The Inner Journey: Savio Clemente on Emotional Healing and Adaptive Resilience After Cancer

Dr. Brad Miller 0:00

Our guest today here on the Cancer and Comedy podcast is Savio P. Clementi. After a decade of remission, cancer came back into Savio's life, and Savio Clemente had to rebuild himself from the ground up, which included a life-saving stem cell transplant. Now he is a TEDx speaker, a board-certified wellness coach, and a journalist who has interviewed over 2000 leaders and 200 cancer survivors. You can find him at his website, Savio P Clemente, that's S A V I O P C L E M E N T e.com Savio. Savio joins us today on cancer and comedy. Savio, welcome to our conversation, my friend.

Savio P. Clemente 0:47

Thanks, Brad. I really appreciate it. I'm excited to see what we unearthed today.

Dr. Brad Miller 0:52

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, let's kind of start with your cancer story a little bit. You have part of your story is being in remission and cancer coming back in your life, and you had to deal with it a couple of times, so just kind of set the context with us about your, your health story, you know, if you will.

Savio P. Clemente 1:14

Sure, so I was initially diagnosed in 2014 I just came back from a trip with a friend from Europe, I noticed I had drenching night sweats, and I noticed that my stomach was getting distended, and so at that moment in time I was not really seeing a doctor, per se, because I didn't really have any medical issues, and I was seeing a naturopath, and he basically said to me, "You need to go get a sonogram, so I did, and I had this sonogram. They told me to have a relative come and pick me up, even though I drove there. I went to the hospital, and literally that night, within an hour and a half, I was transferred to the fifth floor. And then I heard nurses speaking that I would be transferred once again to the seventh floor, which they call the cancer floor. It was only until a day and a half later that I found out it was stage three non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. I was bedridden for a week, spent an extra eight days where they had to distend about eight liters of fluid from my abdomen, and I was told two days prior to leaving from the medical director that I would have to start something called R-CHOP chemotherapy and she said, if you don't start it, I don't know where you're going to be.

Dr. Brad Miller 2:25

Well, well, so what was going through your mind then? You must have been a must, been a whirlwind of things going on. Tell me about how you kind of, your emotional upheaval, what was going on with you then?

Savio P. Clemente 2:34

Yeah, I didn't really know the way forward, because usually when you get a cancer diagnosis, typically you have time to think, you have time to make decisions, you have time to discuss. I didn't. I was bedridden in a hospital with all these tubes attached to me, and so when she came over, I was like, this is serious. I talked to a friend, and she's like, are you sure you want to put all those chemo poisons into your body, because they ravaged the body, and I didn't really have an answer for her, but I did think about it deeply, and I realized that I could do both. I could do traditional mainstream medicine, chemo, and all that, but hopefully when I get out of there, I could also do other things. So I ended up doing six rounds of our chop. The first round was in the hospital, and then an additional five rounds. I just kept thinking to myself, I wasn't really afraid of dying, per se. I know that sounds a little strange. I was more afraid that I didn't live up to my own expectations, or I didn't get to do what I came here to do. Although none of us have an assignment printed paper, but I just felt that I didn't say

Dr. Brad Miller 3:37

more about there. Was there any specific or Savio kind of you thought you know about how old were you when this happened? For one thing,

Savio P. Clemente 3:44

sure, I was 38 years old.

Dr. Brad Miller 3:46

So was there something, something kind of particular in your mind you kind of said left undone or not accomplished that you kind of went through your mind then?

Savio P. Clemente 3:53

Yeah, I had met I had professional debt, like working debt that I had to like feel like I had to fix, I didn't really feel like I was working in a profession that I loved. I was doing at that moment in time, I worked in a production company with a few other people, it just really wasn't successful. So I had that burden, and then also I didn't really fall in love, I didn't really have any relationships, and so those things were weighing really heavily, but also feeling like, and I know a lot of people feel this way, and it's not fair, but it's the feeling like life is is being cut too short, you know, and I wish I had more time.

