Transcription of Health / Wealth #21
Speaker 1: You’re listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine in Portland, Maine and broadcast on 1310 am Portland. Streaming live each week at 11 am on wlobradio.com and available via podcast on drlisa.org. Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 1: The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors. Maine Magazine, Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial, Mike LePage and Beth Franklin with ReMax Heritage, Robin Hodgskin at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists in Falmouth, Maine, Pierce Atwood, UNE the University of New England and Akari.
Dr. Lisa: Hello this is Dr. Lisa Belisle. This week show which is airing on Sunday, February 5th is our Health / Wealth show. Show number 21. We’re going to be speaking today with Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial, Susan Conley author of the Foremost Good Fortune and I have sitting across the microphone from me Genevieve Morgan my cohost. Hi Gen!
Genevieve: Hi Lisa. It’s going to be a great show today I think.
Dr. Lisa: I think it is going to be a great show. This is a very favorite topic of mine. The relationship between individuals and their health and their money.
Genevieve: It’s interesting how that’s connected. What have you seen in your practice?
Dr. Lisa: We often talk about levels of wellness and people come in to me and they will have some health crisis. They’ll have a back issue. They’ll have a neck issue. They’ll have had a heart attack or some trauma that oftentimes is coming along at the same time as a transition in their life whether this is a divorce or a job loss or even something that needs to transition that they haven’t quite gotten to yet.
Genevieve: Sort of stuck there causing them problem.
Dr. Lisa: There’s something underlying in their life that they haven’t dealt with and many times this has to do with money and financial security.
Genevieve: It’s dirty secret people’s financial status. There’s a shame about talking about money or somehow connecting your health with your money. I find it interesting that we’re doing a health show and we’re including a lot about finances and people’s relationship with their money.
Dr. Lisa: There is a shame its associated with it. I’m not sure why that’s so because if you think about money all it is it’s a currency. It’s something that enables you to do something you want to do whether that’s feed your family, put a roof over your own head, your family’s head or going to a vacation. It’s a currency. It’s an exchange of something not unlike energy which we talk about all the time on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast.
Genevieve: Some people seem to make a lot of it with very little effort and for some people it seems to be hard to come by. It’s a big difference between individuals and …
Dr. Lisa: I think that this does get to the root of the shame issue that you’re describing which is if you can’t be 1 of those people that makes enough money then it sometimes feel as if you’re not quite as powerful as you should be or you’re not quite as creative or intelligent. It speaks to your ability to function in this world and in the society.
Genevieve: Certainly not having enough money to meet your needs create a tremendous amount of stress and stress is very bad for our health as you know.
Dr. Lisa: Stress is very bad for our health. Stress and money issues are also very challenging when it comes to your relationship with other people particularly your spouse or your significant other. Our relationship with money is very reflective of our relationship with ourselves and how we think of ourselves whether we think of ourselves as highly capable or as being improvised. Whether we think of ourselves as being enough or not enough. Whether we’re not confident or not confident and we bring that into how we interact with other people.
Genevieve: That’s true. How you value yourself. I’m hesitant to go into this whole idea of positive thinking will make you rich but there is a sense that if you value yourself and you’re connected with your sense of self worth, you’re more apt to connect to your money and making money and your financial health.
Dr. Lisa: There is that sense although it’s not entirely true because I know plenty of people who make lots of money and they are entirely connected. It’s interesting …
Genevieve: Or happy or healthy.
Dr. Lisa: Or happy or healthy so it’s always a direct correlation but there certainly is a correlation. When things start to fall apart in a relationship in a very significant way you will often see a parallel decline in financial status. Divorce lawyers will tell that this is so. That people will come in and they will leave in a far poorer state but they also will come in in significant financial distress, especially today.
Genevieve: One of the things that I hear you saying is that money is an important factor in health but it is just 1 factor. Relationship, physical health, which I think Susan Conley will talk about later on in her book, that they’re all aspects of well-being. Sometimes when people stop stressing about money or can take a step back from their financial stress, they can find other ways of motivating themselves. It’s not all about money in other words. Success isn’t all about money.
Dr. Lisa: It’s not about money but it is all about valuing oneself. Knowing what one has to offer in this world to oneself, to other people, to the greater world. Tom Shepard will talk about the fact that you need to know where you are starting from and Linda Verrill and Frankie Chapel will talk about enabling teenagers to write a value statement. It’s just knowing who you are and what you have to offer. It doesn’t necessarily have to be financial but just again there’s such a direct correlation that we thought would be important too.
