Surviving the ‘Gift’ of Cancer: Dr. Erica Harris #166

Highlights

• Growing up a small-town girl in Northern Ontario (3:36)
• Her love of having a family (6:07)
• The crucible that came out of nowhere (8:51)
• Letting herself feel the pain (14:10)
• Her leukemia worsens (17:36)
• A hope-fueled miracle (22:33)
• A new crucible comes (28:19)
• Rising above her second crucible (33:13)
• Finally well, but her family is shattered (37:57)
• How she started out as a caterpillar and become a butterfly (40:19)
• The importance of mindset (44:27)
• Erica’s word of hope for listeners (50:12)

Transcript

Warwick Fairfax:

Welcome to Beyond the Crucible. I’m Warwick Fairfax, the founder of Beyond the Crucible.

Dr. Erica Harris:

There was a sense of urgency with the caller on the other end of the line, and it said, “Is this Erica Harris? Is this Erica Harris? You need to go to the nearest emergency room and avoid all public places.” And I literally stood dumbfounded saying, “No, no, no. You’ve got the wrong person. I’m the poster child for health and wellness, and I literally just left your lab like 15 minutes ago. There’s no way that those could be my results. You must have had me confused with somebody else,” like literally dumbfounded. But devastatingly, those results were accurate. And soon after, I was told I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia.

Gary Schneeberger:

And that was just the start of a cavalcade of crucibles for Dr. Erica Harris, who was given just two months to live after her body did not respond to chemotherapy treatments. But then miraculously, she believes, she went into remission in time to receive a bone marrow transplant that put her on the road to recovery only to find herself in the direst of straits again when her new immune system rejected her lungs and her life was hanging by a thread of hope.

Hi, I’m Gary Schneeberger, cohost of the show. In this week’s episode, Harris explains every harrowing detail of her years-long up-and-down medical crises, finally set at a more stable path when she received a double-lung transplant. Along that journey, she tells Warwick, she learned the important difference between toxic positivity and genuine positivity, and discovered that the key to her recovery to turning her tragedies into triumphs was a mindset shift.

“I have lived a million more lifetimes than I could have if I never had cancer,” she says today. And now she shares the lessons her journey taught her as a speaker and coach who encourages others through her true wellness platform, Rise Today.

Warwick Fairfax:

Well, Erica, thanks so much for being on our podcast. And just as I’m looking at some of the material that you’ve written about, your story is so inspiring, not just what happened, but what you took out of it and how you’ve risen again. I love the website and just your mission, Rise Today. It’s so impactful. And for people who are watching this on YouTube, I love the background that you have, the pink daisies and the mural, and that is just so fun and hopeful and clearly intentional. It’s a wonderful background you have.

So, obviously, we’ll get to the crucible moment and moments. There was more than one, sadly. But you grew up from Vancouver, Canada, which is, you’re talking off-air, is a magnificent part of the world, with Whistler where we’ve been skiing, and just it’s so beautiful in British Columbia. But just tell us a bit about your background growing up and what was a young Erica like and what do you love to do, sort of hopes, dreams. Yeah. Yeah. Just tell us about… I don’t know if it’s okay to say who you were or who you were growing up and the before.

Dr. Erica Harris:

Yeah. I’ll clarify a little bit. I do live in Vancouver now. I’ve lived here really for most of my adult life. I came out here to do my undergrad degree in exercise science. But rewind, as a small town girl, I grew up in Northern Ontario in a city called Sault Ste. Marie. And as they say, you can take the girl out of the Sault, but you cannot take the Sault out of the girl. And I am still so rooted in that little community, which is halfway across Canada from here.

I still have the same best friend that I’ve had for 35 years. We talk four times a day still today, I kid you not. And I love to take my kids home to the lake. It’s where I get rooted and it’s where I elevate myself again and find me, reconnect with myself. And I’ve just got such a community of support there, being a small town, and I really love going home sweet home. But yeah, that idea of Northern Ontario really, I feel, kind of defined a lot of my childhood, just the roots itself, right? Just the character from Northern Ontario itself, just the rugged nature, loving the outdoors. I grew up boating.

Loved school. I was really lucky going through school with a great group of friends, who I’m still friends with now. Just really lucky in my childhood, and loved to ski and loved to soak in all the great outdoors had to offer. Really, really blessed, and found a love of… In high school, I received the gym award graduating from high school and just really was fascinated by health and wellness and human performance.