Dr. Brad Miller 4:35

Yeah, I call that sometimes the insanity period when people go through when they're first diagnosed, and they're just, they're their whole life is turned upside down, and you're in turmoil emotionally, and and you at a loss of what to do, and especially that feeling of what's not been done, and so it's a crisis moment, and you have said in one of our prior conversations that the. That you went through the crisis, but for you, you said something like the period after the crisis was a hard part for you. So, tell me about that. What do you, what did you mean by that? Kind of after the crisis fades and expectations kind of kind of come into play, or don't come into play. So, tell me a little bit about that period of time.

Savio P. Clemente 5:21

Sure, so after the six rounds of our chop, I was in remission for a decade. It was only until June of 2024 that I had a relapse in a different area of my body, same cancer, but this time it involved so much more, like a stem cell transplant, as you mentioned. 29 days in the hospital, I lost 26 pounds, and it was really during that period that I latched on to two things that were anchors, which was silence and stillness. I was in a quarantine room, nurses would come to do my vitals every four hours, they would do hospital rounds once a day in the morning, and I only had those two things at my advantage, simple things but really powerful things, and in that, including my recovery, stem cell transplant is a serious ordeal. The body literally, they call it a medical rebirth, because once your stem cells - I had my own stem cells - but once they're given, your bone marrow is completely depleted, so they actually assign you another birthdate, medical birthdate.

Dr. Brad Miller 6:21

Wow, I didn't know that. That's an interesting,

Savio P. Clemente 6:26

yeah. And I thought, I thought they were giving me, yeah, I thought they were giving me some like woo, but they're like, no, we actually count the days after your stem cell transplant, so they're like, now second birth. So I have my, I like, joke around and say I have my birth date in the winter, my actual birthdate, and then now I have my second birth date in the summer, so I get two presents. Brad,

Dr. Brad Miller 6:46

hey, how about that? That's a perk you weren't expecting, isn't it? How about that?

Savio P. Clemente 6:52

Absolutely, so only thing that was kind of annoying was once you get your stem cells, you actually have to get revaccinated for childhood vaccinations. Oh my goodness, gone. Wow, have to go.

Dr. Brad Miller 7:05

It is literally, almost literally like a renewal of your, for lack of a term, your kind of your DNA, your, your who you are physiologically. Is this a fair understanding?

Savio P. Clemente 7:16

100% I'm on my fifth batch. The first batch was eight vaccinations. I was like, I had no idea from childhood till now that I had that many, that people get that many vaccinations. I had no idea about that, but yeah, so,

Dr. Brad Miller 7:30

so you kind of had to find a way to resume some semblance of normal life almost from scratch. That's a yeah. How about that now? You also, you also said in a prior conversation, something effect of that does going through the stem cell transplant and 29 days, and the hospital was a spiritual exile. Tell me about that. What did you mean by that, and what did you find in your exile, and did you, and how did, how did you come out of that?

Savio P. Clemente 8:02

Yeah, so I was in a quarantine room. Once you have a stem cell transplant, they have to make sure they stave off any infections, and so fortunately it was silent and quiet, and also I like the, I like the shades down, so I didn't really want any bright lights that's affecting my sleep, and so in that, with the silence and stillness, I actually gravitated towards some really hard truths, like maybe I wouldn't get out of here, maybe when I get out of here I'm just not going to be the same buoyant energetic self that I am, maybe when I get out of here I'm just, I just have to accept the fact and succumb and submit to the fact that perhaps this is this is my new normal from now on, so I came to this realization that I can't control a lot of what's happening to me, I can't control my red blood cells, my platelets, my white blood cells, all the things the doctors look for, I can't control, I can just control my emotional center, I control my mental acuity, I can control the way I actually see myself in this situation, not less than, but just someone in a precarious situation. And I also made sure that I reframed the chemo drugs, not as poison, but something that would help me, like an elixir. If you're someone who studied Bible, you call it mana from the universe, some level of life force, and I also made sure I showed up for the doctors as well, even though I was tired, because they weren't just healing me, I was healing with them. We were working in tandem to try to figure out the situation.

