Life After “Your Child Has Cancer” | Laura DeKraker Lang-Ree

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When life shifts suddenly, before we're ready,  it can knock the wind right out of us.  In today's conversation, Laura DeKraker Langree shares the moment that everything changed in her world  and how, over time, she turned this heartbreak into fierce advocacy. It's a story about resilience, intuition, and the fire we find when we're fighting for the people we love. So one night I just was in bed tickling her before she went to sleep and I said, so tell me where it hurts, baby. And she...

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rubbed all over her whole body and said, everywhere, mama. I went cold. And I knew that something big was wrong.  I'm Mackel Hoolie, and this is The Life Shift,  candid conversations about the pivotal moments that have changed lives forever.

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Hello, my friends. Welcome to the life shift podcast. I am here with Laura. Hello, Laura. Hello. Thank you for joining me on this  what I refer to as my healing journey that I never knew I needed. So thank you for being a part of that. Thank you for having me. I'm excited to talk to you. Well, I am looking forward to talking to you. I know your story is hard, but I know your story is important.  And  what I've learned, which maybe I was a little naive coming into this podcasting journey  of how relatable

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other people's stories are despite not having the same experiences. You know, like that, that human feeling and emotion can be very similar and understandable, even if our circumstances are wildly different. I totally agree. So before we get into your story, maybe you can tell us who Laura is in 2025. How do you identify in the world? Oh, wow. Um, I would say Laura in 2025 is a

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empowered, powerful, badass woman who's learning and growing every day. I like that. I ask it in that way because I think sometimes we're we have this tendency to say like what we do.  Right? totally. This is my job.  And I try  to realize that that our job does not define us. Right? No, I got called out on that in therapy. Did you  like stop attaching to that? It's not happening.  Yes. Because if the job goes away, then what then how do we describe ourselves? Right?

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Exactly. Exactly. I love that. you're also other things. You're a mother, you're an author, you're all the things, right? So many different things. Yeah. Let's dive into your story then we'll just jump right into it. Maybe you can or however you want to paint the picture of your life leading up to this life shift moment that we're going to talk about today. Yeah. So like you said, I loved how you said that there's so many life ship moments in our in our existence. And that's so true. And

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I think if we're mindful, they can shape us and turn us into the next best version of ourselves if we allow them to be a chapter of our lives and not the defining moment. So this particular life shift moment, maybe the biggest one, yeah, I would say it was the biggest one, was in my early 30s, so a while ago. And prior to that, things were humming along. I met my childhood sweetheart slash husband slash boyfriend in high school when we were 14 and 15 years old.

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We were having a fine time, went to separate colleges, sorta stayed together, sorta didn't, sorta got back together, got engaged, got married super young, and we're just having the best time being newlyweds forever. And we decided,  gosh, we're getting towards 30, are we supposed to have kids now? We knew we wanted kids, no question. It's like, okay, let's go. Promptly had two beautiful daughters,  and on the eldest's  near fourth birthday, almost her fourth birthday, she just wasn't looking right.

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didn't look right and mommy instincts kicked in big time and I had taken her to the doctor a few times. There's nothing but a frowning nose, but I'm like, this isn't my kid, she's not right. So one night I just was in bed tickling her before she went to sleep and I said, so tell me where it hurts baby. And she rubbed all over her whole body and said, everywhere mama. I went cold and I knew that something big was wrong. So I insisted on a blood draw and my husband came with me with our baby.

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we just sort of knew that she was gonna hit the fan, even though we didn't have any idea that your child has cancer was gonna come out of somebody's mouth that day. Yeah, that, mean, I'm sorry that you had to face that. can't imagine, I don't have kids, but I think, I'm not even gonna equate this, but I think hearing that that news about someone else that now you don't have the control, you don't have the power to.

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necessarily to fix, right? You have power to care and love and do all those other things. But I think naturally, as humans, we want to help someone feel better or not be sick or whatever it may be.  And so I'm sure that was a devastating blow. Did it hit you in that way? Or was it like, No, this is my opportunity to step up?  No, not immediately. The stepping up part doesn't happen.  I would say for  so I've been involved in the cancer family  world for a long time. I stepped out for a long time. That was part of my healing journey.

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I just needed to, but in the beginning I would say, so I've been active in the last five years, which we'll get to, with current families. And what I have found is really the stories are the same. And  regardless of how empowered and how you're educated or not educated or what your means are, it doesn't matter. Every parent is rendered powerless when they hear that diagnosis. You just don't know what to do next because like you said, you can fix things. You can...

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take care of your dog when they're sick and you have ideas for helping a cut or whatever. But when you hear cancer, you're like, I have no role here. I don't even understand how I can be a part of this journey. And so in the beginning, it hit pretty hard. But realizing what an advocate I was  started to happen pretty quickly. I have a strong side to me, a feisty side to me that I was playing with tapping down a little bit, you know, because.

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I think at the time,  20s and early  30s, like my inner dragon would come out for no, you know, somebody  turned the wrong way or, you know, there's a line at the store and  my inner dragon would come out and rage. It's like,  you just don't know until you know.  What I started to learn pretty much week one was that there was a place for that kind of warrior attitude that could be of service, not only to my kid, but to myself and then eventually to other.