Genevieve: Interestingly I think we have a society where we’re tempted by the pill like to fix everything with a quick pill. What you’re saying is that, I think, that mentality takes over with the money piece too which is “Oh we should all just get rich quick.” There’s got to be a secret out there that will help us stay healthy and be rich. It’s really a process.
Dr. Lisa: It is a process and I write on the blog on a daily basis and somebody who reads the blog for me said “One of the things you need to stop talking about is showing up because you keep talking about showing up all the time.” I’m like “Well, but that’s what there is. You do have to keep showing up and this is why I talk about it a lot because this is a major theme.” You may not get rich quick but there is a sequential they call them success spirals that occur over time.
That if you can get a little bit of success and you show up the next day and you get a little bit of success and this is whether its true with money, relationship, valuing yourself, any of those things. One last thing that I thought would be interesting to talk about is this idea of The Secret. This became very famous I don’t know how long ago it was but there was a marketer and he went out and…
Genevieve: I’m visualizing a lot of stuff everyday and it still hasn’t come.
Dr. Lisa: This is what I wanted to talk about is you can visualize all you want for the positive but they do have studies that have shown that this idea of mental contrasting that actually works. If you can visualize where you’d like your life to go and set some goals and some intentions but at the same time there has to be that other side where you’re visualizing where you don’t want your life to go and maybe where you’ve been. You have to have be able to hold those 2 ideas in your head simultaneously. There’s a researcher in New York who’s been working with this for 20 years and has had great success.
You have to be able to do both. They say there’s a sweet spot. If you’re overly optimistic or this whole idea of the pan gloss where everything is good all the time then you’re not going to succeed. People who have read The Secret and they’re beating themselves up because they weren’t positively thinking enough or speaking enough its because it doesn’t work. You have to be able to do both. You have to be able to hold the contrast in your head and you can be successful.
Genevieve: There we go back to the currency of exchange that it’s never just 1 easy way, there’s always something balancing it out.
Dr. Lisa: This week we will talk with Tom Shepard, Susan Conley and find out more about how this is related to health and wealth.
Dr. Lisa: We’re fortunate on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast to have the University of New England sponsor a segment we call Wellness Innovations. This week’s wellness innovation comes from Psychology Today in an article called The Epidemic of Financial Anxiety What You Can Do. Here’s the good news. Something we’ve had the pleasure to witness many, many times when people step outside of the norm and are not being driven by anxiety about money, many new perspectives as well as new opportunities surface.
Sometimes they surface from your hobbies or passions. Sometimes they are vocational roots that are right in front of your face but you’ve been blinded by old habits and defenses. Most importantly we need to stop being carriers of the financial anxiety contagion. Knowing and exercising your affluence intelligence will help you regain the locust of control for your finances and your life. Read more about this on psychologytoday.com through the Dr. Lisa website and read more about the University of New England at www.une.edu.
Speaker: Support for the Dr. Lisa radio hour comes from the University of New England UNE, an innovative health sciences university grounded in the liberal arts. UNE is the number 1 educator of health professionals in Maine. Learn more about the University of New England at une.edu.
Dr. Lisa: Today’s first guest is a friend of our show from the very beginning, Tom Shepard, and he and I are sitting with Genevieve Morgan. Hi Genevieve!
Genevieve: Hi Lisa. Hi Tom.
Tom: It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me on your show.
Dr. Lisa: Tom, we decided that we wanted to bring you on the show because you have a very interesting perspective on money and how it impacts the family, how impacts the individual. We recognize both as individuals but also in our chosen fields that health and wealth they just can’t be separated. This is true. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do and how you came to this place.
Tom: I am currently a financial advisor. I own my own firm called Shepard Financial. We work out of Yarmouth, Maine. We recently established ourselves as an independent firm so we’re going through a transition right now. We’re really excited about being able to get our message out to the world with our new brand and help people understand what we’re all about. We really believe that money is more than just stuff. That it’s got elements of it that can really help us live healthier lives, wealthier lives and have better relationships and manage our time better and all kinds of other benefits.
I actually got into the business of being a financial advisor because I was a teacher of math at Gould Academy up in Bethel, Maine. I wanted to help the kids get an experience in that last year where they didn’t have to take math but might elect to take a class that was associated with it anyways. We created a personal finance class that was a lot of fun. I had 4 kids the first time I offered it and we got to dive really deep into stuff but clearly hit a nerve. The next we offered the class there were 17 enrolled and it makes for a different dynamic.