Dr. Brad Miller 9:35

Sound like you were, even as your physical health was being devastated and rebuilt almost literally, it would literally, you were doing some inner work too, some deep, deep inner introspection, spiritual development, other things of this nature that was just as vital as what was going on with you physiologically, would you, is that how you would kind. Frame, what was going on? You had the kind of the juxtaposition of the inner life and the outer life.

Yeah, so I'm a speaker, I'm a coach, and I'm also a journalist. So, as you can imagine, I used everything to my arsenal. So, one of the things I did was I created psychological distancing. So, instead of seeing myself as the problem, I created a buffer. I didn't detach, but I allowed myself that space to hold properly, and then I did something a little bit radical. If you know, we were taught for a while that intelligence was the number one trait to hat, then we were taught no emotional intelligence is, but actually the research points to this idea of metacognition, it's the thinking of the thinking, so who am I in the bed with this situation, and who's thinking of something greater than myself? And then with that, I also created an adaptive resilience mindset, so instead of thinking of the idea of bouncing back, I thought, well, when I'm in the situation, how can I have flexibility, create strategies for how to move forward with the situation, rather than thinking I have to get out of here.

Well, you became a real philosopher of your own self, it sounds like, and that's that, that's awesome. And that is, I think, that is a part of what must have led you to kind of the next phase for you, and I'd like to get into that, because you mentioned a little bit of how you then took this experience and you move forward, and you decided, as a journalist and as a researcher to begin a process of interviewing a lot of folks in this field, basically interviewed 2000 people and many cancer survivors. Tell me, kind of what led to that, and then what did you learn in that process?

Yeah, so before my relapse, I interviewed 200 cancer survivors. I told 35 of their stories, including my own. It became a bestselling book called I Survived Cancer Chairs, how I did it. 35 cancer survivors share their journey, and in there the key core element that I found as the linear line, or at least a golden thread, was this idea of forgiveness, not for someone else, but really for themselves, that they themselves felt like they sold themselves short on situations and with people, and so I just continue that. Once I

got you, did you find that? Did you find that finding kind of surprising, or was that how did you react to understanding what you learned there about that forgiveness?

Yeah, so I actually thought that for me it wasn't as present, for me it was. I'm a very independently minded person, so I'm very introspective, you could call me an introvert. I like to joke around and say I'm an extrovert for money, but all joking aside, I actually knew for myself that there wasn't a lot that I didn't say to people, or a lot that I didn't relegate, or a lot that I didn't make peace with, but a lot of the people I interviewed felt like they didn't do any of that, and so I found it really fascinating, because a lot of them needed the support system, and the support system for them during their cancer ordeal was more about them other people showing them affection or love or care, whereas for me, I took it as an inside journey, an inside job that I only I could rectify with, obviously, the help of medicines and all that, but only I could fix, whereas other individuals that I interviewed in the cancer journey didn't think that way, they really needed the ability to have, for example, someone come to the doctor's office to write what the doctor is saying, because they can hold that information in, or some of them actually needed home-cooked meals, or their neighborhood, or their community, or their loved ones showering them with affection and gifts, and things of that nature.

So it seemed like you learned a lot, not only about yourself, but about the integration survivors have between the emotional, the spiritual, the physical, the interpersonal, all that type of thing, and anything, and that this forget, I just fascinated by this area of forgiveness, I just think that's such an important thing, that is healing of relationships also is a part of the healing of our, of our bodies as well, so it just kind of the inner life and the outer life, not only from your own experience, but it seems like the inner life and outer life was a common theme of the people that you interviewed, which is that a fair assessment.