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families because I don't think we're all wired that way to be to have that feistiness. And one of the pivotal things that was said to me, two pivotal things were said early on week two,  my husband and I wisely in the beginning decided we were going to tag team. So nobody was getting all of the dark information and trying to process it. So one would stay home with the baby and get that toddler magic. And the other one would go to the hospital and then we trade information and share job share.  We just tapped out of work.  I don't even, we, don't even really think about the money. were like,

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we can't be here right now.  And we were out for probably six weeks and just got through the, what ended up being  the hardest time. It was a three year journey, just putting that out there. So of daily chemotherapy, which is normal to this day.  So anyway, week one, I'm looking completely bedraggled and this woman comes up to me with a baby in the front pack and a kid in the stroller at my child's age, Cecilia. And she says, my name's Irene, you look like you need help. And I was like,

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Yes, I do. And she gave me her phone number and said,  here's what you need to do, who  you should call, get on this online group. Here's the first things that happened in this month. And she just gave me this wealth of information that  I'd had this amazing medical team. It was very clear they knew what they were doing on the medical side of things. But as you noted, there's this whole other world of where do I fit in and how do I help that she gave me my first inkling. And the second inkling was

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I'll never forget our oncologist who's amazing and who has collaborated with me in the last five years. So we're on great terms. But he was standing in the doorway very casually saying, well, you know, we'll do this and that. It'll be three years and everything's okay. She has about an 80, 85 % chance of survival, but she'll never do math or science. And two things happen. One, was like, okay, I  think if I heard a friend today, I have an 80 % chance of kicking breast cancer. I might be like, wow, that's a great statistic.

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But when it's your kid,  it is not a great statistic. And I was immediately like, okay. And my husband and I felt the same way. That 20%, that's up to us. So  what do I do? Can you please inform me, like, what are my options for making, being a part of the team to collaborate with the medical team so that we can give her the best possible outcome?  And the second thing was,  really, you're telling me  this cancer is gonna take her life potentially, and now you're telling me she may not be who she is.

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And for those of you who have or don't have kids, it doesn't matter. It might sound a little presumptuous, like, okay, your kid might die and you're worried about math or science, but I was.  She was very precocious and loved her numbers and loved to learn. And I was like,  no, that's not okay with me. Absolutely not. And those three things that happened within short order sent me on a big journey.  Those were three life shift moments.  I mean, all in succession in a time period in which...

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I would not blame anyone for falling apart and not be able to function, right? Like, because I feel like we hear the news and then  then we feel helpless, but also at the same time, we know we need to do something. And then maybe we have to put on a good face for the child or the person that's facing  the worst part of it, right? The  one that has to go through it. So I mean, you get this guardian angel of type person coming up to you and being like, was it was this person?

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that you met,  had they gone through that with someone in their family? It was in the hospital, maybe? Yeah, so at the same hospital, she was in the same clinic, the little boy in the stroller was the same diagnosis, same age as Cecilia. So they became fast friends. And I'll give you a little  brief of that. She was the person who would just guide us all, like, here's what we should do. Here's who you should call. Here's how you can help. Did you know if you take this drug and you take your kid to the park, they won't hurt so much,  that person.

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We ended up finding a little squad of those people, about six of us.  And in our journey, we all started with the same cancer. Three of them relapsed with worse cancers and died. And two relapsed and had bone marrow transplants and a lifetime of horrible side effects. So it was never in our,  our belief system that we could skate through. We knew we had to be on our game because it's just a roll of the dice. It's just a roll of the dice.

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Well, and the beauty of  that hard moment is you found like maybe some kind of help in the sense of like community or people that are experiencing something similar because I think a lot of people wouldn't understand,  you know, certain things like you said, like, why were you concerned about the math and science but like I bet those people understood what you meant. So it's nice to find others.

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mean, unfortunate circumstances for them as well, but it's nice to find people that have shared experiences so that we can, you know, talk to each other and learn from each other and know someone else understands what we're going through. It's pivotal. And I think that was so two things come to mind there. One was back then there was one book on cancer treatment. It was focused on the medical side, but thank God we had it because we absorbed it and we're like, we had to learn whatever we wanted, but we just wanted knowledge. We wanted hope.

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We wanted someone who had been there done that to like, okay, so what's next likely? We know there's no guarantee, but what is the advice here? And to this day, there's still only one book, which is what  led me to my current journey, which I'll share later. But the online community is vast. The problem with all of us who are in a crisis medically  is that the online communities can be scary. They can be a place of great help when you need a quick answer. They can be a great...

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great support when you just need to vent.  And there are where people go to share their despair about everything. And that doesn't matter if it's childhood cancer or, or anything that we're going through that you have to really  plot and plan when you are on those online communities, because that can take you down a road that's not healthy either. And the other thing that happened to us is we were searching again, like you're noting in for community, and we went to an amazing childhood cancer camp and

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It's where doctors and nurses come together to do this camp for your kids. I mean, it's ridiculously amazing. And so the kids can run wild while, you know, a nurse is going under the table saying, here, honey, here's your chemo, it. You know what I mean? They're like, and then the kids don't notice and they're, you know, filthy. And Cecilia was the, the lead lizard catcher. And we were so excited because we were going to go to therapy, group therapy with all these people. And we were very new in this. we were like, thank God.

