tell my story Archives - Page 6 of 8

Real Life Stories–Women of Inspiration. My friend. She has cancer.

I’m starting a series on my blog. “Real Life Stories–Women of Inspiration”. I’m inspired by strong women who show up every day and share their stories with the world. I’ll be interviewing women from all different life situations that I want to learn more about who inspire me to show up and live a better life story. And then I’ll share their stories with all of you (and my kids).

The first person I wanted to feature is my friend.

You know those e-mails you never want to get? Those ones that tell you one of your childhood friends has cancer. Yea, I got one of those. And though it was obviously devastating news, it’s turning out to be a defining period of my life.

Lisa, who I also affectionately call Nickell (her maiden name), and I met when I was 12. We played competition soccer together. So we’re not just friends, we’re teammates. We played soccer together for nearly 10 years.

She’s had more than her fair share of health problems. And then got hit with Stage 4 non-hodgkins lymphoma. A game changer to say the least.

No one wants to hear the word cancer associated with themselves or someone they love. But along with the hell associated with cancer, there is also an element of hope. A look into the human spirit at its finest, bravest moments.

She decided to shave her head before chemo started taking her hair. She wanted to be in control of whatever she could. So I asked her if I could photograph the “hair funeral”. Watching her shave her head was one of the bravest things I have ever witnessed. Those pictures are still too painful and intimate for her to share, but here are a few after she was done.

Here is the interview I did with her. And stick around until the end cause we’re doing something really cool for her (that can also be used as a template for other people to use for those they love with cancer) and I NEED your help!!!

1. Give me a quick peek at your story: I was born and raised in Utah. I played soccer since before I can remember. I played in high school for Alta. I’ma lover of all sports and outdoor activities. What I lack in size, I made up for in my determination. I’m very competitive. I went to nursing school and met my amazing husband at the University of Utah. I’ve been married for 11 years. On September 5th our life changed when I was diagnosed with Stage 4 cancer. I’ve been battling for my life ever since.

2. Tell me an “every day moment” you are grateful for: Right now, I am grateful for waking up alive each day. Getting to tell my family that I love them, and giving my niece a hug.

3. What is one ambition you have right now: I want to start a health clinic on wheels for the homeless. Similar to the 4th Street Clinic, but mobile.

4. If you could speak on anything to a large group of women, what would you talk about? That one single person can make a difference. You, alone, can make a change in the world. You don’t need thousands of dollars and thousands of people to help make a difference. What you, alone choose to do each and every day can change someone’s world.

5. What does the phrase “create a good life story” mean to you? To me, it means living every single day to its fullest. Live each day like it could be your last.

6. Tell me something someone taught you that made an impact on your life Right before my grandma died, she told me to never hesitate to tell someone that you love and appreciate them. Don’t assume that they already know. It’s okay if you told them yesterday…say it again. If you’re feeling it in the moment, say it.

7. Name one event in your life that has made the greatest impact on the course of your life story Becoming a wish granter for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Also, going to Haiti.

8. What is something you want to accomplish you haven’t yet? I want to have children

9. What photographs are you most grateful for from your childhood or teen years? I’m most grateful for photos of my family and close friends. I’m relying a lot upon those people right now, and it’s comforting to look back at older photos and see that it’s the same group of people that have continually supported me through whatever life throws my way.

10. What are you most proud of? Never quitting. Never giving up.

11. Tell me something you are sure of: I’m sure there is a level of happiness that comes from serving someone else that can’t be reached any other way.

12. What is your favorite quote or your life motto? I have two: “Life’s most persistent and urgent questions is, ‘What are you doing for others?'” Martin Luther King Jr., and “You must be the change you wish to see in the world” Gandhi

13. What is your favorite part about yourself (not a physical trait)? I really care for those less fortunate than me, and try to do whatever I can to help them.

14. What type of photographs do you wish you had more of? I wish I had more photographs from my honeymoon and dating my husband.

15. What is something you do to help drive away fear or anxiety? I used to exercise to drive away fear and anxiety. Now, I hand out hamburgers to the homeless.

And for fun:

Favorite Book: Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss

Favorite Family tradition: Dutch Oven Cook off at the cabin

Something you enjoy doing with your spouse: playing tennis

Talent you wish you had: I wish I could play a musical instrument

Favorite meal: It changes weekly. Right now I would say it’s cantaloupe. Yep, just cantaloupe

If you never had to do one specific things again, what would it be: Go through a round of chemo. Or, on a lighter note, fill the car with gas

Favorite show on TV: Vampire Diaries

Something that scares you: Dying without having told my family I love them first

Favorite thing about your husband: Brian can always make me laugh. It doesn’t matter what trial we’re facing he helps me face it with humor. And he is just so kind. Brian is the kindest man I know.