Well, in terms of cancer survivors, absolutely. I think to a large portion as well, the forgiveness also comes to the fact that they don't blame themselves for having cancer, but there is this level of forgiving what's happening to them. So I often tell people mine was a blood cancer, it's sort of invisible to some degree, but when you have organ cancers, you can't pretend that your breast. Aren't there, or that you're it's just, it's just that you're physically a different person, and so the forgiveness is allowing that part and making peace with that part.

Yeah, yeah. Well, that we call our caller podcast here Cancer and Comedy, and a lot of times people get a little confused about that, and the thing that we're kind of making light of it, or making fun of, we're not what we're doing, what we're saying is that, you know, having an attitude that has a sense of, of, of delight in it is one of the things that is important for people, we call it therapeutic humor to help with things, and yeah, I know you ran into some people in your research, and that's a part of their experience. I know you, you mentioned in our prior conversation about you had a good conversation with Rob Paulson, the voice of Pink in the Brain, the kind of pretty famous cartoon. Could you just kind of unpack that conversation that you, or what you learned from him, or anyone else you had that you encountered in all your interviews, who kind of had this sense of approaching something as serious as cancer with a little bit of humor.

Yeah, so Rob is a classic example. He was someone I did interview, and then subsequently he was in my book, and he is the voice of Ping He in the brain. And for him, interestingly enough, he said the thing that scared him the most was, so he had throat cancer. The thing that scared him the most was losing the ability to work.

Sure,

that's what gave him joy. It wasn't the cancer, it was the fact that he would not be able to work doing

his, his voice was his livelihood. Yeah, yeah,

absolutely. So, fortunately, he recovered, but he actually said that he created a sense of not only laughter but levity within the hospital system. He said his doctors at some point said, "Rob, we're gonna have to kill you to really, and so he would crack jokes, and for him that was therapeutic, that's what he needed in that situation, and grave and as dire as it was. Fortunately, he's still living, he's still working, he's still doing, he's still, you know, thriving. But I think for me, especially, laughter plays a huge role, because it allows you to once again not only create that distance, but allows you to see from a different perspective, you become more objective, and you then fall into what I think all of us want, which is lightness and joy.

No, some people do say that laughter is medicine, in as much as it can make you feel better. So, your take on that, your philosophy about that, do you think that's the case? And if so, how have you either experienced that or witnessed that in your interviews?

Yeah, so I think so. I did at certain points try to lighten the conversation, but it's so heavy for people who don't understand the cancer journey, who's never been through it, like family and friends, that they themselves don't know how to react, and that creates uncomfortable conversations. So I just kept the laughter to myself. Obviously, it was expressed through watching something, listening to something, doing something, but with other people, because it was triggering for them my own journey. Now a second time it created distance, and I didn't want that to happen. So, there was probably only one friend who I could, you know, he has gallows humor, so it was okay for me to continue, and he understood for me that was a way to have a bit of normalcy.

Yeah, well, cancer is one of those things that you know basically attacks things we love, whether it's ourselves, you know, you mentioned your Rob Paulsen attacked his voice, his livelihood, something that he loves and is very unique talent, and cancer, no matter what kind it is, you know, whether blood cancer, like you, or breast cancer, or, you know, I'm a survivor of prostate cancer. It, it attacks you in some tender and sensitive areas, your, your life itself, and that you love. And then also, it's a matter of control, you know, we're kind of lost control of our body, and sometimes laughter is also losing control, I guess, as it were, and not everybody likes to feel like they lose control, and it is a - I think it's an area when we talk about therapeutic humor, it is an area where we just need to be mindful and tender about it, and also to be sensitive that not everything is appropriate to certain people, you mentioned your friend at Gallows Humor, that maybe he could talk to you about Gallows Humor type stuff, but maybe some other people in your life that wouldn't go so well. So, I think it's an area where we just need to be mindful of this type of thing, and but there's this whole process, it seems that you've never. Got yourself involved with the healthcare field, Savio. So, I'd like for you to kind of go with that a little bit now. You've one of the things you've done is developed some frameworks and some teaching, some speech keynote speaking, and so on about this area. So, tell me a little bit about what you do to help healthcare leaders now to be helpful to people who are impacted by cancer and other healthcare related issues. What are you doing now with this?