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here's where we're going to get the details. Here's where people are going to help  and shine a light on  where we need to go next. And the parents there were three years ahead of us, three months ahead of us, 10 years ahead of us.  I mean, way ahead of us in the journey. This was not a bereavement camp. So people were coming back even after their kids were done.  And it was just this particular group of people on this particular day. And in some ways, it was a blessing because what happened was it was a puddle of tears for an hour and half  of,

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people who had chosen in some respects, some are still early on in it, but had chosen not to close the chapter on something that could have killed their child. Their child lived, but they were still living in that moment. They hadn't passed it. And then the beginning, know, people were asking for advice and how do I get over this and do that? And a couple of times, Arden and I raised our hands like, oh, if you tried, and then we kind of looked at each other like, don't know anything. We should just listen.

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But at the end, we looked at each other and said, whatever happens, whatever outcome we have to face, we can't end up like that nor live for three years of this marathon of treatment, which many of us go through  when we have a long-term illness or diabetes or whatever it is that we face that is forever, you're losing your mom forever.  So  we needed to look at a different way of facing this together and to develop our new normal while we were going through it, learn how to advocate like hell.

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hopefully the best,  to live in it for those years would have destroyed our family and our marriage. Yeah. I mean, so I guess a blessing in disguise of being around people that modeled something you didn't want to eventually be in that way, not to make it negative because everyone has their own journey to find  how they want to go. mean,  similar to what you just said on  the camp. I mean, how wonderful for all the kids also to  be around others that

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kind of also understand what they're going through.  I  recently probably like maybe five years ago, I heard about this like grief camp for kids, like who had lost their parents. And I think of that like eight year old version of me. And how helpful that would have been to know that I wasn't the only kid with a dead mom. Like I knew I wasn't. But I think you feel that way. And you don't know how to emote in a safe way because

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in an eight year old brain, it was my mom abandoned me. And so my fear was, if I wasn't perfect, my dad would also abandon me. And so I couldn't grieve. And so then when I saw this grief camp, I was like, just cried through the whole thing, because I'm thinking of that younger version of me to be able to go through something that just other people would understand. It's not like we would talk about it, maybe. But they would understand how you feeling. So I love that you were able to do that. Plus, you got the learning of like,

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We don't want to be those people however this journey goes. We want to be able to be ourselves through the whole thing.  in defensive cancer parents, so here's the deal. The treatments have gotten relatively better, a little, although they were just cut last week, by the way. But the diagnosis has only increased. So we are still at 40,000 new cases of childhood and adolescent cancer a year in the US, and 400,000 in the whole world, every single freaking year.

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And in their defense, not that what I'm doing is going to fix the world, but kind of hope to, but no one tells us what to do. So these parents who are living in,  they don't have the tools to live in it, to know what their job is, to create their new normal as a family and to  fight for that family and that marriage and that partnership if they have one and themselves, you know, they don't know, cause no one's.

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helping them. The doctors are busy saving your kids' life. And I suspect that's that way for a lot of medical situations. And we also have this continuing inability to collaborate and advocate for ourselves well in the medical space. So it's no wonder they're coming back all those years later and wanting to be together because nobody else gets it. Their friends are like, you're done. Why are you still upset?

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And I bet there's a lot of people that are on this high adrenaline the whole time of worry  and, they don't have the time to process it themselves until maybe after, you know, that that harder period is over. And then it's like all of it at once and you think, oh, you know, and so you're delayed in that sense as well. I took me 20 years to grieve my mom. So I  know waiting too long, but  it was also my survival. was the only way I could get through those 20.

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Yeah. And I see my child who's a survivor at 30 now experiencing some of the trauma for the very first time. That's your, you know, what is that the book, the body knows or the body remembers? you don't know when it's going to show up for you and having the wherewithal to know that the hardest time is likely to come afterwards is, is good to know and not spoken of because society and, and even us, we just, we, all we think about is the end or the  next step or the

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I'll feel better next year after time has passed and it doesn't quite work that way. Yeah, two things you just said, like really resonate with me, society and speaking. I think there are two things.  I always just assume that society had this like timeline for me, like I was supposed to achieve like you kind of said with your husband, you were like, Oh, is it time that we're supposed to have kids now, you know, kind of that  society tells us this checklist that we kind of have to follow. But also, I think it's true with with grief. Sometimes we

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absorb whether that's through a medical experience that you guys had or through a loss of some sort. I think there's like this weird society's timeline that we take on like, Oh, it's been three months. So  you should be good now or  whatever it may be.  And the power of speaking, whether it's your own unique experience, or it's a shared experience or whatever it is, putting it more out there in the universe,  I think allows other people to hear it.

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whether they're in front of you or they're reading your book or whatever it may be, and feel less alone and feel okay about advocating for themselves and sharing that they're not okay. I think there's so much power  in  that. And I think it helps push away society's  checklist of things we need to do. Yeah. And people  don't share with us. We don't know what we know until we've gone through it. And then we're the expert. And if we have the bandwidth to be able to share it, we make the world a better place for others who come.

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after us. Yeah, it's challenging. Yeah, it is. I do find it challenging in a sense of I mean, I would imagine that your experience as a parent  of a child that has cancer  is similar but also different than other parents going through that. Is that true? Or am I making a wrong assumption? Well, you mean like as a as a body of people that that cancer parents  journey? Yeah, I'm just like,

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you could say this is what I did and this is where I found success, but it's not necessarily like these are the exact things you need to do and that will be successful for you or am I wrong in that sense?  No, and  in  the thing that I've done, which we haven't spoken of yet is that when I'm working with parents now,  I just give them all of the options. Because you become so paralyzed when you're hit with grief.