Talking to the kids about money and helping them understand some of the things that they were going to wrestle with led them to go home, talk to their parents. It was the kids who said, “You should talk to our parents.” I said, “That might be a good career move for me.” that’s how we got into deciding to become an advisor.
Dr. Lisa: What do you think it was about the kids and how you were impacting them that caused them to want you to talk to their parents. What were you saying that was so striking to them?
Tom: I think 1 of the coolest exercises that we were able to do with the kids was take the math part of what they were learning which was the power of compounding of interest over time and connect some of their expensive little habits or hobbies. The 6 Mountain Dews that 1 student would drink every day. Aside from the nasty health benefits, we wanted to show them how much more money you could have if you could figure out ways to do that habit either cheaper or just eliminate it altogether. He used to pump quarters into a very expensive vending machine and there is a store just not that far away. The walk would have been good for him. It would have been cheaper if he’d just gone and bought a big giant 2 liter bottle.
It was just helping them recognize that not only is your health impacted as a result of the habits and addictions that we all have but also there’s a financial impact as well. One of the things that I bring to my practice is the personal experiences that I’ve had with respect to money and financing careers and transitions. Been through a lot of transitions. The first 1 was getting out of college and working for Pratt and Whitney as an engineer, getting laid off during the recession in the early 90s. I tried to decide what it was I wanted to do next and I thought “Teaching and coaching and working in a boarding school might be something I should try.” The only thing I can get was an internship so from $30,000 a year to $6,000 year.
Genevieve: That was a big leap.
Tom: Went from working as an engineer to being a football coach and a dorm parent to teenagers who really weren’t that much younger than me at the time.
Dr. Lisa: You’re originally from upstate New York?
Tom: Grew up in a small little town called Fayetteville outside of Syracuse where it snows a lot and the whole reason we settled on Maine was because I wanted to be closer to the coast. I want to be close to the mountains.
Dr. Lisa: You came to the qigong class that I teach and the qigong class we talk about energy and building ones energy and of course over time you and I often said energy and money they’re very much the same. It’s just a currency. It’s a different energy currency.
Genevieve: That struck me too when you were describing the way you identified different habits to people have with money. It’s very similar in some ways to some of the things that Lisa sees in her practice about how people manage their health. I’m interested can you do a quick description of the roller coaster and the different ways that people have habits with their money.
Tom: I can probably give you a couple of my own habits that I’ve either had or been working on overcoming. Used to be that when I would leave the office at 5:00 for my 5 mile drive home, I’d stop 1 mile into it at a local convenience store and I’d buy myself a bag of Cheetos. I didn’t need to spend the money but there’s just something about my health and my condition of needing to get some sugar or salt or whatever. This is a funny place to be spending money on Cheetos 4 miles from home and arriving home and just spent the last 4 miles licking my fingers and trying to hide the evidence.
Whenever anybody asks me to talk about money, 1 of the things I have to do is I have to go back to the beginning and say, “What is it? What is money? Money for me in an ideal world would be everybody going to work doing something they love and then putting love into it and getting something out of it that they can then turn around and share with other people and just having that go around and around would be a great basis for our economy. You do this. I do this. We help each other out. We share.
What happens in the relationship that people have with money is they go through about 7 different levels of relationship to money. The first 1 and the name I have for it is insufficient. I would even call a level zero. You feel like a zero. You feel worthless. You feel like you’re just not everything that you can be. You may in fact make most of your decisions based on reaction and instinct. It’s all done in a gut level. I’ve known people and clients who… they just don’t take the time to think about what’s really the right next step they just take a next step so that’s where the first level.
The second level is often a roller coaster ride. You might make a lot of money and then you spend lots of money and then you make very little money and you don’t have enough. That’s the second stage is the picture I would paint would be a roller coaster. The third stage would be where you’re trying to nail it all down. You’re trying to make the right amount of money to meet the right amount of expenses. You’re trying to control it but if you’re not careful it starts to control you. There’s lots of tools out there to help people track where their money goes but all of a sudden the next thing you know you’re addicted to tracking where your money goes and you’re wasting time, another valuable resource doing something that really doesn’t add any additional value to you.
The next level for me is where you actually get paid to do a good job of managing your resources whether those resources are time, money, stuff, relationships, your health. You’re creating value that can then be repurposed. You can take some of your excess savings and you can do something else with it. Lots of folks get to that level and then maybe take that purpose and just plow it back into those other 3 levels. Deal with the crisis. Deal with the ups and downs. Try to nail down. Try to reduce your debt. That’s a spending mentality and it’s very similar … The whole financial system, the problems with our current system financially are very similar to the problems with our food system.
