Turning Fear and Loathing of Cancer into Laughter, Faith, and Fabulous Focus

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 be talking about fear and loathing of cancer mixed with faith and funny. So now here is the host of the Cancer and Comedy podcast, Dr. Brad Miller.

Hey, Deb, pleasure to be with you and our lifter uppers. These are the people who said that cancer and other adversities in life are not going to stop us. We're going to live life to the fullest no matter what happens, and we're going to have a good attitude about it. There's bad stuff that happens. Cancer is certainly one of them, but we're going to have a attitude of living our life to the fullest, and that's what we like to do here in cancer and comedy, we'd like to talk about in terms of turning the grim of cancer into the grin of a fulfilled life. And we're going to be having some conversation around that today. But part of that process is developing a community of people, of like minded people, and see, we hope that people will do just that by connecting up with our with our community at cancer and comedy.com/follow Hey, Deb, I got a couple of food related, bad dad jokes for you today.

Oh, can't wait.

Food related, here you go. Here. Here's one. Why don't eggs tell each other jokes?

I don't know.

Yeah, they just crack each other up.

Cute, cute, cute.

One more here. Why did the baby cookie cry?

I don't know,

Because his mother was a wafer too long.

Cute. I love it. I love it. Very fun. Very fun. Well, you know, we love these jokes, and in fact, following our conversation, we're going to have another one of Dr Brad's bad jokes of the day. But then, of course, we do turn serious and have our faith, it or break it. Segment, well, we would love for you to be part of our Cancer and Comedy community, where together we crush cancer with a message of how to cope with hope and humor. Please follow cancer and comedy at cancerandcomedy.com/follow.

Well, Deb, today, let's, I thought we would have a conversation. You and I chat a little bit ahead of time about this, about how so many people approach cancer and other bad things in their life with fear and just dread. You know, loathing. They fear and loathed. We've those two words sometimes go together, fear and loathing, and that it is such a especially intimidating thing at per at first. And you and I know that at least a couple things that we can do to reframe the fear and loathing people have about cancer and other bad things that happen to them, is by being funny or having fun things in our life. And faith is another aspect of that too, and we ran across some material that has to do with this.

And particularly, I ran across from material by a lawyer turned comedian turned pastor. Her name is Susan Sparks. You can find her at susansparks.com and she's got some cool, some interesting information on her website, and some of the she's been on TV, and some of the big name shows and feature Oprah and some of the other ones, and she had some good things to say and I just thought to just generate some aspects of what you and I could talk about regarding fear and loathing of cancer juxtaposed with being faithful and funny. First of all, you think it's true that a lot of people have this thing of fear and loathing, fear and just kind of intimidation. You think it's a people deal with, you

know, you hear that word, you know you have cancer, or even we suspect you have cancer. And I think fear has got to be panic, you know, you know all sorts of words you mentioned loathing. I think you know we're, we know that we're going to hate what comes up, you know, all sorts of things and, and so, you know it's, it really is, you know, nobody goes, Oh, okay, I can't, you know, I can deal with this. I you know that comes right? You know, we've, we've got that. But I think first, it is just terror, you know, fear,

Yeah, indeed. And everybody has goes through that some of the writing I've done, call it the insanity part of it, you know, you just your, your mind kind of goes blank. You just, kind of, or you just short, short circuit, set your brain to the fear and the and the anxiety of that. And I know, and in my case, you know, I talked quite a bit about how when I first heard about I had to laugh to keep from crying. That's because I was so devastated by the news that I had cancer.

And you've people react to different sorts of ways, and then you've had your moments too. You've dealt with stage four cancer on several different occasions. In many different treatments and surgeries and so on and but what you and I both chosen to do, and what many people in the cancer and comedy community have chose to do, is to reframe this circumstance and then include in it some things like having fun in life, being funny and having be around fun people, and then the faith aspect of it, and then the and we found some interesting things here that help us to do just that. I know you took a few notes and had some thoughts about how we can maybe approach this area of reframing fear and loathing of cancer, the faith and funny, right?

Well, you know, we started kind of looking at it based on words that start with the letter F, right, faith, fear. There is that big F bomb that we can't say, you know, and sometimes you just need to say it, right? Yeah. I mean, it's just there.