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that you don't know what your options are. So you make a choice and then you stick with it or you don't make a choice and you stick with it, you don't realize you have options. So laying out all of the options and then saying, hey, it's yours, do what you do. If you wanna copy this exactly, go for it. If you wanna make, if this triggers you to go, oh God, yeah, I know who I am, I know what I need, great. Yeah, it's really hard. Cause I think sometimes, and the reason that all came out is cause sometimes people are like, oh, well,

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you have a dead mom and then you watched your grandmother pass away. So you must know how to grieve. And I do. I do. But for me, I can't give you  this is what you need to do and you'll be fine in X amount of time. So that's kind of where that question came from,  is I have to be very careful. I mean, I'm nobody except someone that experienced that. And I can tell you what helped me as I made it through through both of those different journeys of grief. But at the same time,

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I love that you're giving people options. Do you find a lot of people are like, but but tell me which one, because I just want to know what to do and do it right. I think  as of right now, they're just grateful to see the options and have the options. So what  what  I knew back in the day that I had a book in me because I was really pissed off that it was so hard for us as parents and it didn't need to be that hard.

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There's some basic things that we needed to know as parents. There's some basic suggestion, basic ideas. And 20 plus years later, it's easy for me to go back and be empathetic towards my amazing medical team because they were kicking ass curing her. It's not their job. But it's not our job to figure it out either.  And I think what has happened is these bazillion parents who've gone through this, they just don't have the bandwidth when they get out  or their child just didn't live  to do something about it.

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I kept saying, have a book in me. have a book in me and I kept like Irene, my friend, I kept copious notes and when things worked and things didn't, and I would see that bedraggled new family come in and I'd share information. I'm a teacher by trade. So teaching and speaking is  kind of my jam and connecting with people I love.  And so I was like,  it makes you feel good when you're going through trauma to help somebody else. That felt great. I always knew it was there, but it took a lot of time and space. And I was actually just right before COVID in a class, in a film class. And one of the requirements was,

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write a monologue about a pivotal moment in your life. And you don't have to explain what it was, but write it and share it. And I did.  And the teacher's like,  what was that thing that you just did? And I explained the backstory. And she said,  you need to go there. That's what you're supposed to be doing. I've never seen your work be better. And I was like,  maybe she's right. COVID hit. And suddenly, teaching wasn't so much fun. And then you had a little kind of a bit more bandwidth.  So I dug in.

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literally every single person I've met along the way led me to eventually finding a publisher and the Cancer Parents Handbook, What Your Oncologist Doesn't Have Time To Tell You, being born a month ago  on my survivor kid's 30th birthday. So I've been in it for five years and  it's been wild to go back there because we did close the book. It's not like we ignored it, but we did like, I had good advice from a friend who said, you know, do you want this to be a chapter in your life or the defining

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moment that never goes away. And I think there's two ways of looking at that. yeah, did it dredge a lot of stuff back up while you're putting that book together? Or did it feel like empowering? Both it made me  it brought back feisty me in a good way because I realized that now with bandwidth and  space and time, I could be their BFF. All of these parents, I could be that nudge they need to kind of like, nah, let's go. You got to do this now.

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And I could be that, you know, hopefully nurturing soul that's like, okay, I totally get it.  The hardest part was writing the diagnosis day story and doing the audio book for that. Cause that was like,  oh, it's like, right. It's, the whole experience is right there. You just,  it's hard to explain. And I would imagine you the whole experience when your dad told you that your mom, I mean, you're right there. So that was,  that was a, that was a tough one to get through the rest of it. was like, just in.

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to get more information. And I ended up collaborating with our entire medical team to hear what they had to say and what did they want to offer in retrospect? What do they wish? I bet that was fascinating. Oh my God, it was fascinating. We were so aligned. And I thought, you know, when I came up with the kind of quippy title, you know, what your oncologist doesn't have time to tell you, I don't mean it meanly. I mean it literally.  And they felt it. They're like, we don't. And they, know, my oncologist who was sort of  the guy,

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back in our time for this particular disease, wrote the foreword. I mean, you just can't make it up. It's  awesome.  I bet it's fascinating too, to go back to talk to these people so many years later. Yes.  And see how much has changed yet how much has not changed. Did you experience any of that where  they shared some of like, we're doing the same exact thing that we did when your daughter was here? Yeah, there's definitely a lot of that. And I  also

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five years ago in COVID, joined all of,  I asked, because in grief groups or trauma groups, you can't just show up and stalk. And I explained who I was, that I was a cancer mom. It's been a long time.  Here's what I want to do. I want to listen. I want to observe. I want to hear.  And so much of it is  sadly the same, because  there's only so much you can do when you're  on  the ground trying to save a kid's life from cancer. It's kind of go, go, go. But in talking to, it was so much fun to be in.

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contact and we'd been in contact with our oncologist since when Cecilia went to college. She collaborated with him to do relay for life on campus, which was super cool.  But I will never forget, I gave him the first copy and I was just, my heart was just like, oh my God.  I just, gave it to three oncologists, two parents and three nurse practitioners. And I was so, you know, did I, what did I miss? What did I not catch? What would be offensive? And it came back with just.