We can create lots of food but what’s really the value of it from a nutrient standpoint. We can create lots of money but are we really creating the value for ourselves that we want. There’s a jump. There’s a big step from having money, controlling your spending and taking the money and investing it, creating a second skill set.
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Dr. Lisa: You were talking about these stages of money understanding and development. What you’re talking about that restructuring is further down the line. First you had to go through that initial phase, that fear phase I believe.
Tom: Fear is definitely 1 of those emotions that if I could only, I wouldn’t be so afraid or if I could only I wouldn’t be so worried. Fears are looking backward and thinking negative things might happen. The antidote to that oftentimes is looking forward and identifying how you can take that fear and hedge or manage that risk that you see as a potential and turn it into an opportunity. You can take a negative and turn it into a positive if you can get to a more neutral place. If you can get to a place where you’re not being ruled by any of your emotions but you’re still in touch with your emotions you can make better decisions.
One of the things I’ve observed is there are lots of folks who think that they’ve reached a certain level of success with respect to their wealth but because they’re disconnected from it. It might be all be in a retirement planner 401-K plan, it might be money that’s been set aside for college or specific purpose but that purpose is way far off, they feel wealthy because they see what their wealth looks like on paper but it’s got no practical application for them right now.
Dr. Lisa: Which you said is problem when people are dealing with money is that they disconnect from their money.
Tom: The worst case scenario is where you got wealth over here that you can’t touch and you got debt over here that’s adding to expenses that are making it harder for you to live now. Especially in a situation like we’re in right now where the economy is not that strong. There are plenty of folks who have put money away for retirement but now they’re laid off maybe they have to go in and all of a sudden it’s more expensive to access that money. Some of the things that we do when we’re going forward don’t work as well when we end up in a backward period.
One of the things that we’ve done in our firm is to study the history of money. Let’s go back over not just the last 10 years but let’s go back and look over the 50,000, 100,000 years so that we understand really what money is and that it goes through these different cycles. By understanding what it is, knowing that it goes through these cycles but knowing that it evolves over time. One of the things that we need right now is we need a wall street thats scaled for mainstream. If we could figure out a way to get our food system to recognize the need to shrink back down and get to a human scale, we probably need something similar. A similar movement to exist that will bring our capitalist structure back to a human scale.
At the same time it also has to exist in a global environment. That’s the challenge. The challenge is, how do you continue to evolve globally while also bringing the scale back down locally? Maine is a really neat place because its small enough where you could take any system that is benefiting us on a national or global level and you can come back and really work very quickly if people were directed well enough to create something that’d be very useful for us here. Much healthier, smaller, scalable and I’d love to see that happen.
Dr. Lisa: Tom, did you come to some of these lessons not only as a teacher but through some of your personal experiences?
Tom: One of the things I bring to my financial planning practice is I’m not afraid to go out and make mistakes so others don’t have to. I’ve made lots of financial mistakes. From failure to recognize the value proposition between a private school and public school when I was trying to select colleges, buying beer for all my friends at college on a credit card that I’m probably still paying for, leasing a car, buying a car, owning a 2 family home, buying a … I’ve made lots of decisions and not all of them have worked out for the best. One of the things that I’ve always tried to do is pay attention to why I made that decision and if it didn’t go well, why didn’t it go well? Where did I go wrong and learn from it.
Let me take back what I said. I haven’t made every mistake in the book. Some of what I’m able to bring to forward from my experiences are the mistakes that either clients or family or friends have made around me. One of the lessons early on that I was like… that’s not smart was a decision that my brother in law made regarding his 401(k) plan and paying off debt. Even though when I talk about there being different levels and at 1 level it’s an investment that reduces your debt, for my brother-in-law it really came down to I think this is me speaking many years after the fact about why thinking the decision he made was there are 4 things people value. There’s time, relationships, stuff, money falls into that category and your health.
I think he got to a certain point with college loans and debt that had piled up, a feeling like that was robbing him of certain energy to advance his career, to do better financially. If I look at his decision to cash in a 401(k) and pay off all his debt from a mathematical standpoint, from a financial standpoint, it doesn’t make any sense. When we start talking about the interconnections of health, relationship, money and time sometimes it’s time to make a decision to do something with your money that actually pays huge dividends. Say on the relationship side of things. The relationship you have with a spouse, relationship you have with yourself, an employer that sort of space.
