passed and experiences like this gives you kind of permission to heal in your own way or maybe to give something back to others in your own.

From your own unique perspective?

Yeah, I think.

I think that's.

That's occurred in a number of ways.

So a couple examples, I think.

One, when I ref.

After watching It's a Wonderful Life and starting to look Back on how.

How did cancer and how could cancer impact me moving forward?

I did reflect on.

There were seven in my book.

There were seven heroes in my life who stood by me and helped me get through that year that I talk about in the book.

And.

And so I think one was the way those.

One was a nurse who went above and beyond the call of duty, who didn't know me before cancer.

Two of them were high school buddies.

And then my.

My siblings.

But my parents, who I kind of put through their own hell with my behavior as a junior and senior in.

In high school, I reflected back on how great they all were and how much they stood by me.

And so I try when people reach out to me, it could be for.

Somebody could reach out to me for help with an interview or their resume or LinkedIn or something I'm.

I'm good at.

I just.

I enjoy helping others, and I think about that a lot, that there were people who stood by me in my worst moment.

And I try to pay that forward.

I've participated.

I continue to participate and volunteer with a number of cancer organizations.

The big one is National Pediatric Cancer Foundation.

They're headquartered here in Tampa, where I live.

But, yeah, just trying to give back and help others.

I think that that comes from my experience and reflecting on how much people stood by me and helped me get through a horrible time in my life.

So that connection was important there.

And what do you think are.

So maybe some lessons learned out of this whole experience that's helped you in your business life and what you do there.

Has there been some transferable principles or lessons here?

Yeah, there's a lot.

I would say if I summed it up in one word, it would be empathy.

And so I've managed people for a bulk of my career.

You know, I'd say one, when I was going through cancer for a while, when I still had my hair, in the beginning, I was going to school part time, I was working part time.

And there were probably people I passed every day that had no idea what I was going through.

And so.

And there were some examples of that where people were shocked when they later learned I was going through chemo and cancer.

That always stood out with me.

And so I think when I'm managing people and leading teams, I try to lead with empathy because you don't know.

You don't always know what's going on in their personal life.

So an example could be a sales performer who's performed at a high level.

And I've seen this happen.

And there's a dip over time in their performance.

There's something going on maybe in their personal life could be divorced, a loss.

So I try to lead with empathy.

I think that has helped me with customers trying to put myself in a potential customer shoes when I'm selling something and trying to understand their point of view and what's important to them.

But I would say a lot of it comes back to empathy, to answer your question.

Awesome.

Awesome.

Well, let's kind of bring this conversation around and begin the process of bringing in to land the plane.

But let's.

I always like to have this type of conversation, Steve, with my guests and that is you've mentioned a couple of people who are impacted by your people had grief in their life and so on.

Can you be kind of specific about a person that your book or your story has been helpful?

You don't have to give any names you don't want to.

But a story where you've seen some transformation happen in some form or another or some good thing happen to someone that was a.

Partly due to your book or your story.

Yeah, I'll give one.

I don't want to use names but.

But I'll give one.

I had a. I have a gentleman who I worked with back.

Back in my 20s and we've just kept in touch.

Our paths have crossed and we usually talk a couple times a year and consider him a friend.

He had back surgery and it was pretty, pretty severe and he was laid up for a while and he read my book while he was laid up with back surgery and he said it really helped him because he was kind of a.

He was in a victim mindset of like woe is me and this is terrible and why, why do I have such bad luck?

And we talked about my name of my book, Brad being grapefruit.

I was this close.

I was this close to naming the book.

Why me?

Because when I, when I was, you know, I think any cancer, anybody who's had cancer or something terrible in life, usually you go through that.

Why me?

Right.

Sure.

Anytime.

Do kind of the bar to denial bargaining type of thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And so this gentleman read my book and said it, it.

It helped him kind of snap out of that and it gave him a different perspective and that he felt gratitude as he was laid up going through this and, and realized like there's a lot of people I know or people in the world that are in a much worse situation and dealing with.

With things that are much worse than.

Than back surgery and just said it made.

And he's going through something else personal now that he said that I don't want to share but that he said is.

Is really impacting and the book kind of helped ground him a little bit and more of a glass half full mentality.

So I've had a lot like that.