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typos. It was just glowing reviews. my oncologist wanted to meet in person, or our oncologist wanted to meet in person.  I was very excited and very nervous. And he opens up his  folder where he's printed out every chapter and paper clipped it. And I'm like,  oh shit.  And he starts to go, okay, so on page 12, and it should be relapsed, don't you think? Not relapses. And it was  all just like that. There was nothing content wise. He  just, and he had grown so much.

27:20
He had created a whole aftercare clinic after we left. He became very deeply involved in the mental health of children after we had left. We had really pushed to work with a naturopathic doctor in conjunction with the chemotherapy, not instead of,  and he fought us tooth and nail for months. And at the end, ended up working with him and advising him for other clients because there are a lot of hospitals. Well, not a lot, there should be.

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But there are many hospitals that work in collaboration with naturopathic doctors to help support the kids because the chemo destroys their immune system. So it's fascinating to hear about his whole journey in it. And funny side note, he got to the part about math and science, the story I told you, and he goes, who said that to you? And I was like, because I'm still in awe of this person.  I'm like, ha ha. And he goes about his business. Five minutes later, he goes, no, really, who said that to you? And I said,  you did.

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And he just,  there's this pause and I'm thinking he's going to say, take it out of the book or whatever the case may be. And he just busted up laughing and said, I was so young. So he had these life shift moments that changed him. And what was so fascinating to learn that I never knew all these years working with him when he was doing  medical care in Africa for years with his wife, before he became an oncologist, they lost their first baby there. So

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He'd spent all of this time in pediatric oncology because he'd wanted to help families. So it was really cool to look at the life shift of this person who was so pivotal in our life shift as well. Yeah. Did your daughter play a role in the book? I  I don't know. Did, I mean, I understand that it stems from your experiences, but did, did she play into helping you with that?  Not really. I wanted to be really mindful of her space too. So it's, it's a guidebook. It is a tactical book.

29:11
There are our stories,  our whole family's stories are thrown in there as  to be relatable and anecdotes. And here's what we  chose. And here's a list of what all the things you can do today. But it's really not a memoir at all. It's it's and she feels that too.  So we talk about different chapters. And I did talk about one something about her adulthood. But otherwise,  yeah, it's been it's been really great. She's been super supportive, but it's not a memoir. So it's we both feel like.

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it's very personal, but we both know what a big need there is. So it's like, okay, this just needs to happen. Right. You wrote the book that you  Right? Yeah,  absolutely. When you did that, that monologue piece in your film class, did it feel the same way to you as it felt from your instructor saying that to you? Like, did you feel a release? Or was that anything that was new to you? No, no, I no idea. I thought it was everything.

30:06
It was part of the process. Yeah. You had mentioned earlier that you don't know when the trauma is going to hit and it definitely slammed us hard with PTSD and there's a better name for it now afterwards. And I had to go through a lot of self care and therapy and because I had taken the adrenaline that you spoke of and just applied it to the rest of my life. And my dad had  right after she got diet, right after she finished treatment, I gave birth to another child, which is, you know, a lot in and of itself. My dad got

30:34
esophageal cancer three months later. So I just transferred all that hype and energy to him and he died nine months later. And I just, I was on this rabbit hole. I didn't know how to pull back. And so it wasn't until, you know, a couple of years after when I needed to get deep into some different practices and that practice, was, it's a morning meditation that I have to this day to ground and center myself. And it's just what I do. So when I did it in the film acting class, I'm like, this is just what I do. And it came from this experience.

31:03
and your tactical typebook, do you have tips for things like that to keep you from taking so long to get to that point? I really do hope for parents and for all of us who are caregivers of any kind are going through trauma to not tank quite so hard. I think it's unrealistic to think that we're not going to experience some form of let down tanking PTSD, whatever you want to call it.  I think that's pretty normal because you if you're the caregiver or you're going through it, your adrenaline is so up.

31:33
So I have two chapters, one body and soul for the caregiver and one for the kid, because there's so much you can do to help the kid too.  But I say, you're not allowed to read the kid one until you've read the parent one, because  the oxygen mask analogy is real.  if we are not, I was talking to a parent yesterday who said, didn't eat for an entire week. And finally, my husband said, if you don't eat, you're not going to be able to take care. And that's what we forget is that we have to be strong to be able to fight for.

32:01
our family, ourselves,  our person who's going through whatever they're going through.  Yeah, it's really hard.  A lot of people just forget about themselves  because they want to help the other person because that's the most important thing happening at that moment. to your point, it's like, and then I get sick and then I can't help, right? And then I'm  draining. Yeah.  Now you have this book out. Congratulations on your publication. But it sounds like you're also working with individuals.

32:30
or capacity your talk is this like a business thing or is this something that you're just what do do there?  All of the above. So  I don't know where this is going to take me. But right now I'm working with a media group for the next several months to get this book into the hands of whoever I can worldwide and get that get it going. I know what it was like when we were when we had when we were in treatment and the book was just handed to us the one that existed like you got to read this and I know how much is needed and the response I'm getting from the middle  community is huge. So

33:00
What I'm doing right now, like for example, I'm collaborating with Stanford to potentially talk to their residents about working with parents.  am  a LLS visionary and soon to be ambassador. So I'll go different places, including the Hill to advocate for parents of kids with cancer and to explain the situation to different people. I'm not a one-on-one coach per se for parents, but I'm still active on the boards who helped me so much write this book. And you you can't help but say, Oh, how are you doing? Try this thing. Have you thought about that?