That’s not an example of a mistake because it turned out very, very well. His career took off very rapidly after he made that decision. I viewed it as a mistake when I first saw it. It was only later on when I got to a fuller, more holistic approach to understanding what money is, how we value it and how we use those values to make decision on a day in and day out basis that sometimes what’s right for 1 person it’s absolutely the wrong thing for somebody else.
Dr. Lisa: This is the reason that we had you come in and talk to us today is that relationship between health and wealth. It’s not just about how do you manage your mutual funds. It’s about from what you seen in your practice. You’ve seen that people when they feel scared, they get anxious, they can’t sleep at night and there’s a very primal relationship. It’s very foundational. Can you talk about some other examples that you’ve seen?
Tom: The better connected I can be to how I feel about the value decisions I’m making with my money, the more aware I am of the impact that those decisions are going to have not just on my health but also on my relationships, the way I manage my time. If I can manage my time well enough, then I can get enough sleep. If I can get enough sleep, I won’t be tired. I won’t need the extra caffeine. The extra caffeine won’t kick me into a craving mode that then starts to pour cheap no value calories into me. My energy will improve and if my energy is better, I can be more productive and the way that you get paid is be productive and do something that you share with other people that’s very positive.
When I think about the connection between health and wealth, I think plenty of people try to put it into a box and then forget about it. That’s oftentimes why they hire me but the difference between what we use to do when we first got into this business and what we do now is I’ll let them hire me. We’ll look at the box but we’ll definitely connect them to the inputs and outputs are going into and out of that box and hopefully make it such that they’re money is allowing them to grow and develop and become the person that they want to be today and tomorrow not just 30 years from now.
Dr. Lisa: Tom, I know that there’s a lot more wisdom that you have to offer and you have a new logo. You have a new website that’s being launched very soon. Where can people find out more about you?
Tom: If somebody wants to find out more about Shepard Financial and what we’re all about, our web address is www.shepardfinancialmaine.com and we are building our website so it’s under construction right now. We expect it to be launched in the next week or so. We’re really excited about the information that’s going to be on it. The art work that’s being created that helps really … A picture tells a 1000 words and hopefully just by going there you’ll be able to get a sense not only of where you are, where you been but also what your potential is and the path that you might go on in order to get there.
Dr. Lisa: Do you have any parting words of wisdom for our people that are listening and embarking on 2012?
Tom: I think this year is a very exciting year obviously for us because we got a lot going on. I think this is a year for people to really get in touch with what your purpose is. Stay connected to it, figure out how your money can serve you, can serve others. Hopefully it’s a year that has a mark on it out there somewhere around the 21st of December where the world is going to come to an end. My birthday is the 22nd and I hope to see you all at my birthday celebration.
Dr. Lisa: Thank you Tom for coming in and talking to us today about the connection between health and wealth. I know that people are going to be very interested in learning more about the type of services that you offer.
Tom: It’s been great to be on your show. Thank you.
Speaker 1: This segment of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is made possible by the support of the following generous sponsors. Pierce Atwood part of the Portland legal community for 120 years. Clients turn to Pierce Atwood for help with important deals and critical disputes, for creative solutions and sound advice about legal or business strategy, for peace of mind. For more information on Pierce Atwood, go to www.pierceatwood.com and by Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists in Falmouth, Maine. Makers of Dr. John’s Brainola Cereal. Find them on the web at orthopedicspecialistsme.com.
Dr. Lisa: We’ve just spoken with Tom Shepard from Shepard Financial about the relationship between health and wealth. We now have an individual who’s slightly different perspective but also very strong on the health and wealth side of things. She will be speaking with GenevieveMorgan, the wellness editor for Maine Magazine as part of our Maine Magazine Minutes.
Genevieve: Thanks Lisa. Today in the studio on the Maine Magazine Minutes we have Susan Conley an intrepid traveler in life and geographically whose written a book called the Foremost Good Fortune, a memoir about her experience moving her family to China in 2009 and the adventures of many different sorts that occurred there. Welcome Susan.
Susan: It’s great to be here.
Genevieve: Why did you name your book your Memoir the Foremost Good Fortune?
Susan: The book is a memoir about moving to China with my family. We’ve lived in Beijing for close to 3 years and the extended metaphor of the story is moving through China and moving through cancer. I really equated cancer with the foreign land. If read you the poem that goes with the title of the book it might make more sense. Should I do that?
Genevieve: I would love that. That would be great.
Susan: This is from Dhammapada number 15.
Hunger the foremost illness. Fabrications: the foremost pain. For 1 knowing this truth as it actually is, unbinding is the foremost ease. Freedom from illness, the foremost good fortune.