But, you know, I think I have a pretty close relative, he has a shirt on, and she's not known for this because, you know, F cancer, you know, and that's not really her thing to say, though, I get what she does, but we know which we we're talking about here. So, yeah, right, no, and.

But there's, you know, the words that start with the word or with the letter F, I think, you know, we can say F cancer, and use a lot of those words, you know, you mentioned the first one, and that's faith. And you know, obviously there is the spiritual version of it. You know, that God will get you through it, you know, or God will be by your side, you know, all of those various things. Then there's faith that your friends will be with you. I think there's faith in yourself, right? I can do this, you know, and, and, but as, as you know a former minister, what are, what are your thoughts about the word faith?

Well, faith, I think, is putting a trust in something that is a little beyond yourself and or within yourself. What I mean by that there is an internal basis of faith, and then there is a basis of faith that can come from outside to support you. The internal basis of faith is that where the wherewithal that we can bring within us and we can support, we can we can build up the wherewithal within us through things like faith practices, spirituality, prayer, meditation, things of that nature.

And we do know from our studies about how to handle cancer and other trauma that there sometimes we need to center ourselves. You know, we need to get to go within ourselves and just say, okay, Brad, Deb, you could handle this, and you are going to do this, and you would have to pool your resources to do this. And I believe faith is a big part of that, of course, as a, as a as a Christian man, as a person of faith, and person who believes that faith, in all, all religious faiths, can have something to say here, I think that's a part of it too. There's also the faith that we can have in the resources that we then draw into ourselves, such as such as the medical teams that we work with, such as our friends, our family, maybe even a support group. We certainly hope that the community we build here at cancer and comedy is a part of this helping people to draw strength from the faith in others.

And you know, we also believe a part of that faith process here is to draw that there is something bigger than ourselves to hang on to and to live for. And so if without faith, you just shrivel up and die literally. And you might die. You kind of might die internally. Many people, kind of, you know, die emotionally, and even emotionally and mental capacity long before they expire physically. And so faith kind of builds that up. That's my take. What do you think? What's your take on this faith issue, you know?

I think it's absolutely critical, as you said, that that we have it in its various connotations. I'm not particularly a religious person. I was raised as a Methodist, and I tell people, you know, I go to church when my mother would tell me to go, you know, and, and, but there, to me, there is something bigger, right? And, but I always found great comfort when people would tell me, we're praying for you and, and, you know, and I'm not sure why.

I mean, you know, obviously there is that, that religious thought, but it was also that there was just somebody there who was thinking about me, and I never, ever, you know, would dissuade them from that, you know, it just, it was always to me. It was very moving when someone would say, you know, we're praying for you. And you know, when my mother was still alive for, you know, nine years I was on the prayer list. Just at her church, you know, and, and I got to you, I kind of got a kick out of that. I thought, you know, at some point, somebody's probably thinking still, but you know, to me, the fact that total strangers were saying prayers for me that really, really did mean a lot.

And the fact that was communicated with you, at least, to know that it's happening, helps that human connection, and part of the human connection is also bit of a faith, spiritual connection, at least an emotional connection, to know that you're thought of and not discounted. And I think sometimes we talk about cancer and other things like that, we can think, Okay, this is over with. I'm gone. I'm a goner, you know, so no longer of value, and the fact that we are still valued and cared for, I think that's awesome. Well, that's one f1 you got it. You got another. You got another F horse.

Well, you know, we mentioned the word fear, and we probably don't need to talk about it anymore. But one of mine, you know that, that I think is just as important as faith, is the word fight. You know, we've talked about, you know, some people don't like they think that's, you know, kind of a negative connotation. That's fine, you know. And, you know. But to me, personally, it is, you know, I am in a fight, you know, and, and, but, you know, kind of, along with that, you also have the fight or flight, right?

And it's okay sometimes to say, I'm going to take a break, you know, maybe it's a day, maybe it's more than that. Maybe it's an hour, you know, and, and, you know, maybe let's, let's turn it into something where we're going to talk about another word, and that's fun. So maybe you're going to take, you know, a little bit of a break and watch something funny. So you're, you're taking flight from that fear, that trepidation, that terror, and you're going to laugh. You're going to have fun.