33:30
And then I have my website, which has just a bazillion articles and podcasts to hopefully just give parents a place to go. Oh, wow. I never thought of that. Or, Oh, I know how to do that. I just forgot. And to help them through what they're going through. People need reminders. Is there, is there a thought in your journey of a version of this for caretakers of, of non kids with cancer? Yeah, definitely. I think that the whole, the whole premise of it. And I've had many people say to me like,

33:59
because I had a lot of friends as first readers who  didn't have a cancer experience, but they're like, I used this for  taking care of my parents. I used this when my husband was in the hospital for two months. I do because I think it's easy to extract the cancer element and talk about caregiving, which is just so underrated and people need help so desperately and reminders of how to do it and how to do it in a way that's sustainable. Because like us, it's a marathon and there are many caregiving situations that are marathons.

34:29
So if it's gonna last a long time, how do you take care of your body and soul so that you can have your own life and be strong enough to help the person that needs you? Yeah, yeah, I think of  like my father and my uncle when my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer and  kind of that journey, she was in her seventies and then  as things got worse, you could see that they didn't have the tools that they needed or wanted.

34:56
to take care of themselves, but also be able to move through  the emotions that come with it. And, know, like one of the greatest things I could tell other people of the experience of  losing my mom,  failing is what I call it grief for so long until figuring that out, is that when my grandmother got sick, I knew exactly what I needed to do  to make it through  the sickness, but also knowing that

35:27
when the end comes, I know how to do this. And so when I'm like, if someone's facing this end stage piece, what I did was I sat my grandmother down, I said, we're gonna have the conversation. We're going to tell each other everything that we meant to each other. And we're gonna  do it until there's nothing left to say.  And if anyone can do that, I highly recommend it because what it did is once she started to get

35:54
pretty sick that she was not really verbal anymore. spent the last 96 hours of her life with her in her hospice room.  And I knew we had nothing left that we needed to say. And so it was a devastatingly beautiful goodbye, in a way. And  so I say all that to say that there are things that we experience earlier or in our lives that I think we  may feel we've done wrong. But then there are ways to make other parts that are really hard, also beautiful.

36:24
And so I, you know, I wish I could have imparted how that felt for me to like help my dad through losing his mom, because he lost his ex wife. But at the same time, it's not quite the grief journey that I had and the way that I went about it. So, you know, I would love to see something for for adults that just don't have the tools either for losing a parent or someone around that age.

36:50
I do too.  it's funny you said that because it's been quite a journey and  I'm having to go back to all my self care tips because my body is screaming at me right now. I a full time  career and this whole thing with the book, which has been awesome.  But I did do a little Google searching to see what's really out there for caregivers. Because like our cancer book, I just presumed there was and there  really isn't. So I'm curious because  I had to then segue to be the caregiver for my dad, which I didn't do very well because it was right after Seale.

37:20
And then this last year, I lost my mom, but I was her primary caregiver. So that I could do right. And  I had a very similar experience to you that I got the time I needed and that she needed so that her being able to be present for her passing, was, you know, it doesn't, it matters, but it doesn't,  she was 96,  still that all of that grief, she was my person, but I got to go through it as opposed to, I surrendered into it.

37:49
as opposed to rebelling against it, which I think in grief and in trauma and in  any kind of land like that, the surrender to what is happening to you is so crucial if you have, if it's not a surprise, like your mom was a surprise, that the surrendering to it gives you the time and space to accept it and go, oh, there's all these things I can do. I can go talk to my grandma for all this time. I can look at her in the face and be able to say what I couldn't say to my mom. I mean,

38:17
That just chokes me up. That's just the best thing ever. And to be able to advise people on that, maybe you and I should write a chapter in my next book on that because I think that's powerful. I think it's like the hardest thing that I probably have ever done, right? But the thing that will impact me until the end of my days is that conversation because it can't take it away. And there's not, you know, I, how many people have you heard in your life that are like, Oh, I wish I would have said X, Y, and Z, or they say it at the funeral.

38:46
or whatever it may be. And it's like, we should say it to each other. We should tell each other. You never know. And for me, losing a parent at a young age, it's like, I don't know if I'm going to be around here tomorrow. You know, like it feels like there's always that chance that tomorrow's not promised. And I think some people don't realize that. And so we just kind of, we'll do it. I'll do it tomorrow. Yeah, don't do it tomorrow.  I specifically, and I think talking about that is so important and talking about grief is so important. People are

39:12
so, so scared of cancer. And I think  in part because they see the death sentence, that's what they feel. So Irene, who I told you about, Luke died. So I  asked her back to write. I could not write this book without having a chapter on grief and bereavement. And it wasn't all about, it was about the choices they made when he  wasn't gonna survive, which were magical and  powerful and so hard and amazing that people need to know.

39:39
gosh, this person made this choice. didn't just, they chose not to keep slamming their kid with chemo. They took them off. And the doctors yelled and said, he's going to die in three months. lived almost two more years  without anything with his brothers and had the best time. And then what they, how they chose to say goodbye to him. All of those things are so important to look at  so that we know they're there and what choices we can make. And they're important stories that have to be told.