I think when I read that at the start of many of my book talks around the country, I get this light that goes on in people’s eyes and the whole story begins to make sense on many different levels.
Genevieve: Certainly when you’re young and relatively healthy, you don’t think about your health as a fortune, as a reserve but then when you become ill it becomes so clear.
Susan: Yes. I think when you become a mother as well the elixir of good health becomes even more magical and sacred. Its only when illness really came knocking at my door that I’ve realized all these other wonderful good fortunes that I had in my life. This story of mine it’s a story about tracing disease through motherhood as well and how it resonates through a family and how a family learns to put cancer in its place and make room for disease and all of its different permutations
Genevieve: Which I think is very important because when you were describing in your book moving to China you were talking about your boys being relatively young and very active. I remember quite vividly 1 of the opening paragraphs how you didn’t have the boys that would go off and play scrabble or something. They were the boys who were jumping on beds and were always with you. You really needed to make room for this in your life.
Susan: We brought young boys to Beijing. They were 4 and 6. They were doing ski jumps off the sidewalks and running up the stairs at the Great Wall and they were fearless travelers. They were game for it all. Then when mommy got cancer, we had to find a language for that and a place to put that so that it didn’t take over our family, didn’t take over our time in China and we really learned to do that through a whole lot of honesty.
Genevieve: Let’s talk about your move a little bit because you were born and raised in Maine though you lived in other places in Boston and San Francisco. You’ve always been a writer. Do you want to take us a through a little bit of your background?
Susan: I was the girl in 6th grade here in Maine who was always scribbling poetry and reading the lyrics to the Jackson Browne songs on the album sleeve. Poetry was were language really came alive for me so I studied it for years and years. I got undergraduate and graduate degrees and then I became a teacher of poetry. It’s always been that distillation of language that attracts me to poetry and still does that kind of crystallization of that thing that can be said any other way. I brought that keen interest in that economy of language to China.
I had a real intention that I set to write a story about my family moving to China and I did that for about 100 pages before I found my own cancer. Then in the end the book became a love letter to the boys. It was really written for them and to them and it’s something that I hope they will read with great pride and delight when they’re maybe in their 20s.
Genevieve: It didn’t start out as a book about cancer?
Susan: No. It was a day in the life book. A book about what happens when you watch your children learn a new language. What happens when you go figure out how to weigh Chinese apples at the market and then it had to become a book about cancer or it was never going to be finished and that really was my revelation. That there had to be a way to connect that carefree mother with that new mother who had cancer and was she the same and was that voice the same. This breakthrough was when I went back over some rather scribbled notes I taken during the cancer treatment and realized “I have a book here. It’s actually the second half of that first book and it’s the same mother. I’m the same woman. I’m changed but not necessarily for the worst.”
I think I had to get really open to the material. I had to come to terms with it and find my own language for it. I hear that a lot with cancer survivors this needing to assimilate it, decipher it in whatever way works internally for them. A painter will pain. A dancer will dance. I needed to write. I wrote my way through the cancer. I know that we all hear that it can be incredibly cathartic to have some artistic expression around disease. I have to say I couldn’t agree more with that. It was actually one of the greatest surprises of my life, how freeing it was to write through the cancer.
When I found my cancer in Beijing, I went through early phase of denial which I think is now quite common. I had a on the spot lumpectomy in a Beijing hospital because I had come head to head with a patriarchal old school Chinese doctor who really was dismissive of these lumps that we had found. He wanted me to go far, far away for many months but I was stubborn and I called my wonderful woman doctor back here in the states. She has some lines that I quote in the book that go like this, “We never wait Susan. We always go back in and found out. You can’t wait.”
Then I called that Beijing hospital and I said, “Hi it’s Susan that American with the breast lumps and we can’t wait.” As things go in China things move really quickly and I had the surgery I think the next day. Then things got zoo-ey little crazy because it was clear we had malignancy and then they wanted to do an on the spot mastectomy and we said wait and we put the brakes on. We actually came back to the states for the mastectomy.
Genevieve: You used the western model for the emergent surgical care that you needed and you came back to America for that but then you went back to China post-radiation. That was when the book started to change and when your perception about how to heal started to change. I’m interested in that because that’s a real sea change for you.
Susan: Cancer caused me to give up the reigns so to speak and to begin to let go of that powerful control mechanism that I was driven by I think here in the states. Cancer is so humbling that there really wasn’t much left to do but give up control. When we got back to Beijing and what I did was I found a fantastic yoga teacher. A Chinese woman who worked with me to get my strength back in my arms. She also worked with me on all kinds of mantras and things that were incredibly helpful and grounding.