Well, I think we can fight for there's a two or three nuances to the word fight. I'd like for us to kind of discuss here for a second. There's a sense that you get a daily fight, you know, you get, it's a daily renewal, that this is the flight thing means that you have given up. Means you have withdrawn. You know, that kind of thing fight means that I'm not giving up, Dag on it. I'm into this. I'm going to scrap and claw. I'm going to do everything I can to work on this, you know. And I thought about this a little bit here recently, just, just with my wife, retired a couple months ago, and we decided to revisit our wills, which we hadn't done for many years.

And, you know, there's some things in there, about property and other things like that, but also about end of life protocols and that kind of things. Are you going to make some decisions regarding that? And one of his, you know, do you want extreme measures or not, whatever? But to me, and I was headset, whether you have to choose whether you're going to fight for your life or not. You know, in your case, you know, you've had stage four cancer on several different occasions. Obviously, you're a fighter and a script scrapper and getting after and tenacious, and that's good. So there's that internal fight that we have to choose every day, that I also like the sense about the camaraderie that comes when we're in a team effort to fight together, you know, like a team, whatever it is, you know, maybe might be literally in a, you know, a fight a war.

You just had a big basketball, you know, with Indiana, right?

Yeah, the teams coming together, you know, we with its basketball or football or like, a band coming together to play music together, you got to, you got to come together, and you got to really fight for the energy. Fight for the joy, as it were, fight it's that. It's that's worth it. And, you know, I think about and then I think it kind of gives you the sense of, every day I'm going to fight for this with my for my own self.

But if I team together with other people, then we got a team. We've got a team thing going here. We're really fighting that's and that's how, you know, when we think about some of the charitable groups, American Cancer Society, Stand Up to Cancer, others, you know, they work together to try to defeat cancer. And that's when I think of it fight. It's kind of a you got to have your individual wherewithal and a team effort to fight for something that's of value, right?

Right, yeah. And so when we were thinking about this, I put it, you know, into ChatGPT. Who, you know, I use ChatGPT all the time. And so it kind of knows. It knows that I like Sass and sparkle.

I agree with him. I agree with him. I don't think I've heard you say that before. SAS and struggle. That describes, that describes T.

Yeah, oh yeah, oh yeah, you know. And, and so, you know, I told it the concept of what we were doing, and I said, we're looking for words that start with F, that are important on a cancer journey. And, you know, one of these, it says. Focus, right? We need to focus on what matters, like naps and dogs. There you go. For you, it would be granddaughters, that's right.

I got to tell you, I dig the nap apart too. I really I've.

Oh yeah, oh yeah. We like Naps. Naps are good.

Well, I love that because, you know, focus, it's kind of like getting your priorities straight. You got to in order to, in order to have fulfillment of joy in life, you also got to take care of, you know what you got to do? You know what you got to do. And so the focus is on. You got to care for your health concerns. You got to see the doc, you got to do all that kind of thing. You got to do the exercise and the eating right. Sometimes that made me to change the plans.

But then you also focus on that which is beyond those things, which is relationships, dogs for you, my grandchildren for me, although we service, we've been two years now since we lost our dog, and my wife and I were talking about that just today, because we were getting we get going on vacation pretty soon, and in the past, we'd have to make all these arrangements, you know, take care of her dog and do that more, but Miss, miss her a lot, but you're right, but it's those things what matters, the focus what matters most. And don't focus on the disease so much, right? Focus on what matters even more than that. Love it, right? Love it.

Yeah, you know, we don't want to focus on what we have lost now. We want to acknowledge it, right? But we're going to focus on how we're going to go forward. And I love that. So then it's next one, and I love this. So these are under empowering and motivational, right? It says freedom, freedom from expectations, toxic people or pants with buttons. Okay, see, I tell you, chat GPT and I are tight.

I dig it. I dig it. I do. It's a great tool to use. Well, I like this one a lot, Deb, and I tell you what I have found, like, I've, you know, mentioned our cancer comedy community will know that part of my cancer story is that I literally was diagnosed a month or so after I retired. And so I was kind of thinking, Well, I'm going to do retirement, you know, this kind of stuff. And, right? And, but.