40:07
and to hear that other people have made those decisions  and not to make them seem like they're easy or any of  those elements, but that, okay,  this is an option for me. Like you said, you put all the options out there and this is what we choose. We choose the one that we're most aligned with. I mean,  you're doing beautiful work. You're doing the thing that the younger version of you totally needed this book. Do you think you would have picked up this book if you were searching? Day one. Yeah. Day one.

40:36
So that's why I'm hot on Amazon with all the reviews, because I just want people to Google it. And it's there it is for them. They don't have to think. Are you a type eight person? Well, I'm both. I'm  an introverted extrovert. in you know, like I get really excited and hyped in this situation and in my work as well. And then I need to turtle. That's hard restore. Yeah, how about you? I'm the same way  I am very much though, like, I'm trying to pull myself away from

41:03
being so hyper focused on like a checklist type approach to things, because so much of life is in a gray space. It's not, it's not a yes or no, it's not a check a box. It's a, know, you have to kind of figure out what what aligns most with you. But I just attribute it to my experience growing up and I you know, losing someone and then feeling like I had to be perfect so that my dad wouldn't also leave. Yeah, it's snowballs.

41:30
But if I had a tool or my dad had a tool back then of a book of like, this is how you help a kid whose parent died. You know, like these are the things that maybe weren't around in the 80s. I don't know. I don't know that around at all. You know, and I and he didn't know how to grieve and my grandmother didn't know how to grieve. So it was like nobody had the tools. So I just love that we're all sharing our stories that we're just saying that like they are our stories and they are what they are.

41:58
even with all the mistakes. And I think that's the beautiful part is that maybe vulnerability is on a rise. Yeah, I hope so. I mean, it feels like it should be. What's your favorite part of of this journey as hard as this book is? What's your favorite part of it? I love the idea that I am empowering parents of kids with cancer, and that my aim is to level the playing field. So it doesn't matter. You know, we had a lot of

42:26
people in our clinic who didn't speak English, it wasn't their first language. And there's a big disparity of income, of course, when you have that many people diagnosed with something that everybody gets the same information. I will tell a quick side story that, you know, remember when I told you all that she'll never do math or science? Well, I got pissed about that. And I share this whole thing in the Cancer Parents Handbook. But the short version is, is I ended up, my type A side figured out who the...

42:54
who the researcher was on her protocol and I called him.  And after he got over the shock of, who's this random mom calling me?  I explained what our oncologist said and I said, is that,  that doesn't seem right to me. And he goes,  oh no, it's not. I mean,  it's right. The drug goes straight to the cerebral spinal fluid and kills white matter, but they're young. And here's all the things that you can do because you can just rewire her brain. It's like, really?

43:20
So fast, so we did everything he said. She didn't notice we made it very much play time and just under the radar. So it wasn't like, do this thing so you'll be smart.  Never knew.  And she ended up going to Stanford for undergrad and graduate degree in math and science. So there you go.  I mean, here's where you're wrong, doctor. He loves that story. So I think that's beautiful. I think that's really important, too. Is part of your book like teaching the parents how it must be to help the kids?

43:49
Exactly. Teach them because we have to be the ones to do it. We have to be the ones to ask. We have to be the ones to advocate. Nobody knows our child or the person we're taking care of in the hospital or at home better than we do as a caregiver. We have to speak up and model. think modeling seems like it would be hard as a parent too, because if you're deep in your grief, how do you model the behavior so your kid doesn't absorb that? I mean, I would imagine that's a huge

44:20
Yeah, I suggest in the book, we saw it all the time that you have to, and I imagine this happened with you, I don't know what happened with your dad, but we had all the feelings and we'd be strong one day and all of a sudden we felt the wave of, I would imagine her funeral.  And I would just have to make sure my kids were okay and they were playing and I had a bathroom I would sneak into and I would just lose it. So I gave myself the permission to lose it and Arne and I were pretty good about losing it on different schedules. Because what we saw is when you tell a person that you're taking care of your sick,

44:50
you're in trouble,  you give them a label, they feed into it and they're not empowered to grow stronger. So when people would say, oh, she's sick, that's terrible. And they'd say in front of my kid, go, no, because leukemia wasn't, you get a kid  in remission quickly and then you pound them for the remaining years to stay that way. She's in treatment. Now that's a big  shift in language that's so important. And as a teacher, I know how important language is. I have a performing artist teacher, so it's all about storytelling and

45:19
how you tell your stories.  So if you're telling your kid, touch that, you're immune compromised. Or no, no, no, don't do that. You're not feeling well right now. Well, of course they're going to absorb it. Cecilia thought she could conquer the world. And her babysitter gave her  this amazing gift of they were reading a story about animal spirits and said, so sweetie, what are yours? And she defined every dinosaur that was in her body killing which different cancer cell. And she became powerful.

