Ep 1 - My Background and The Why

In this first episode, I open up about why I’m starting this podcast and what I’m still working through. If you’ve ever felt stuck, burned out, or like you’re rebuilding from scratch — this one’s for you. Loss is the focus in this one.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hey, everyone, welcome back. Thanks for tuning in again to
the Still Standing Strong podcast. If you've made it this far,
one episode in thank you, you could have given up,
but you didn't. There's some positivity to start your day.

(00:31):
Or maybe it's the afternoon for you already and I'm
a little late, but there's some positivity for you. With
that being said, today I just wanted to and this
will be a shorter episode as well, but I just
wanted to give you a background on me. Let you
explore my mind a bit. You might need a flashlighth

(00:56):
but better understand I'm here doing this and what makes
me tick. So that being said, let me just start
from the beginning and give you just a little bit.

(01:18):
So I'll say I'm in my early thirties. I'd like
to think fairly young, but I've experienced different things in
my life that I'm sure a lot of you have
as well. And I'm sure what you've gone through in

(01:42):
many cases has been far more traumatic and extreme. But
what we go through largely dictates how the rest of
our lives will be. For me, that all began when
I was well, when when I was thirteen, When I
was thirteen, just exiting middle school entering high school, my

(02:09):
family learned that my mom had been diagnosed with stage
four lung cancer and she was given six months to
live at the time, and we really didn't know what
to do with this information. This was, as it is
for everyone, new territory, unexplored territory. There isn't a map

(02:29):
that you can be given for this. You just have
to traverse it the best way that you know how.
For us, and thankfully for us, my mom was incredibly optimistic, positive, confident,
just exuded this liveliness and as we had a feeling

(02:50):
she would, she ended up beating this and getting into
remission for a while. I think it was something of
a year and a half two years. So we used
that time to travel, visit family, do the most that
we absolutely could, because as unfortunately we all experience I'm
sure at some point or another and hopefully most of

(03:12):
us don't. The cancer came back and it was much
more aggressive, and this time it ended up winning, and
my mom passed away six years after being diagnosed. Remember
she was given six months to live, but six years
she made it. It didn't make it any easier on

(03:33):
us or her, but my mom was so strong up
until the end, and even in the end she was
even stronger. And then once she left, my Dad and
my brother and I we began to live the life
that was given to us and did the best that
we could. I remember I visited family that I had

(03:57):
in Georgia and some friends, and that helped me, and
I'm glad that I did, because about two months later
to the day, my little brother passed away as well,
at the age of seventeen. His death was more of

(04:18):
a mystery, took us all by surprise. We didn't have
an opportunity to prepare for it, and to this day
we're largely not sure what happened, but let's just say
it was something resembling broken heart syndrome, and this left

(04:42):
my family spinning. My dad was struggling with this, as
was I, and for the next many years this was
very difficult, as we can imagine. I know that a
lot of you have experienced this unfortunately as well, so

(05:04):
you know the trauma of the emotions, the feelings this
brings up. But I saw life a little bit differently
than my father did, and well, for me, life moved
forward and I can't take things back. I can't bring

(05:26):
people back, so I lived my life the best that
I could, and then in twenty nineteen, my dad nearly
passed away. I may go into the details at some point,

(05:46):
but let's just say he was discovered more than likely
on his last breath, and was saved by law enforcement
who carried him out of his house and got him
to the hospital. And then came the longest ten to
fourteen days of my entire life, wondering what came next.

(06:09):
Was I about to be a I don't even know
what that would be called, and you lose your entire
immediate family. But well, by some miracle, even on a
ventilator for ten days, even me learning that my father
wasn't showing any signs of brain activity, I was told

(06:32):
that he was able to come off of the ventilator,
and from there was a very long and strenuous and
slow process but allowed him to come out stronger and
in some ways healthier than he had gone in. And
he did, yes make a full recovery, which was not
what I had ever experienced before, and I was so grateful.

(06:54):
But from that day on, it just seemed that things
just kept piling on. What do you do with that?
What did I do with that? Well, for better or
for worse. What I did not do is dwell on it.
As you'll hear and maybe see at some point a

(07:16):
lot on this podcast. I just kept moving forward because
what else could I do. I live my life in
a way that I would want others to live it
in that. You can't dwell on events that you cannot change.
Although I've definitely gone and done that and I've learned

(07:38):
from it. Death is something that really you really can't
do much about. Well, you can't do anything about it.
But with that being said, I hope that sets the
right tone for where I'm at, what I've experienced, And

(07:58):
there are other events that I've gone through, but we'll
talk about those later. What I really want to explore, though,
is what would your reaction be to that? Well, how
would you handle that kind of tragedy, that kind of

(08:19):
life wrench being thrown at you? How have you handled it?
Maybe you've gone through something like this, or maybe you've
had a friend, a work, colleague, coworker go through something
like this. How did they handle it? And that's what

(08:39):
I want to explore on this This is a rather
extreme example, but your way of handling this might differ
greatly from my way, and I'm hoping that we learn
from each other. I don't know if I want to
say the best way to handle these but way that

(09:01):
suits us best in order to wind up in a
parallel path of positivity towards the rest of our lives.
So with that being said, here's some positivity. We had
waffles yesterday morning, my wife and I, and they were wonderful.

(09:22):
I liked. I believe in the Sandwich philosophy of delivering
bad news. But thank you for joining. Next time we'll
just dive a little bit deeper, touch on some smaller topics,
what we're thinking, what we're feeling. I'd love to see
some comments coming in from everyone guide me. This is

(09:44):
our podcast, not mine. I just enjoy hearing the sound
of my own voice. No I don't. I want to
help wherever I can, and I think there's a lot
of people that want to say things that can't, that
don't want to, So let me be that voice, help
you through things, make some recommendations. But at the end
of the day, as I said on the intro episode,

(10:09):
life is going to hand you a lot, and your
a lot may look a lot different than my a lot,
but It isn't about what happens to you until you
react to it, and I want to get into that
as well. What does that mean? How does that look?
But that's what We're going to explore it together, and

(10:31):
I'm looking forward to it. This is a topic that
I enjoy discussing because if it has the ability to
help just one person, well what are we waiting for.
Let's make it happen. But together we can get through this.
We can all get through this, whatever it is. So

(10:52):
here's step one. I've done it for you. Let's open
the conversation up and let's move forward together. Thank you
for your time, thank you for tuning in. Looking forward
to experiencing what this becomes and seeing what kind of
impact it has on you. And remember we are still

(11:16):
standing strong.