Shining Brightly: Cancer Journeys with Hope l S1E025

Linda Orsini: 00:00:08

Hello and welcome to a call for love. I believe the most powerful gift you can offer yourself is to give and receive love more freely. I'm your host Linda Orsini meditation guidance spiritual coach. Everyone has the desire to be seen, heard, respected and loved. The journey to becoming more connected to your greater purpose lies within the ability to live from the deep source of love within you. Let's begin.

Linda Orsini: 00:00:40

Welcome, today I'm with Howard Brown, who is an entrepreneur at the heartbeat of technology innovation in Silicon Valley, and the best selling author of shining brightly award winning international speaker podcaster survivor ship coach. And to time stage four cancer patient and survivor he shares the keys to leading a resilient life with hope that drives successful community leaders, business innovators, and health care patient advocates. So be prepared to be inspired. I've been listening to his podcast, and I have thoroughly enjoyed the inspiration and the shining bright message that he shares. So welcome, Howard.

Howard Brown: 00:01:24

Linda, thank you for having me. I'm so glad to be with you today. Thank you. Thank you, thank you.

Linda Orsini: 00:01:30

Well, call for love is about how we can live in a place of love. And I know you've been through a lot. So your book shining brightly is very inspirational. What was the driving force behind your book shining brightly?

Howard Brown: 00:01:45

Well, I thank you for asking. I am the least likely published author you'd ever want to meet. And the reason is, is that I'm not a writer. So the quick story behind it is that a friend of mine named David Crum, who's also a book publisher, was taking me out for coffee and a bagel. And I was very sick at the time under treatment. And he said, Would you like to leave a legacy book? Well, let's do a short little Kindle book on legacy for your wife and daughter, people to remember, you've accomplished so much. And I said, No way. I'm intimidated by that. And I came back from the bathroom. And on the napkin, he had like 10 chapters written, He said, Go and go home and ask Lisa and Emily, you know, if we could write a book together, and I did, and they laughed at me, and they're like, you write a book, oh, my god, grammar and punctuation are optional. And so I called David back a day or two later, and I said, David, I have one request to write a book with you. And he said, only one. I said, normally, our authors have lots of questions and requests, I said, I am not a great writer, you need to know your strengths. I'm a good speaker. I said, if you will record me on zoom with the most influential, important people in my life, I will write a book with you. And there was just silence on the phone. And he said, We've never done that before. And well, I gotta get back to you. Well, he called me back. He said, we're gonna have to be very dedicated every Wednesday for a couple hours. And we'll do it in a year. Well, like anything else, good things come to those who wait three years later, 158 interviews. And I have a published book that came out in September, that is basically a life guide to living a resilient life with hope and doing good good deeds in this world.

Linda Orsini: 00:03:30

So that is really powerful. I love your message. And you know, your versatility in deciding what your strengths are and what they aren't. And then navigating through that to empower yourself to create your legacy work. So yeah, so

Howard Brown: 00:03:44

it's great, because now I got to walk back my life. How many times do you get to do this? Now listen, we went from, you know, cancer into COVID. So it was a very good use of time, as well. But I got to go back and explore my entire family history in detail from my grandmother coming from Lithuania, my grandfather that fought in World War Two, and then my first boss, my doctors, my friendships around the neighborhood. My basketball coach from high school, my camp counselors, so it was such a cathartic thing. It was healing for me, because I was basically documenting my memoir and my life, but also teaching lessons along the way. And it was very cool experience. I'm so glad I went through it. It's a lot of work to get a book done. But it was a great experience. And now I'm a published author and a best selling author, it's it's cool to have people tell me what they've learned from my book and the lessons that they're applying to their lives and, and how it makes their family experience feel or if someone else is now sick, or if they found their happy place and things like that. So different times they I get messages of excerpt from the book of how how it helped them or what they learned from it. And again, that's you beam as an author that you actually conveyed that and had some impact on somebody. So that's that was it's really cool.

Linda Orsini: 00:05:04

Awesome. Well, your book shining brightly really is about your journey, not only of your whole life, but really surviving cancer. Not once, but twice. Can you tell us about that? Sure.