45:48
And we need to do that for our children, but we also need to do that for ourselves. Yeah, I can see that that would be a really challenging thing, especially if the parent doesn't have the tools like isn't self aware enough to remind it. Yeah,  or have had those things modeled for them. I mean, I think we're all just a product of seeing what other people do and,  finding which version of that feels most right for us so that we can kind of work through that example. Because

46:15
Otherwise, just making it up, which I guess someone did at the beginning. But if we can model what other people are doing, it  makes life a little bit easier. Model it, fake it till we make it. And sometimes it is faking it for a while. And that's okay, too. That's sometimes that's just survival, right? Yep. You just have to fake it. And then eventually you're like, Oh, wait, you know, that's one thing that I tell people a lot too, when they're like so and so in their life just died. And they're like, What do you do? And I was like, Well, don't listen to me. But this is what I do is I give myself permission to feel whatever I'm feeling. So

46:45
If two days after someone died, I find myself laughing, that's okay. I'm a human. Like I'm gonna have the full, not about the death, but about,  you know, something in life because I can have all those emotions. I can hold them all. I can hold everything at once. And  some people are just like, I'm supposed to cry for the first seven days and then,  you know, move to the next emotion. I'm like, no, you can have them all and that's okay. That's a beautiful gift that you tell them that. Well, I try but.

47:14
I love that you've put this book together for that younger version of yourself. But now, I mean, I can't imagine how many people  the ripple effect is going to be so impactful as we get further into the release of this.  Is the audio book out now too, you said? It's in the hands of  the audio book people, so should be up and running pretty quick. I think that'll be handy because I think it's tough sometimes for people to find space. Yeah. What was the hardest part about  the book?

47:42
process the five years of putting it together. I hate editing. I love writing and the audio book was easy. Yeah, because it was already done. Right. Yeah, just telling me the story, you know, and and and teaching because it was like, you know, here's your list.  But editing is just painstaking. Not and  the agent and the publishing and all that stuff. Was that a hard process for you? I know that some people struggle through that. got lucky.  And  the person who had who was my

48:11
business partner at the time helping me edit it and getting the proposal ready just had connected with somebody and told her about my book, a publisher. And she's like, I need to read this book. And it just kind of happened. I got lucky. What's your favorite thing about you these days about this life that you're living now?  I love, love helping others. I love seeing, seeing people take something and running with it. Uh, I love empowering them to be who they want to be in that moment in time. get a lot out of that. I love.

48:41
being on my second honeymoon with my husband as our kids are launched  and love the little adult family chaos and  fun that we have together. I  just, I, one of the  big things that somebody told me to do early on in trauma that I would love to leave you with is somebody said, start a gratitude journal. And I thought, are you freaking kidding me? A gratitude journal? Right. So. It's empty though.

49:08
Well, there's still hope. It's still a new day. It's still anyway, I started it that night and I've never stopped. And so I kind of even on the shittiest of times and days, and we've had plenty of stuff happen between cancer land and now I'm still able because I'm practicing it. I'm intentional about going, dang, it's super fun to talk right now. Or I'm really looking forward. Oh, man, that was the best coffee I've had in like a week of the little things of really shining a light on.

49:35
the joy that is around if we choose to look and find it and take it in. I can't wait till you get this onslaught of hearing from individual families on how much this book has,  you know, maybe they were part way through the journey and they picked up your book and it helped create a map or they were able to create a map from it.  Right. That's gonna be I can't imagine what that's gonna feel like probably super overwhelming, but also gratifying in so many ways. Yeah.  If you could go back to

50:05
that version of Laura when you were sitting down with your daughter and asking her like where it hurts. Is there anything that you would want to tell her knowing all the stuff you know now? Yeah, I think that,  that  to know that your inner dragon is absolutely  needed and powerful and it's time to bring her out. You will soon learn when she's needed and when she's not. And you're going to grow into the much more chiller version of yourself as you go through this.

50:35
this horrific journey, you have it all there, you're just gonna need to figure it out. And I mean, man, listening to your intuition, good on you. Right? Because that, that kicked off this journey. And now look at all the people  you're going to be helping just  by listening to to your gut. If people want to like, check out your book, they want to find you, they want to connect with you, what's the best way to get in your circle? Yeah, all my socials are  cancer parents handbook.

51:05
not the, so Cancer Parents Handbook. There's the website with all of the articles I've written over the last five years podcast, things that will help you create your next best hospital party or how you create your next normal.  You can buy the book everywhere. The audio book will be out shortly and yeah. Where's the best place for them to buy it? Whatever you like. You can do Barnes and Noble. You can do the ebook. You can do Amazon, whatever people's store of choices. I don't know what works best for you. So I just want to make sure that we point them in the place that's most supportive.

51:35
Thank you. And I'm on Instagram at Cancer Parents Handbook at least two to three times a week with podcast clips, articles, inspiration, hope, guidance. And I would imagine that a lot of the things that you share are somewhat universal as well for just a human experience and, the resilience if you're going through something similar or adjacent or tangentially related in some capacity. Building resiliency.

52:04
taking care of yourself, empowerment. Being a good human. Being a good human. So thank you for modeling that for so many people. think that's really important and for sharing your story in this way, but also through  the book, helping people with some kind of tactical ways to get through what might be the hardest part of their life. Thank you. Thanks for letting me share.  I appreciate it. I appreciate anyone listening. Please, if you know someone in your life that

52:31
that needs to hear this conversation needs to hear what Laura has said, please share this episode with them. I think  that's probably the biggest gift that you could give us is sharing this conversation with people that might need to hear a different voice or hear hear something that that maybe they're struggling with. So  please do that. And thank you, Laura, for being a part of this healing journey. There are little pieces of this conversation that have healed certain parts of that little kid in me. So thank you for that. Thank you.

52:59
I'm going to say goodbye now and I will be back next week with a brand new episode of the LifeShift Podcast.

53:15
For more information, please visit  www.thelifeshiftpodcast.com.