Yeah, so in my speaking work, in my coaching work, and also my journalism work, I really speak with healthcare leaders about how to regain clarity in high stakes decisions after disruption. Everyone wants to figure out how do you survive the crisis. Of course, you need to survive the crisis, but it's really about that post crisis leadership gap that ends up creating that drift, and that drift creates even more of a chasm. And so, figure out the fact that it, the pressure hasn't gone quiet, it's just gone internal, so how does you recalibrate and figure out how performance lasts? That's what I.. that's really the work, because it's not really about surviving the crisis, it's what comes afterwards. It's about how do you not only create a new normal but a new way forward from that, and you know, the healthcare industry, especially in the US, it's, it's reported recently that it's $935 billion in healthcare waste, that's just not in equipment, that's in human bodies making indecisive decisions, and the decision quality itself is sorely lacking. So, what you're all about is making an interview series with CEO.

I'm sorry, I want you to finish with that, but it basically, it sounds like you're helping. What you're all about is helping individuals and people in healthcare substances make better decisions to serve others. Is that a part of what you're about?

100% yes. Especially when it comes to that crisis, about not only surviving it, but actually what comes next, and so it's, it's been reported that's 930 $5 billion in healthcare waste, that's just not in equipment, that's in human bodies making decisions that are not adequate or apt.

Yeah, you mentioned in our prior conversation something about you kind of had to develop your own operating system to develop your own well-being is that a part of what you're then trying to help organizations and healthcare systems to do too to kind of recalibrate their operating systems to serve their clientele better, is that part of what's going on here?

Absolutely, so it, the framework I have is called the Adaptive Resilience Framework, and in that it's really about that, mostly those weighted that they're overwhelmed, rather the framework identifies the signals and the patterns as to what actually needs to be done, actionable wise, in order to regain clarity, because that's often lost, and so I spoke a little bit about this in my TEDx talk. I did it about a year and a half before my relapse, and in it I talk about something called the Aloha reboot, and as we all know in Hawaiian, aloha means hello, and so it's a hello to your inner self, and so it's an acronym, a means acknowledge, or acknowledge where you are. I was in the hospital. This is what's happening to me. Just be really truthful, do a brain dump, whatever you need to do. L stands for listening. And in Hawaiian, there's a healing modality called Horna healing, and in Hono healing, they believe that the body not only sends you sensations, but it's, it has messages as consciousness in there, no matter what your belief system. This is what they actually believe. So, it's about tapping into the silence and stillness of that and trying to figure that out. O stands for opening, so open yourself up to this information, no matter what your belief system is, or even if you don't have one, just really opening and allowing. H stands for harnessing, so harness this information, make the connection, see what works, what doesn't, and A stands for acting, so act with like I like, like to say with the caveat, act with courage, because it takes courage to change, the research points to the fact that people love to change, but they don't know how to change, and that's the stages of change, as they call it, are they thinking about changing, are they in change? Are they thinking about reversing course? Are they thinking about relapsing? What's actually happening to them? Because they do want to change, they just don't have the tools or the knowledge or the wherewithal to do that. And so it's called the Loja Reboot. I tell people it's seven minutes to wellness, so seven minutes. If you don't have seven minutes a day, take one of the acronyms and practice that for one day, for one minute,

yeah,

but it can really help get recalibrate and regulate,

get the process going. I just curious, you have, are you from Hawaii, or does you have a background there?

I am not. My parents are from India, but from Goa, India, which was ruled by the Portuguese for like 400 years, so when people look at. Me and they see my name, they always get confused.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I just put the aloha phrase there, but you cut out of a unique story, Savio, in the sense of you, you've worked, you know, you had 10 years between your first occurrence and your second relapse of very serious cancer, and you learned a lot, and you shared a lot in between those, and then after, but it seems to be a common theme that you've mentioned here is resilience. So, any difference between the resilience before your relapse and after your relapse, or there's any sensibility about your prior cancer experience helping you to prepare resilience-wise, as it were, or maybe a false sense of readiness, perhaps, in getting, you know, when you, when, when the relapse came so long. Just tell me a little bit about your reality. Was your reality affirmed, or was it shattered when the cancer came back in your life?