Type of candy you can’t life without: ALL CANDY. Anything you would find in the candy isle. I need it all

What’s something you think about often: I think a lot about hunger in the world. People going hungry.

If you don’t know Lisa, you’re missing out. For those of us who get to call her a friend, well, we’re pretty lucky. She’s definitely one-of-a-kind. She’s nearly killed me (literally) on several different adventures we’ve been on together. Once in a very sketchy mini-van ride, another where I nearly drowned. I blame her for my fear of water.

Here’s where I need your help. For any of you who know and/or love someone with cancer, you know how brutal it is. Not just physically, but emotionally and mentally. The days are long. The weeks even longer. Because her cancer is so severe, she has to be admitted to the hospital each time she receives chemo. She stays there for at least 6 or 7 days, often more, at a time.

It gets lonely. And hard. And scary. And there are days where all she can do is draw on the strength of others. Her walls in the hospital are lined with pictures of people who love her. To remind her why she’s fighting.

Right now, she needs something more than ever to take her mind off what is still ahead. She still has a long way to go–more chemo, then a bone marrow transplant.

Lisa is famous for her “peace sign” in pictures. Always flashing that peace sign.

So. We (she’s in on this) want to collect as MANY pictures of people flashing the peace sign as we can and put them in a huge collage (I’m talkin’ huge) for her to hang on the wall in the hospital and in her home. Even if you don’t know her, we’d love for you to participate. My guess is we ALL know someone affected by cancer (it’s so rampant) so we know how desperate people get for hope. And when Lisa sees pictures of people doing the peace sign with HER in mind, it brings her hope. And peace to her soul.

There is strength in numbers. And strength in knowing people are thinking about you and people CARE.

We’ll be collecting pictures for ONE WEEK. Deadline is next Thursday, March 27th. Doesn’t need to be anything fancy. Just a picture of you, your kids, co-workers, family, strangers, whatever doing the peace sign. Then e-mail it to me. [email protected] Please title the e-mail “PEACE PICTURE” so we don’t lose any. That’s it. (You can e-mail it directly from your camera phone. If you don’t know how to do that, ask a kid. They’ll know how:) )

You can also send more than one picture with different groups of people. We’ll take as many as we can get.

Once we have them, we’ll make a killer poster. And post it so everyone can see. And hopefully make it into a useable template for anyone else who wants to use it to do a similar project for someone they love with cancer.

Thanks in advance for your help. My friend needs a boost. A push to keep fighting. She’s a fighter. But no one can fight cancer alone.

Love you Nickell.

We now declare the following week “Peace Sign Picture” week. I gave myself power to do that.

To read more “Real Life Stories–Women of Inspiration” interviews, CLICK HERE.

What makes a person memorable

I’m kind of obsessed with the idea of “story”. And living a good life story. Creating a life story. I was first introduced to the idea of life as a story by Donald Miller in his book, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years

Since then I have been following Miller’s blog and get e-mails from him every once in a while. That kinda makes it sound like we’re friends. 🙂 I subscribe to his blog. But still.

The last e-mail I received really stood out to me and I didn’t want to forget it. And it’s something I’d like my children to read one day, so I’m including parts of it in this post. If there’s ONE thing I want to teach my children, it’s to be kind. Always. And to everyone.

“Bill Murray is making a name for himself…Other than the obvious that he’s a great actor, here’s his secret: He’s MEMORABLY KIND.
By memorably kind, I mean he does more than open doors or lend you his umbrella. He’s quite creative about his kindness, actually.”

He goes on to describe a story about Bill Murray on an elevator in a hotel when a guy got on and recognized him. The man told Murray he was a fan. Bill nodded and smiled. The fan walked “sheepishly out of the elevator”. When they got to the entrance, the fan went one way, Murray went the other way.

“Then, suddenly, Bill Murray turned, ran toward the man and tackled him into a shrub. He sat up, pointed his finger at the man and said Your friends will never believe this happened!

There are more stories…Once when asked for an autograph, Murray refused. But he did spend the better part of the rest of the day with the young fan shooting a scene on the guys I-phone that he could his friends and post on Facebook.

And there’s more. He tweeted he was in a certain city and if anybody was throwing a party he wanted to come. He then made appearances at several parties that night.

Why is Murray so cherished as an actor and a man? In my opinion, it’s because he’s creatively kind.”

This is the part of the e-mail that really stood out to me:

“What being memorably kind is about is showing the world there’s goodness in it, there’s kindness and grace. I’ve a friend who says we are supposed to go around putting little feathers of kindness on the internal scale people use to measure good vs evil.“

That good vs evil scale could use as much kindness as we can give it. Collectively, we tip the scale towards the good side instead of the evil.