Through her I was introduced to 5 element acupuncture. I began to really open up to the language around the disease and to be able to say “Yes I have cancer and I’m incredibly hopeful. I think this has a happy ending. I’ve made room for it. I can find words to talk to my kids about it.” Once I became that open, it all got very simple and it was all about honesty and about living very much in the moment as much as I could.
Speaker 1: This segment of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour is brought to you by the following generous sponsors. Shepard Financial. With offices in Yarmouth, Maine the Shepard Financial team is there to help you evolve with your money. For more information on Shepard Financial’s refreshing perspective on investing, please email [email protected] for more information and by mike LePage and Beth Franklin of ReMax Heritage in Yarmouth, Maine. Honesty and integrity can take you home with ReMax heritage it’s your move. Learn more at rheritage.com.
Genevieve: I also love the part in your book where your dear friend Lily King says to you, “Suze you can’t think your way through this.” It seems to me that some of what was happening for you at least in reading your book was this opening to feeling your way.
Susan; For those of us who want to live in our heads, cancer really challenges that assumption. I think Lily was right that it was time to try to live more in my body, in my heart. Acupuncture really helped that. I found this wonderful man in Beijing who did a lot of acupuncture and acupressure. I remember going to him for the first time. He knew very little about me. He spoke limited English. It was a very special place, very quiet, very spiritual and it was all intuition and touch. There wasn’t a lot of verbal. He began working on me and he said, “Okay we need to tell your body that it’s okay to let go now.”
Genevieve: Do you have a sense for what you were holding on to or do you have a sense for what it was that you needed to open up to?
Susan: It’s really interesting question because I think my answer has changed over time. The obvious answer is that big C control word that I think can inform a lot of what we do here in the west. I also think that what I was holding on to was more primal than that. I think as a mother when I was diagnosed with cancer I felt this incredibly intrinsic urge to survive for my kids. It was very simple. It was if I can control this, if I can hold on to it and if I can solve this then I can live. If I can live, then my children will have a better life. It was really all about mortality for a while and then I began to work through that and that was a big turning point for me was “Hey you don’t have to hold on to the whole disease and think it inside out. You can let go. You can trust.”
Genevieve: Well you came back to Maine a year and half ago?
Susan: yeah.
Genevieve: How have you taken some of the lesson that you learned in China and that opening and translated it back to your life here in the US? What have you learned?
Susan: There’s a certain chaotic wonderful wild energy on any street in China and that sense of potential that anything can happen on a given day is something that I try to draw on while I’m here in Maine. Then I would say yoga, yoga,yoga, meditation, living much more in the body. For someone who sits at a desk and writes a lot, I could live in my head all the time and for those of us who need to get that release, for me yoga is the perfect thing.
Genevieve: You’re working on a novel and …
Susan: Yes.
Genevieve: When will that be coming out?
Susan: I just finished the novel. It’s called The Woman who cooked on the roof and it’s about an Indian teenager who ends up in Paris in the late 80s. She’s befriended by an American teacher there who comes and helps her at her asylum center and that teacher’s brother is dying actually of a disease. I had written a draft of this novel before I wrote the memoir. I think the fascinating thing here for me and for all of us who are trying to write the stories of our lives is that these stories weave together. The work I did in the memoir and the work I did around getting honest with myself about cancer then came to the novel and informed the novel. I was able to write I think much more honestly and authentically about disease.
The novel will come out in about a year and it’s with the same publishing house Knopf and the same editor as the memoir so that’s really nice because there’s continuity there.
Genevieve: Then, what else are you doing? I know you’re very active in the literary world in Portland.
Susan: The Telling Room has always been very dear to my heart. It’s the creative writing center here in Portland that I cofounded with 2 wonderful writer friends coming on about 7 years ago. I’m always trying to do all things Telling Room, trying to teach there as often as I can and watch that organization grow and all these incredible ways. I’m also teaching for the Stonecoast Writers’ conference summer actually at the Stonehouse in Freeport. I’ll be doing some memoir intensives.
Genevieve: That is one thing we didn’t talk about. You are a wonderful teacher.
Susan: Thank you so much. I love teaching and I can wear many different hats when I teach. I have been teaching various workshops up and down the coast. Actually I was teaching some in Beijing back in June and I’m always amazed by the power of the story and about how when you gather a group of men and women together in a room and you ask them to get really honest with themselves they will take great risks and they will really show you how much story can transform human experience. I’ve been deeply moved by that. I love teaching.