So, I, you could say, for a decade, was the poster child of resilience bouncing back, writing articles about it, coaching other individuals about it, but when it hit, when the relapse hit, after the doctor, he spent literally an hour and a half going through the treatment cycle, which included two, three day stays in the hospital, including stem cell harvesting, including stem cell transplant, 29 days in the hospital, immunotherapy physical therapy. After he explained all the things that were involved with this, which, by the way, was 16 months from start to finish, I actually looked at him and I said, Dr. Steinberg, do you actually think I could do this? He paused, and he says, Yes, mr. Clementi, I actually think you can, and it wasn't that I was doubting myself, but I didn't know if my physical body could take it, like my mental, yes, my, my, my emotional, yes, absolutely, but I didn't know if my physical body could actually take another blow like this, especially a treatment cycle so involved, it's just not chemotherapy, it's something even deeper. He even talked about even doing radiation, which I didn't have to do, because I did do a scan and I was in complete response to treatment. But I did do an immunotherapy treatment because there was a clinical trial, and he's like, "It's like an insurance policy, it's really your choice if you want to do my sister's like, why would you want to do that after you spent x amount of months with all this? I said, because if it came back, then the only recourse I have is to do CAR-T therapy, and some insurance companies don't cover CAR-T therapy because it's really, really expensive.

Yeah,

and so I'm like, okay, let me just do everything, so that way I can say I checked off every box, and so for me, yes, I look at resilience differently now, because I myself wasn't sure it's not about bouncing back for me more, it's more about trying to regulate with the rhythm of what life is trying to show me, it came to my life, it came again, and now what do I do to move forward?

Yeah, I think I'll regulate with the rhythm, the rhythm of life. I really like that, in terms of how that's something that you can, you can teach and offer to the people that you work with, that you know very few people you know bounce back to their total health, you know, from a major health crisis. You know, not too long ago, I was just dealing with some health issues, and my doc said to me something I didn't want to hear. He said, 'Miller, you're getting old. I said, 'I didn't want to hear that, Doc. But so, but you know, it just gave me a little reality check there, that just things don't bounce back quite like they used to. So, having a strategy moving forward, I think, is so, so important, and you offer a lot of.. I've been on your website and learned a lot about you here today in our prior conversation, and you, you offer a lot of things to help people, your TED, your TED talk, TEDx talk, for instance, other things, your things that you've been writing and doing, your speeches, and your the work you do with healthcare organizations, but you've said something in prior conversations that really intrigued me. You said something you weren't something effective, you don't aggressively self-promote, that work kind of comes to you. So I just kind of wonder, how did this cancer experience kind of change or impact your relationship with things like ambition, achievement, success, things along that nature. Tell me a little bit about that journey.

Yeah,so I didn't start this work in the cancer world until five years after my first cancer bout, because they kept calling me after five years it's less likely to come back, and may come back, but it's less likely to. I didn't want to build something and then have it fold underneath me. Obviously, since then, now 10 years, 11 years, almost 12 years has elapsed from it, and so for me I live in that middle ground of not being too attached and. And the other pitfall is not being too detached. I don't want to be that person either. So I live in this middle ground where I go and I seek out things, and I do things. I work within the confines of how we all work, and I have an arsenal of things and contacts that I can thankfully do this work with, but I don't really get attached to outcomes anymore, because I know that can be taken away. People often talk about this idea that, okay, well, you know, I want to achieve this, I want to do this, I want to do that, but I can tell you from experience, I was doing that, and then a day later I found out I had cancer again.