Don’t just be kind, be memorably kind. I love that.

Twinkle Lights. Or why I have Christmas lights up in my house all year.

“When we reach out and share ourselves–our fears, hopes, struggles, and joy–we create small sparks of connection. Our shared vulnerability creates light in normally dark places. My metaphor for this is twinkle lights (I keep them in my house year-round as a reminder).
There’s something magical about the idea of twinkle lights shining in dark and difficult places. The lights are small, and a single light is not very special, but an entire strand of sparkling lights is sheer beauty. It’s the connectivity that makes them beautiful. When it comes to vulnerability, connectivity means sharing our stories with people who have earned the right to hear them…”
Brene Brown, Daring Greatly

(image from Internet)

I loved Brene Brown’s story about twinkle lights.

I know sometimes I don’t share my stories, or my “light” for various reasons. Sometimes out of embarrassment, or fear, or sometimes because I don’t even recognize the stories as important. It’s not something I’m proud of, it’s just truth.

But I have found when I share my light and my stories, when I stay true to me, and embrace what I have to give the world, I feel more whole. Brene calls it “wholehearted”. I live and love with my WHOLE heart. And when I allow my light to shine, I in turn encourage others to do the same. And though my light alone isn’t strong enough to light the way, when we all combine our lights together, we change the world.

Sibling love

I am constantly grateful these two boys have each other. To play with. To love. To wrestle. To terrorize. To just BE together. What a life-long blessing to have a sibling to grow up with and be an integral part of your life story. Though we didn’t plan to have them so close together, I am thankful it worked out the way it did. Caleb adores his older brother and I hope it always stays that way. And Carter refuses to sit by Caleb at meal time because he’s “too messy”.

They keep me oh-so-busy. And I’m already dreading the day they both go to school and I’ll be buddy-less during the day. Boo. Double Boo.

Boys, you’re lucky to have each other. Don’t ever forget that.

Picture Display Movement. Step 2. Load and Back up.

{Click here for Step 1 of Project Picture Display}

After I am focused on taking more photos, the next step is to get them on my computer.

I’m really good about doing this with my dSLR, but horrible about doing it with my phone. Some pictures sit on my phone for months before I ever put them on my computer. And a lot of the pictures I take these days are with my camera phone for convenience/logistical issues. (I’m still busy just trying to keep track of the four little humans I usually have around me and all the “stuff” that seems to accompany them). And without that handy camera phone, I’d miss pictures like this. Of my kid hugging a mannequin. Not weird at all.

Here’s the key to the rest of The Picture Display Movement. There HAS to be a system and it has to be SIMPLE or it will never get done. So find a system. Schedule a consistent time to do it. And keep it simple!! We schedule time to clean. Time to do laundry. Time to exercise. We should DEFINITELY schedule time to organize, print, and display our photos.

Here’s the system that works for me. This will have to be tweaked for each family just like chore charts have to be tweaked for each family (still working on fine tuning our chore/money system), but find something, anything, that works for you and stick to it.

I load my photos directly into iPhoto. When I plug in my camera or phone to my computer, iPhoto automatically pops up and the pictures go straight in there. The pictures automatically sort by date.

Once the pictures are loaded, I make sure they are backed up onto an external hard drive. You can get those at Costco. I just bought a 3TB external drive (most people won’t need one that big) for about $120. Worth every penny if my computer hard drive crashes. This is a step that should never be skipped. It’s not hard and only takes a few extra minutes. You can just drag and drop the photos onto the icon for the hard drive and it copies them to the hard drive.

I also back up my entire computer hard-drive to an online site. I researched several online storage companies and finally settled with Backblaze because it is unlimited storage for a really affordable price ($5 per month) and it allows me to back up all my external hard-drives as well (as long as I plug them in every 30 days). I have 7 full external hard drives and a nearly full computer hard drive. I see the “your startup disc is almost full” message more times than I care to keep track of.

I need a lot of storage space. Backblaze backs up my entire hard drive (photos, documents, music, etc.) so if (more like when) my hard-drive crashes, I know everything is backed up on Backblaze.

When deciding on an online storage company, I wanted something that was:

1. affordable

2. I personally knew someone who used the company to recover photos

3. unlimited storage including external hard drives

So after looking at and comparing several well-known companies (and talking to several photographer friends), I decided on Backblaze.

If your photos aren’t backed up, I can not emphasize enough that you NEED to do this step. Even if your photos are a big hot-mess right now. Back them up. Then worry about organizing. Trust me on this one.

Step 2. Load ’em and BACK THEM UP!!!

Click here for Step 3. ORGANIZE those Photos.

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