And so, that’s what I then pursued my education in and pursued a degree in exercise science and kinesiology, and then later pursued a degree in chiropractic and practiced as a sports chiropractor for years. I owned my own clinic, Peak Performance Chiropractic Health Centre, and loved it. Really loved working with professional athletes and weekend warriors and practiced what I preached by every single measure at the same time and was really truly climbing the ladder of life and loved life.

Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. It seemed like everything was going well. You, I guess, were married and had, well, two sons, maybe one just, I guess, from what I understand.

Dr. Erica Harris:

Yeah. I was still nursing my youngest son and very happily married. We hurdled everywhere as a family of four, and my love for health and wellness was practiced in our family as well. We hiked every mountain together with the little infant backpacks. And my kids’ first foods were homemade steamed spinach and avocado. I passed along the love of what I practiced for my whole life, even with my family. And getting sick was never on the agenda. I saw myself as the poster child for health and wellness. I felt so strong. I felt truly invincible at the time. And especially being a young mom too, your concern is always for your children, and you never really take the time to slow down and look inwards.

Warwick Fairfax:

So let’s talk about what happened, because you were, I think, from what I understand, relatively young, like 35 or thereabouts, two young kids. Life is going great. And then what happened that changed the course of your life?

Dr. Erica Harris:

Sure. Yeah. You know what? We were climbing the ladder. We had so many plans and hopes and dreams and you’re just in the thick of it. I was planning for my son’s fifth birthday party, my oldest. I had planned this little party for months, and we had planned a month-long family holiday to the lake. Just, I was literally packing for it. We were gearing up to leave for the next week. I was still nursing my youngest. My oldest was soon to be starting kindergarten. We just had so much on the horizon, and cancer doesn’t care about any of it.

It takes no regard for all of your responsibilities or your goals or your dreams or any of it. And it was a morning just like any other. I had woken up with my kids. We had packed a picnic lunch. I planned a little outing to the Vancouver Aquarium. We planned this picnic lunch to do after at Stanley Park. And I had to do a very quick routine lab test before we went. And it was a routine lab just to check a simple hormone. So when I was pregnant with my firstborn son, I had been diagnosed with this very common thyroid issue that a lot of women face. And I would take since then just one little medication every day. It’s called Synthroid. And I would go for these routine labs every now and then just to make sure that that hormone level was at a good range.

And this was just kind of par for the course. And I went for this lab and I went straight to the Aquarium. It must have taken me about 15 minutes to go from A to B. And as we arrive in the Aquarium, I have these two little sets of legs running up ahead, so excited to see all of their sea creature friends, and my phone rang. I was still tucking our passes back into my wallet, and the reception in the Aquarium is terrible. I nearly didn’t answer the call. And that was the call that changed my whole world, where everything I knew was ripped out from under me in the matter of seconds and really never to return again.

And there was a sense of urgency with the caller on the other end of the line, and it said, “Is this Erica Harris? Is this Erica Harris? You need to go to the nearest emergency room and avoid all public places.” And I literally stood dumbfounded saying, “No, no, no. You’ve got the wrong person. I’m the poster child for health and wellness, and I literally just left your lab like 15 minutes ago. There’s no way that those could be my results. You must have had me confused with somebody else,” like literally dumbfounded. But devastatingly, those results were accurate. And soon after, I was told I was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia.

So I had a blood cancer that stemmed deep in my deepest of cavities in my bone marrow. So basically, my bone marrow wasn’t producing functional blood cells. Literally, everything just happened so fast with leukemia. It’s interesting, because you don’t produce functional blood cells, so you don’t have enough red blood cells. You can’t clot properly as you don’t have platelets, and you’re just an immune hazard. You don’t have the ability to fight any colds or bugs because you don’t have any white blood cells.

So right away, you have to be admitted for 24 hours a day, seven-days-a-week chemotherapy. And it happened so fast. I think a lot of cancer diagnoses face this wait period that must be really difficult, too, in a completely different way. But this was just so abrupt and I had to be admitted to hospital right away. And like I said, the world was just ripped out from under me and just trying to grasp, hold on to anything I could at that time.