Dr. Lisa: Do you think that that struggle, the power of the story, potentially the illness do you think that that also is a part of the wealth that you’re describing not only health as being wealth but also struggle?
Susan: I’m happy to say in hindsight yes. It’s a hard earned wealth and you don’t wish it upon people necessarily. I remember being asked at a reading by a cancer survivor if I would give up the knowledge that I gained through having my cancer to not have my cancer and I was pretty floored by that question. She had a quick answer. She said she would not give up here knowledge but she didn’t have children and there’s the rub. I didn’t answer her. I think it’s a complicated question and it comes back to some of those primal survival mother bear things that we were talking about.
I’ve learned so much and I’ve learned that that struggle was not about being happy but that happy doesn’t necessarily mean growth, doesn’t mean change. As I said earlier, I’m definitely changed by the cancer and I really do not think it’s for the worst.
Genevieve: How can people who have heard you today learn more about you and read more of your work?
Susan: We did a website when we launched the Foremost Good Fortune and it’s for me more than just a here’s my book and here’s where I’m reading. I put a lot of content on there around so what do you do if you find yourself with a cancer diagnosis? What might you look for in your provider? I also did where to get the best dumplings in Beijing. Where to find the most crazy flea market in the world. That website was fun. I did a blog on that website where I took on a lot of the topics that we’ve talked about today in various essay form.
Genevieve: That’s great. We’re so thrilled that you could come in today and I am hoping that you don’t get any more surprises and that you continue to add to your health and your wealth. Thank you for coming in today.
Dr. Lisa: We will link through to your website off of the Dr. Lisa website but do you want to tell people what your website actually is?
Susan: It’s susanconley.com and I also pull together a fairly detailed Facebook page which is an ancillary to the website but that has a lot of stuff on it too.
Dr. Lisa: Thank you Susan.
Susan: Thanks so much. It’s been a treat.
Genevieve: Susan Conley’s work can be found online. It has appeared in the New York Times magazine, Plowshares, the Harvard Review and the Paris Review among other literary magazines. She was profiled in the March 2010 issue of Maine Magazine and was the recipient of The Greatest Women in Maine award in 2011. To read more about writers like Susan Conley go online at the mainemag.com or pick up the latest issue in a local newsstand near you.
Speaker 1; Your life is calling. Are you listening? Our bodies are often the first indicators that something isn’t quite working. Are you having difficulty sleeping, anxiety or chronic pain issues? Maybe you’ve had a job loss, divorce or recent empty nest? Dr. Lisa specializes in helping people through times of change and inspiring individuals to create joyful, sustainable lives. Visit doctorlisa.org for more information on her Yarmouth, Maine medical practice and schedule your office visit or phone consult today.
Dr. Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle, you have been listening to show number 21 health, wealth airing on February 5th available through iTunes and also on wlobradio.com streaming Sunday mornings at 11 am. This week show included a conversation with Tom Shepard of Shepard financial about the importance of evolving with one’s money and growing as one’s life grows. We went on and talked with Susan Conley the author of The Foremost Good Fortune who described the importance of knowing that not only is one’s health of value but also occasionally health crisis and it’s all in how we go about dealing with these crisis as to how wealthy we might become.
We hope that you will continue to listen to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, cohosted by Genevieve Morgan. For more information on our show, go to doctorlisa.org. Be sure to download the podcast every week and even become a subscriber at iTunes Dr. Lisa Belisle. Read our bountiful blog at bountiful-blog.com or like us on Facebook. We hope that you are going to be able to create more health and wealth in your life as a result of listening to our show and we encourage you to join us for next week’s show which will be called Happy Heart airing on February 12th. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle, thank you for being part of our world. May you have a bountiful life.
Speaker 1: The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors Maine Magazine, Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial, Mike LePage and Beth Franklin with ReMax Heritage, Robin Hodgskin at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists in Falmouth, Maine, Pierce Atwood, UNE, the University of New England and Akari. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is recorded in downtown Portland at the offices of Maine Magazine on 75 Market Street. It is produced by Kevin Thomas and Dr. Lisa Belisle. Original content produced by Chris Kast and Genevieve Morgan. Our assistant producer is Jane Pate. Audio production and original music by John C. McCain.
For more information on our hosts, production team, Maine Magazine or any of the guests featured here today, visit us at doctorlisa.org. Tune in every Sunday at 11 am for the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour on WLOB Portland Maine 1310 am or streaming wlobreadio.com. Podcasts are available at doctorlisa.org.