Howard Brown: 00:05:18

It's a long story, but we'll give you the highlight reel. Because, unfortunately, at age 23, I graduated college, I had just gotten promoted, and in my job in computers and technology, and I was moving to Ohio. And on the way to Ohio, I noticed a small bump on my cheekbone. And it was read, and I got out of the car, and I call my mom on a payphone. We still had payphones in 1989, right, summer of 89. And I said, as she goes, It's probably nothing. And she had come out to visit me to help get my apartment set up, like by dishes and, and sheets, and stuff that guys don't think about it. So she sent my apartment, and it was growing. And we didn't know anybody there and I didn't feel bad. So I didn't know what it was. But I was flying back to Boston to do a presentation. And my dad took me to a little community hospital. And then they thought it was nothing. They thought it was assist, but I wasn't feeling very well. So they I after that weekend, before I flew out, I went and got a piece of it taken out, they biopsied it. And we waited a long time. This is 1989. We waited, and I didn't still know what to add. So I just went along with life. I was working out I was traveling, I was doing my business. And my parents were freaking out because we had no idea what this thing was. It was a big mystery. I got called back to Boston. And I went to this little community hospital. And I had seven doctors standing around me and they said you have an appointment at Dana Farber Cancer Institute. At two o'clock, I wouldn't be late. And then it hit me like, What Why am I going there? Right. I get there. And they start to put you through tests. And I'm in a waiting room and I'm 23 years old. Bunch of old people I thought so I went down to the pediatric side of the Jimmy funding sat with the kids until they called me and I got the news there that I had stage four T cell non Hodgkins lymphoma. I had a blood cancer on my entire lymphatic system with a very bleak prognosis. My mom was crying. My dad was a statue. And I turned Nam, I basically was a deer in the headlights. I didn't hear what they said next. And my we went home that evening and my twin sister very important. Came to Dinner, my dad went to the library and got a book on cancer. There was no Internet, we had a book on cancer to learn about this stuff. And I ended up starting treatment. But before I started treatment, my liver function was too high. And this really smart. Dr. Eric Rubin sent me to the cryogenic center. And I was like cryo, what are you talking about? And he said, Yeah, go deliver a sample I said, Well, okay, so I did, I actually delivered a sperm sample and then forgot about it. I went through treatment, I was failing treatments. And the best news was that my twin sister was an exact match. And it's a one in 24,000 chance. There's registries called gift of life or Be The Match where they swab your cheek, and you could donate your bone marrow to save someone's life. But it's a lottery. And on May 24 of 1990. My sister went in early and donated her bone marrow from her hip bones. And they basically infused it in me. And they told me and told me that it could kill me right away. It could kill me over time, or it could work and they wait for your immune system to grow back. So I had tons of chemotherapy, tons of radiation to eliminate my immune system. And then it started to grow back. Well, my my immune system became my sister's immune system. And it worked. And then I did a clinical trial, and I was able to reclaim my life back again. I had to put Humpty Dumpty back together again, as as 135 pound bald guy at age 24 and a half years old. So I moved to California. That was where I wanted the sun and fun and all that. So that was very intense. My parents were my caregivers. I was immune compromised. So everyone that just went through COVID I did that at age 23 I had to wear a mask. I had to wear gloves. My mom had to keep the house spotless, and very intense time where my family, my parents and my sister and my friends very became very insular. Okay, we didn't have the digital communications, we had a busy signal. Our two phones or a house are always busy because people were trying to get through to find out how things were going on. And I kind of actually spent a ton of time at the Cancer Hospital. So you're going through that battle with others. It's very humbling. And majority of the people in the stage for cancer world are dying. And so that was back in 1990 My friend In my fifth year high school reunion thought I was dead man walking. So I learned a lot about myself. And I knew that I had to get up and fight. And we had to be able to put the pieces together. And I say, Every morning I look in the mirror from, from this, and then the second cancer is that I am blessed. I am lucky, and I'm grateful. There's no other way to explain it. My twisted my twin sister miracle one was an exact match.

Linda Orsini: 00:10:26

Isn't that beautiful? I love how you say, you know that each day is a blessing. It's a gift, right? And that's what the message here and the listeners on my podcast, listen to a call for love. It's a call for noticing and being grateful for each day, and not taking it for granted. And that only happens, unfortunately, sometimes with a scare. But I know that you've been knocked down and came back again and you stay so positive. How do you keep so positive? Where do you find your hope?