Then and fate had another word for you, right?

There's another F word, isn't it? But, but I found, in many ways, in the four years since I re three years since I retired, and some freedom to do what I want to do, and also some focus that comes with the timeline. I heard somebody speak recently about cancer time. In other words, she this woman who had cancer very severe. It's a very terrible situation, but she realized that there was a lot to accomplish, and she didn't have time to worry too much about some of the things that were not that important.

So she had freedom to eject the things that were dragging her down and to focus on the things that gave her joy and to get them done. And she did it, and has accomplished a whole lot of life. And I felt that same thing too, that the free, the freedom comes in that I'm doing basically what I want to do now instead of what I have to do, you know, talking to you on a regular basis and sharing with our cancer comedy.com, lifter uppers and other opportunities I've had. I'm meeting locally in my own community. I'm meeting tomorrow with some people who have to do with some cancer, charitable work.

And I'm looking, looking forward to see what becomes of that, doing what I want. And there's freedom to do that. It's had some little time freedom to do that. So I love that, and it's choosing to do that rather than dwelling on what you don't have, right? Was just dwell on what you do have, and the freedom to accomplish it, and to, you know, not, not give a damn too much about the things that really don't matter. Lean into. What lean into? What does How do you feel? How do you feel about that?

Oh, yeah, most definitely. You know, I think one of the things that we see a lot of people think about is they now have the freedom to do what they really want to do and what they think is important. So, you know, their priorities change. They might quit their jobs. They you know, they might, you know, all you change, you know, just a variety of things going forward in their life, because they know that, you know, the Life is short, you know, hopefully they have many, many years ahead of them. But sometimes it's like, okay, you know, maybe this needs to change and I need to make some decisions differently.

Well, I think a number of the guests we've had here in cancer comedy last couple years we've worked on this, have had some shift sort of like that happen, you know, where they've had something that's happened to them, that they've had a life shift, and they seem to have more fulfillment in that. And that could might be another F word for us here, is focus, fulfillment.

And really, I think, all to. Finally, what people want to aspire for in life is a fulfilled life, because for so many people, they feel unfulfilled, right? And so if we can help that to happen here, even amidst something terrible like cancer or some other adversity that is cancer us in a sense that eats us alive, right? Man, I think that's overall, a gift, you know, a gift that we choose to accept. It or Not we, we can. You got any more F words there for us? I'm sorry.

I have one more. And like I said, you know, ChatGPT knows me, so it's, it's another F word. Is fabulous days when we still sparkle, right? You know, and so think about that, folks, you know, when, when things aren't going the way that you want, whether it's, you know, because of cancer or not. How can you be fabulous? How can you toss a little sparkle and a little sass in your day?

I love that, and that describes you so much sad. What did you call it? Sass and fabulous?

Sass and sparkle? Yeah, that.

There you go. And then to be, to choose to be fabulous. And I have a good other friend of mine, and she and you, I think you might know Jen Hardy, but anyhow, and she, she leans into a fabulous over 50 is her, is her kind of a thing, and she's the sparkles, and all that kind of thing is, is that kind of thing? But I think what we're saying here is, be yourself, let your right, if you let your freak flag fly, you know, whatever that is, you know.

There are several F words there, yeah.

I can't break the flag fly. There you go. I love it. And for me, it was just kind of lean into the whole dumb dad joke thing, you know, which I was kind of known for my family, and I would tell them in sermons and things like that, just kind of lean into it, you know, just embrace it, you know, just be a corn cornball a little bit. And that doesn't mean you're not serious at times. It doesn't mean you don't, you know, it's like you take life, you take other things seriously.

You don't take yourself so serious, like, you know, for you, the sparkle and the Sass is just a descriptor of your personality that just comes out and some, many, many people are attracted that maybe some aren't. But so what you go on and you've got that attitude about I love it fabulous. How do you think? How do you think we can encourage some of our folks in our community to let their freak flag fly to be fabulous in their own way. How can you encourage them?