Your world,

much as I was doing all those things and living life completely upside down. So, why can't the opposite be true? Why can't I have gone through a relapse and then my world reorientates itself and gives me all positive things as well, right? Yeah, so I just make it for what it is, and I don't push

it, yeah. Love that, what you've been sharing here about rhythms and so on. I'd like to hear, for as we kind of bring our conversation to a close the next few minutes here, tell me about, let's just say you've spoken a lot of places, you've served a lot of people, I'm sure people have, you said work comes to you, but I imagine people have come to you, you've literally sought them out of your interviews, but I imagine people have come to you and said, Savio, you know, thank you for sharing, and here's what's going on with me, and so on, so forth with my cancer journey, or my situation in life. So, tell me, what you know, what you share with people, what may be a first step for someone who's kind of in a bad place, maybe where you were, you know, when you kind of first started this journey. What do you share with people as kind of a first step to get them on a journey to finding their rhythm?

Yeah, I would say a few things. One is what's actually bubbling or percolating with you. A lot of coaching is really the work that I do, like I mentioned earlier, is about really figuring out for yourself where in the body does that reside, and so whether it's cognitive load or cognitive pressure, is it residing there, and finding ways to actually move that or filter that down. So I like to tell people, think of it like an elevator, you're going from the top of the elevator, all the way down to the heart, to the gut, wherever that's resonating for you, and then create some type of symbology or language for that. What's actually happening in there? Second thing I would say is really incorporating the intentional silence that seems easier said than done, is very difficult in our disruptive, noisy world, and I think once people really figure out for themselves what is the signal they're trying to intake, really gather, and what other signal that they're actually trying to give out to the world, then they can attract opportunities, people, and situations much better. It always starts from the internal, I think. A lot of us, including myself, try to fix the external things in our, in our life, rather than actually spending the time with the heaviness that's usually an internal

one. They're just kind of a follow-up to that. What you say to somebody, is there any stories about somebody that you've influenced in your teaching or your what you've shared who's had kind of an aha moment of their own? Can you share any stories like that about any person or situation?

Yeah, I was coaching this executive, and in the middle of the conversation, I just randomly asked them, I'm like, because he was a latchkey kid, and I said, "What were you watching on TV when you were? He was like, "That's odd to ask that. I'm like, "Yeah, what was it? He talked about commercials. He was really.. he loved commercials, and he realized now, as an adult, that he became an advertising executive because watching commercials made him feel safe, and made him feel at home, and made it feel like he was protected, that someone was watching, someone was watching over him, even those an animated television show, and so the aha moment for him was trying to figure out, oh, that's not my identity anymore, I don't want to be that person, so I tell any viewer or listener right now, if they have that label of cancer patient or cancer survivor, we don't know what the outcome is. We can't control it, but we can control how we see ourselves and what we see ourselves doing, being, acting, because I think at the end of the day, beyond hope, I think all of us just really want to feel like we're being listened to, that we're being understood, and the best way to understand someone else is to understand yourself.

Yeah, I love that we're just saying to be listened to, understand others, understand yourself. I love that. That's a great way to conclude our conversation. Saw VLP Clemente, how can people get a hold of. You, if they want to find out more about you and about what you're, what you're all about, and what you offer.

Sure, they can go to my website, Savio P clementi.com S A V I O P C L E M E N T E. On there, I have my keynote work. I have a few more spots for 2026 left. They can go and get my book. They can also go and see my TEDx talk. Every Wednesday, I have a subset newsletter called the Head, Heart, and Gut Intelligence, and also my current information, my current interview series with CEOs and CMOs about the healthcare leadership operating system, and if they want to follow me on social media, I'm at every platform at the Human Resolve, because Brad, as I believe, as you do, probably as well, we only have two things at our disposal: resolve and resolution.

Absolutely, well, we'll put those connections in our website as well, at Cancer and comedy.com And we thank you for being our guest today. He is Savio P. Clemente, and great guest here on the Cancer and Comedy Podcast. Thank you, Savio, for being our guest today.