Howard Brown: 00:10:59

Well, it's really great that you asked that because hope is the four letter word that I love. It's the last chapter of my book, without hope the world gets very dark. And that's the shining brightly of peace, love and hope, with the dove on my cover of my my book. Hope is that fuel that kept me going, right. It's all the things that you want to do for one more day, one more week, one more time, spend time with your family, make memories, walk on the beach, go to a sporting event, see art, cook, and taste a great meal. That's the fuel that kept me going. There was many days, Linda, that I couldn't get out of bed. There were many days that I had steroids and side effects. And I, I was angry, and I was disappointed. But I kept my eye on the prize that I needed to be able to get back up again. And to be able to continue living if I was granted the second chance, I don't take it for granted. So hope is the is the key fuel. And then you mix in a lot of gratitude. And you mix in a lot of being able to help others. So the mantra that I live by, for that is hope is to lift up yourself. And I needed to lift up myself. But I needed a lot of help. So I needed people to come and help me. So I actually, and this is a hard thing to learn for most people, I learned to accept help. People had to help me in cancer number one, and in cancer two, I had to allow them to do the good deeds and be able to want to help for people to want to help someone else is love. And they did and people came in my time of need. And that's really the important thing. And how did I do it small baby steps every single day. Right, two steps back three steps forward, one step sideways. I worked at it, I worked at it if you can't stay sedentary. So there was some days I sat and played video games all day. Other days, I went out for a walk by myself, sometimes I went for a car ride, if I was able to drive, you had to make the plan. And again, I was very disciplined. Because I my life came to a screeching halt. And it was I didn't take that lightly. And so when the bone marrow started working, and they started telling me that I was getting clean scans, I was like you know what, I have to move forward. And make sure that I am taking care of myself. And then give back. It's not it's not what you get. It's what you give, I received so much love and encouragement for cancer one and two, that it's time to it was time to give back and I was always giving back. But now I am very and the word is intentional about it. Every single day, I lift myself up, and then I go lift up others. And then we join forces for good and positive change. That's that's the image of God. That's the image of a good life and building a community. And so I try to live those values. And I do it intentionally every single day.

Linda Orsini: 00:14:01

That's really beautiful. I love how you live intentionally because you have really opened your eyes to how you want to live because you've had not one chance but a second chance and there's so much to live for. For your really a call for love for you was offering yourself what I'm hearing is saw offering yourself the ability to allow other people to give you love. And that's not always easy. We've discussed this on a call for love. How do you feel that you can offer the listeners of a call for love, some wisdom on how to accept love from others, especially when you're going through a hard time because I think in this society, we're conditioned to be really strong, and then to really allow those to help us. It feels like it's not that we're weak. It's just that we're opening up for others to love us and that's not always easy.

Howard Brown: 00:15:00

I want to answer that question by just touching on cancer too. So I got my life back, I married the love of my life. Lisa in California. i My career is going great. I'm back playing basketball, I got my life back Humpty Dumpty version one oh came back better and stronger than before I became a big brother, mentor, I was doing very active role in giving in the community and fundraising for the Jewish communities. And what happened was, I got another miracle. We called for that frozen sperm. Right, and we got a beautiful healthy daughter, Emily. So I'm getting back in an amazing ways to have a healthy daughter, who now graduated college and as a reporter in Montana, and again, so for all the hardship I went through, I started to receive back some blessings. Now, at age 50. The screening age for colonoscopy was 50. It's now 45. So I'll take a time out and say go get screened for your mammography, your prostate, your cardio, go to the dentist, everyone missed a ton of appointments during COVID. Go get your colonoscopy, I went and got my colonoscopy. And unfortunately, they found something in my intestine, and it was eight and a half centimeter tumor stage three colon cancer, lightning struck again. And then it turned a year later into metastatic stage four colon colon cancer that went to my liver, my stomach lining and my bowel. Now I was back on chemotherapy, I was back in surgeries. And then I went metastatic boy did it get dark again. But we were living in the digital age. I was also a dad also married, The Times had changed. It was 26. Now it's 34 years later, okay. And I was more of a marine on a mission rather than a deer in the headlights. So I actually knew that. Did I know if I was going to live or die? Hell no. But I knew that I could call for the masses. So boy did I build a movement that HB strong movement and shining brightly movement all started then. And I was getting support around the world. Facebook allows that LinkedIn allowed that text messaging that allowed that WhatsApp allows that so that digital world came to support me through prayer, through cheerleading through jokes, through meal trains through carpooling through the school helping us. I mean, we got help so many different ways. And in my time of need. So answering your question, real is accepting help makes you vulnerable. It doesn't, it actually makes you stronger, to allow people to share their light. And in your terms love with you. So my first advice is, go be selfish, in your time of need. Go be selfish, it sounds simple, not easy to execute on because you want to do it yourself. You don't want to ask for help. You don't want to be a burden. You know what, in your time of need, that's what we do. I actually had have a lot of convincing of my high school and college friends to run a GoFundMe for me, I was embarrassed that I actually needed that because I racked up $4.8 million worth of medical bills, right, but I allowed them to do it. And boy, that money helped a lot. And it was a very successful campaign. Second thing is that you yourself have to take some ownership of a muscle called resilience. Resilience is part physical and part mental. So the Mental Toughness part is you don't have to be Pollyanna. But you actually do have to be able to be able to see in your blueprint of moving forward of what you can do on your end. Okay, can it be taking a walk a little further? Right? Can it be actually dude, finding your happy place, whether it's yoga, cooking, travel, mines basketball court, finding that happy, happy place, which is stress free, getting help with the financial burden, if there's a financial burden with me, I have a financial burden. And then actually being very disciplined in your relationships, quite frankly, I lost friends and family during cancer. They didn't have not to deal with it. They didn't want to deal with it didn't have time to deal with it. And you have to be okay with that. The other thing is there's other people that come in and say, Oh, it's nothing you got this and there's negativity. You have to have the discipline to weed out negativity. You don't need that negativity right now. Nobody does. There's plenty of negativity with a war in the Ukraine, with shootings, with fires with lots of other stuff happening in this world. You have to be able to be disciplined to weed that out. And I did. And so that's where the positive attitude came from. That's where shining my light, okay and receiving the light from others that fueled me. So those tips, right, there are the basics that I would say, and it all centers around, receiving that love and then using that love.