But that was one recently where I got a phone call where he said, hey, this.

This really kind of helped me through something.

Well, that's awesome.

I think the.

Just to you know, you have this story of basically your life is heading over the cliff when you're young, you get the cancer diagnosis.

Who knows what your life would attract to be if you hadn't had cancer.

It would probably much different than it is now.

I think it'd be fair to say.

Don't you think so?

And the.

I think I would have died.

Yeah, I think I would have.

I think it was.

It was that bad.

I was heading down a. I don't know that I'd still be here.

Well, there's that and you've.

And that's.

So that is as dramatic a transition as you can take pretty much.

And then you told the story about this friend in your life and other people have been impacting what you're talking about.

And I think it's.

I love what you're saying here, Steve, about perspective.

You know, that question I've asked it almost every cancer impact the person, you know, why me?

But I think you've kind of changed it around.

Why not me?

And what am I going to do about it?

You know, And I think.

And I think you can do that and I think you are doing that without being preachy or dismissive of the situation people are in and to give something back because you've lived the walk, you know, for 58 years now or, you know, since you returned 18 to now.

And that's an awesome thing.

So any kind of final words of encouragement or advice or anything you'd want to share with somebody who may be listening to our voices here today, who's kind of going through that why me?

And to go the why not me?

Any words of encouragement you may have.

Yeah, it's.

It's tough.

I. I don't know that I thought that much.

Much.

I don't know that I had that thought very much when I was going through it.

It.

But I would say whether you're currently in the midst of something, but definitely as you're coming out of it, trying to look at like how can that experience help me in a positive way?

How can it change my mindset?

How can it change the way I live my life?

And I've just, it, it helps me a lot doing that.

And, you know, I've, I've had relatives that have been through cancer, and some handled it very well and some were kind of bitter and angry for a long period of time.

And I just would encourage, I guess, people listening to this to, to find a way to try to grow and live a better life coming out of whatever it is.

Right.

We, it's not a question of if.

It's when we're going to go through something.

Right.

Traumatic.

We all go through stuff in our life.

And so just trying to come out of that with a growth mindset can only help and help you live a better life.

Yeah.

I love that in this perspective you're talking about, we'd like to talk around here about coping with hope and humor.

Well, our guest today, Steve Garrity.

Steve, tell us how people can find your book or find out more about you.

Yeah.

So you mentioned stevegarrity.com and again, it's spelled G A R R A T Y, but that's my website.

There's a link to the book of on Amazon.

Amazon owns about 80% of all book sales in the world, but it's on Amazon.

It's on Barnes and Nobles.

So pretty much anywhere online that you can buy books, it's in audio, paperback, hardback and ebooks.

So it's pretty much in all formats.

Well, you can find him, as you said, @stevegarrity.com his name's Steve Garrity, the author of Great Fruit How Cancer Led to Living a More Fruitful Life.

And we thank you for being our guest today on the Cancer and comedy podcast.

Hey, I just really want to they really thank Steve Garrity from stevegarrighty.com that's Garrity is spelled G-A R R A T Y.com and his book Great Fruit How Cancer Led to Living a More Fruitful Life.

We'll put all those links in our show notes and and with that can be a part of our conversation sharing from his heart about what happened in his life, you know, with cancer and getting through it.

But one of the things you and I like to focus in on her Deb is not just kind of being stuck in the story of our cancer or our problems that way, but what can we do with it?

How can it change our life for the better?

How can we serve others?

That's the fruit part of what he talks about here.

And so go with me here for a second.

What do you think are some of the lessons learned that Steve can give to us about how to have fruitfulness in your life after cancer?

Well, it is all about perspective.

You know, you can think, this is horrible.

This is awful.

You know, why me?

Or you can think, what am I going to learn from this?

You know, people ask me all the time, you know, what did I learn from this?

And what are the benefits?

And I say, well, I never would have met an awful lot of people, including Dr. Brad, for having cancer.

And, you know, and.

And that has definitely changed my life.

So I think that was one of his, you know, main messages was, how can this change your life to the positive?

Yeah, I agree.

It's choice that we make.

That's a choice that we make.

And there's some tools at hand that we can help do that.

You know, we talk about that here.

Really, one of the main purposes of this podcast is to help provide tools to people who are looking to cope with hope and humor.