You know, I think the biggest thing is to let go of the fear we're going to judge you, right? You know, and, and, and kind of, you know, it's, it's funny, it's, you know, like we can use this as an excuse, you know, well, I'm, like, one of mine. I no longer wear business suits, you know, and, and I don't care if people don't like that, I attend business meetings in jeans and a night jacket. I mean, you know, I'm everything's clean, everything fits all of those various things. But, yeah, let go of that fear that people are going to judge you. And it might be you can say, well, you know, I got cancer, you know, and, and so, but yeah, you know, it's let go with that fear and know that the only opinion that counts is your own. Yeah, a part

of that is just give yourself a break, you know, right? And, and understand that there's a phrase I'm going to use here is that applies in some degree, but I'm going to explain it. This is, it's like nothing really matters, is what I'm going to say, and what I mean with it. And yet, everything matters. Everything matters, but nothing matters. In other words, right? You know your relationships are going to change, and what's really important is relationships and things that grow in that way.

But the external, you know, whether you know some things of that nature, doesn't really matter. The facade doesn't really matter. And that's where I have kind of a interesting I observe a fair amount about social media world and that kind of thing. I'm not as involved with it as you are, but I observe it because you got people who are leaning into it as I'm an influencer, and other than then, I the ones I appreciate more are ones who are choosing to kind of share their life, but they're not trying to manipulate the system. If you were, you understand what I'm going with this.

You know they want to be so this has to do with being authentic, genuine and authentic, without being those people who are pretending to be genuine, authentic, which I think happens too, and I love what you're saying there, you know, hey, if you go to like, I've got a business meeting tomorrow, and I'll probably wear what I usually wear, which is, you know, my Hawaiian shirt. And, you know, either, either Jean. Things, or shorts, what I wear most of time these days. I very, you know, very rarely worn a tie in the last many years, even when I was still in ministry.

But that's just not my had a couple weddings. I've done funerals. I've worn ties for but that was pretty much it, because I don't like them. I don't like wearing ties, but to be your yourself, and I think that's a cool thing. And what is some way you mentioned about how you help encourage others be fabulous? And I think I know a couple of these, but what are some of the ways that you have allowed yourself to be fabulous? You mentioned no more pant suits, for instance. What is one only? What's one of the ways you lodge those people? That's fabulous?

You know, some of it is getting rid of the toxic people in my life, or just not paying attention to them. You know, they're still there. But it's like, okay, whatever. But I think one of the big things is to give yourself and others grace. And that comes back maybe to our first word, which was faith. You know, we give them grace to know, you know, maybe things aren't going good with them. Maybe we need to give them a hug. We need to, you know, give ourselves the grace to deal with what we're dealing with in whatever way is going to work.

Awesome, awesome. Well, I think part of what we're saying here, this kind of bring our conversation around to this, is to choose to find joy in difficult circumstances. Is what we're part of, what we're talking about here. It's kind of the overall theme of our podcast here. And then a part of that process, this reframing, thing that is, is know that, yeah, you have to deal with the reality of the cancer or the bad thing that has happened to you. It is frightening. It is, you know, we hate it. It's loathing that kind of stuff.

But we don't have to live there. We don't, you know, we could we live with it. We don't have to live for it. And that that kind of thing, right? And this reframing of this is to not be so judgmental about ourselves, about others, but or shame or anger or any of that kind of stuff and but to have joy and purpose and hope in our life. And one of the people that we ran into in our conversation here is a pastor, former lawyer turned comedian turned pastor, named Susan Sparks at susansparks.com and one thing she said, one of the things that but about her, she has a quote, is her, one of her missions is to help people harness the power of humor to live with purpose, gratitude and joy.

And I like that quote because it means to be kind of intentional, to bring this joy into our lives, even in the midst of something like cancer and other bad things that can happen to us, divorce, depression, bad you lose your job, what have you. We can choose, choose to do this, to harness the power that comes in that and to me, that's a great reframing of taking the fear and the loathing of cancer and then just turn it into something that's funny with faith in the funny being a part of it, right?

Yeah. You know the best word, I think, is fun. You know, how can we have fun with this absolutely. Well, speaking of fun, I told you, we're going to have another one of Dr. Brad's bad jokes of the day.