Linda Orsini: 00:19:53

I think Howard you are and I know from listening to you that not only have you learned to read Give love. But you also give back a lot. How have you given back? So maybe it helps people to know that, yes, they can receive graciously, but then we don't want it, we want to extend that we want to extend that loving kindness outward again. So what do you do to extend your all the gifts and gratitude that you have in your life? How do you extend it outward?

Howard Brown: 00:20:25

So, as I said, I try to live it each day. So the first thing is, is that if people go get screened, there is a good chance that something could get caught earlier, and it can be treated. And to I don't want even my worst, I don't think I have any enemies. But my worst people that don't know me strangers to ever go through, I know this won't happen, because, you know, certain cancers are on the rise, that to go through chemotherapy, radiation, surgeries, clinical trials, side effects. Oh my God, I don't wish that on anyone. It's horrible. And I had to do it twice in my life. Alright, so that's the first thing is to, I want to scream up from the rooftop to go get screened. And so you

Linda Orsini: 00:21:09

sharing your message, sharing the message get tested.

Howard Brown: 00:21:14

Right. The second thing that I do is that I volunteer in the community. Okay. Community service. One is healing for me, it puts you and again during COVID, it was a little more restricted. We were all tied to zoom. But now we're coming back out. But I actually walked the walk, I went and planted trees, I went and did a food drive, I actually helped raise money for the, you know, colon cancer walk. So I actually do it through actionable things. And then the second piece that I think that when we were talking about before we came online, on air is that mentorship, I counsel, entrepreneurial students that are trying to get started in their careers, I counsel cancer patients that are five steps ahead. And I call that cancer whispering or cancer mentoring. But I'm talking to people, because I had my mentors that were five steps ahead of me that were pulling me along. And it's my obligation to go pull others along. And so mentorship is leadership. And if people practice that each day, it's a part of giving. And, quite frankly, that's where the learning comes in. And that is giving back.

Linda Orsini: 00:22:27

Excellent. I love that, you know, a call for love is about giving and receiving love. You not only received it, but you know through all your examples and mentorship because I know you are have your own podcast shining brightly. And you share the message of hope, resiliency, gratitude, and just living each day for yourself and for others. And I love how you say weeding out the negativity because we when I imagine that during this time, you need to maintain all your strength to get over this the hump of cancer, too. And so, it's so important that you keep yourself in a high vibration.

Howard Brown: 00:23:11

Absolutely 100% I want you know, basically I'm going to quote this gentleman, Chris Whitehead, from the iconic Alliance is a mastermind extraordinary leader. He says listen, you have to take a check at where you're at. And he calls it the four F's. Where are you in faith? Where are you in family? Where are you in fitness? And where are you in finance? Okay, so finance is if you're in business, where are you at? With? How are you giving yourself a scorecard? Are you happy where you're at? And if you're looking at fitness, where are you in health? If you're looking at family, where are you in relationship, and faith is where are you with yourself. And if you've got to check, and if you're out of alignment in any of those areas, it's up to you to either do it yourself or go get assistance, call for help to go get yourself in alignment. And get yourself in a position where you're you feel that you're excelling. And so I I'm learning, I'm just we're all just students here. Yeah. We're students

Linda Orsini: 00:24:10

of life. Yeah, students life. I really love that you shared your time here and your message and your message of hope. And thank you for being on a call for love. I'm going to include all your links in the show notes. And it was really awesome. If you wanted to say one last thing to the audience. Is there anything else that you'd like to share?

Howard Brown: 00:24:31

I do. And for those listening, I'm putting on my white gold glasses and I'm shining light back to you, Linda, for having me on this. I'm grateful for that. This opportunity to be on your show and talk to your audience. But my final message is that if anyone that wants to reach out to me, I'm very interactive. It's shining. brightly.com for my book for my speaking and for podcast. I also have downloads on survivorship mentorship, and interfaith. And it's been So I'll end with this. If we could all shine brightly, just a little bit more each day for ourselves, for others and our communities, the world will be a better place and we will all share love. Absolutely. Fabulous. Thank you, Howard. It was such a great time to talk to you and to share and listen to your message. So thank you so much. Thank you.