And so one of the tools that he used through his life was journaling.

And so he basically journaled his whole life.

I think his mother gave him journals to write about this.

And so from the age of 18 on, he was journaling on pretty regular basis.

And finally 30 something years later, basically when Covid came around, he sat down and created a book out of that.

And that's there for us all to.

To.

To serve others as well.

And so that's a tool we can use.

So there's several tools that we can use to help us get through this.

But then what we give back, I think out of that is really the fruit of that.

And I still love the metaphor, the story about It's a Wonderful Life, you know, the movie that he refers to.

Because what's the theme of that whole movie?

Wonder.

Your life is wonderful no matter what happens to you.

Yes.

And clarifying for us here, so what are some of the ways that Steve taught about giving back and that maybe can be helpful to our listeners here?

Well, you know, he talks about volunteering, he talks about ministry, all sorts of things.

And.

And I think it's one of those where we just need to think about, you know, how can we give back?

And sometimes it's just not being grumpy that day.

I love that.

Oh, well, I know that that's an issue that I've had to deal with my life, to try to.

I kind of see my life and sometimes the kind of the.

The help to suppress the grumpy old man with the fun grandpa or whatever it would be.

And if I'm going to choose, I'd rather be the fun grandpa than the grumpy old man.

But sometimes the grumpy old man comes back around.

Anyhow.

Anyhow.

But the idea here is to be intentional giving something back.

And one of the ways that Steve did this is by writing this book about having a fruitful life and kind of get beyond the conversations of why me?

To, you know, hey, why not me?

In order to take, you know, why not me?

You know, and.

And so on and so forth.

I just throw a. I was watch.

We're recording this today after the super bowl, and there was some ad.

One of the ads of the super bowl had to do with prostate cancer and basically saying, you know, one in eight men gets prostrate cancer in some form or another.

And, and so my wife kind of looks at me and says, well, you're one of the lucky ones.

One of the.

What are the.

What are they?

You, you.

You won the lottery.

And I don't, I don't always look at it that way, but certainly my life has changed since I was diagnosed with prostate cancer a few years ago.

And, and you then what are you going to do with it?

You know, what are you going to do with.

Do with it and see life with the, the hardships happen, they are given, but what you do with it, and it's a shift in perspective.

I want to come back, I want to come back with a closing comment, but, you know, I want to see what you have to say about any kind of reality closing takeaways that can be helpful to our cancer comedy audience.

Out of our conversation with Steve Garrison,

I think it's, you know, a lot of what we talk about.

How can we find the humor in the situation?

You know, he told several really funny stories, and I thought, oh, it's a good thing you're interviewing him and not me, because I would have had,

yeah,

we, we had a good, good time together.

And I.

Real people do encourage and to go get the, get the book, but I just, what I want to leave our listeners with is this sense of, if you're going to leave a legacy, let's leave a legacy of meaningfulness.

You know, I think part of what Steve is sharing is that his life was on a trajectory of meaninglessness.

And I just think.

And a tragedy perhaps, and that he chose in a life of meaningfulness and giving back.

And his story, you know, just the title is really, you know, he had a grapefruit fries tumor and now he makes great fruit out of that experience, it's meant to encourage our listeners.

They encourage people who need to see a renewed purpose in their life and meaning fullness in life.

So it's not, you know, cancer is just whatever adversity you face, you can get through it and seek.

Seek a life that's filled with.

With hope and humor.

Right.

Right.

Well, speaking of hope and humor, it's time for.

Yep.

I'm sorry.

I warned you, folks.

Another one of Dr. Brad's bad jokes of the day.

So this experienced hiker went on a hike way up on a high mountain pass, and he made kind of a rookie mistake for a hiker in a dangerous high mountain pass.

He went all by himself.

There was rocky ridges and steep ledges, and he was.

Although he was an experienced hiker, he did not see the loose footing, the gravel along this one patch.

He stepped on this rock, it gave way, and all of a sudden he found himself, himself sliding over the cliff.

He was on his way down to the very steep fall into his demise, and he was able just to reach out and grab a root.

Just as he was getting ready to slide off the cliff and grab onto it and hang on to it for dear life.

He was dangling there, and he knew he was the only one.

The only real hope that he had was that hopefully someone else was on the trail.

Someone else was on the trail that he could save him.

So he called up, called up above where the trail was at.

He says, is anybody up there?

Is anybody up there?

No answer.

Just kind of an echo through the valley.

Is anybody up there?

Is anybody up there?

No answer.

One more time.

He called up, please, please, is anybody up there?

Then a voice came booming back.

I am here.

I am the Lord your God, and I'm here to save you.

If only you will let go of, I will save you.

And the man said, is anybody else up there?

Well, lifter, uppers, it's now time for us to turn serious with Dr. Brad's faith it or break it segment.

In our Faith it or break it segment, let's talk about mountaintop experiences and also experiences when it seems like you are going off the edge of a cliff.

In our conversation today with Steve Garrity, we recounted the truth that runs through his life, that sometimes God meets us not on our mountaintops, but deep in the valleys and even when we're about to go over the cliff.

He was 18 years old and was racing towards the cliff filled with unhealthy friendships, reckless choices, substance abuse.

And he said in his own words,

I was not a Good teenager.

Then what happened?

The diagnosis?

Cancer.

You have cancer.

And like a screeching halt, those words for Steve to confront his mortality, his priorities and his identity.

That's what I want you to think about here today, your real transformational time of life.

So the transformation happened for Steve was an instant.

It doesn't necessarily have to be instant for all of us, but it is a pivotal point and it's not easy at all.

It is something we have to go through the valley, we have to go through the tough times.

There is isolation, there's loss of friends.

He had a breakup.

He had lonely nights.

And for a while, Steve admitted he was devastated.

I bet you have those moments too.

I know I have.

But here's where faith and hope and God's grace come to take take root in our life if we allow it.

And Steve Case, guided by his parents, he began journaling and pouring out his raw feelings, his fears, his prayers, and even his questions to God.

And in quite honesty, he started to process the chaos, trusting that somehow God could redeem his pain.

And for Steve, his turning point came in a most unexpected place.

The viewing of the movie It's a Wonderful Life.

And he saw how adversity, even suffering, could become kind of like the Clarence character, the angel in that movie, like an angel in disguise.

So what if cancer, or whatever hardship we face is an opportunity to start over like an angel in disguise, to start over with new gratitude, a chance to reframe our perspective with God's help.

The Bible echoes this theme and it says in Romans 8:28.

And we know that in all things, God works for the good, for those who love him and are called according to his purpose.

So for Steve, his cancer became not just a crisis, but a reset.

It changed the way he lived as a husband, a father, business leader and a friend.

And it infused his life with empathy and gratitude, the desire to serve others.

I want you to learn that lesson there.

Because just as Christ calls us to bear one another's burdens, we can offer and offer comfort to others.

That's how we often receive comfort and have our burden relieved as well.

So let me ask you this, what adversity has knocked you flat?

Maybe it's cancer, maybe it's something else.

What are you saying?

Kind of why me?

About what kind of moment like that have you faced?

So Steve reminds us, and I want to remind you to have.

Have perspective.

Healed by God's grace can turn your why me Into a why not me?

What would God have me do with this?

And Steve eventually wrote his story for his children and we all were invited to share in his testimonies.

And he let God turn a bitter fruit.

Well, he puts it into great fruit.

So whether your hardship is cancer, grief, loss, loss, something else kind of eating away at your spirit, Christ offers hope, the promise that suffering can birth new strength, new compassion, and new purpose.

That's our Faith it or break it segment.

Well, lifter Uppers this brings us to the close of this episode of the Cancer and Comedy podcast with Dr. Brad Miller.

Cancer and Comedy is all about telling uplifting stories of people like you who are kicking cancer's butt with healing through hope and humor.

You can join those of us who are turning the grim into a grin by telling us your uplifting story.

Just go to cancerincomedy.com voice message well, that's all for now.

Please join us next time on Cancer and Comedy.

And if you like what you hear, please pass this podcast on to someone in your life who needs to turn turn their grim into a grin.

For Dr. Brad Miller, I'm Deb Krier reminding you that a cheerful heart is good medicine.

Hey, thanks for joining us on the Cancer and Comedy podcast with Dr. Brad Miller.

Make sure you visit our website cancerandcomedy.com where you can follow the show and get our newsletter.

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Until next time, keep turning the grim into a grin.