Warwick Fairfax:

So you go to hospital, and what were those first days like? I mean, and sadly, it was almost like a long descent into a dark night that was to last probably years, it felt like. But you weren’t to know that at the time. What was your first thoughts?

Dr. Erica Harris:

No, I had no clue. In fact, I was told I had an 80% chance of success with the first round of chemotherapy. And I think we do it as a survival mechanism, but I went on to autopilot, as I’m sure we all do, in this flight-or-fight scenario that our brains and our minds almost have to do that to protect ourselves, to get through those moments. It would be too overwhelming to digest it all in that time, if that makes sense. Obviously, we can’t stay on that zone. But looking back on it… And you don’t see it at the time, but I can totally tell you I was in that autopilot survival mode.

And so, when I was admitted to hospital, right away, to me and my perspective, it was just a blip on the path. I was going to be fine, like, “Come watch me on my exercise bike. What can I get all my visitors from my water fountain? Would you like ice or no ice?” I had 60 visitors come to visit me every single day. And then over time, all of the unimaginable indignities that were coming in tow that I kept just dismissing, “Oh, it’s fine. Oh, it’s fine. It’s fine. Just a blip. Just a blip. I’m going to be just fine.”

But over time at night, when no one was around, that’s when I would start to weep the silent tears, and that’s when I would really let myself feel it. But I really felt genuinely that that was wrong to let myself feel that. I wasn’t being positive in those moments and, “Erica Jane, just be positive. Just know you’re going to be fine and then you will be fine.” I was actually even reading Lance Armstrong’s book at the time. And I remember being really angry when I got to this part where he was chatting with his oncologist, and he said to his oncologist, “Look,” he too wasn’t having the best news up until this point.

And he challenged his oncologist saying, “Look, I’ve been positive. I’ve had the most positive mindset, and I’m still not getting the results I want.” And the oncologist apparently kind of looked back to him, and I don’t remember the exact words, but the basic inference was, “Lance, I’ve seen the most positive of positive people perish on this path, and the most melancholic people of melancholic people thrive.” And I was really angry with that. I really challenged myself with, “What had I done so wrong to get into this position and to be here now? And if only I were positive, that should work. That should contribute to my success.”

But it was over time that I learned very acutely that when we’re really our most genuine and positive self, it only comes after being really real about the hardships and giving ourself that safe space to be really real about the hardships. And for me, it came in tow with a nanny that we had had to hire. This nanny had been sitting in the corner of my room. She brought my babies in to see me. And all of a sudden, I was just struck by the presence of this complete stranger in the corner of my room. This must have been about eight weeks in.

I was struck by the presence of this complete stranger in my room and having access to our family’s most vulnerable and most intimate of moments. And I watched her leave with my children. And from my penthouse view above, I could see her load in my boys into my vehicle down below, 15 floors below. All of a sudden, my mind just literally raced and panicked, and I was like, “Oh my gosh, is she going to buckle their seat belts properly? Is she going to speed on her way home? Is she going to shoulder check when she changes lanes? Does she realize what precious cargo she has in that car?”

I wanted to be the one driving home with my babies. I wanted to be the one to make them a healthy meal or to tuck them in at night and to sing them their lullabies before bed. I just felt so trapped. I felt almost institutionalized in that moment against my will, if that makes sense. I was stuck. I couldn’t go anywhere. I couldn’t be that mom to them at the time. And I watched my vehicle drive out with my kids. And people assume I’ve had so much physical pain on my path, which I have not. But that day was, by far, the most physical pain I’ve had on this journey, and I turned around from my window and I wept. And I was all alone in my room and I wept and I wept and I wept, and I didn’t stop for days on end.

In today’s society, that’s when it’s a problem. And my medical team came racing in saying, “Oh my gosh.” There was this woman in this Hawaiian floral print dress, and I didn’t even know her background or her specialization, but she had a clipboard, and she was just like, “If you’ve been having thoughts,” and I was like, “Who is she?” And she’s like, “I hear you’ve been crying. Don’t worry. I can prescribe you anything you want.”

And for me, it was the first reality check that I was like, “No, no. I just need to let myself feel the hurt of this and all that cancer came to take away and literally rip away from me.” I had to abruptly stop nursing my youngest. I had to miss my oldest son’s fifth birthday party. I couldn’t go to this kindergarten orientation. I had to let myself feel all of the grief and loss that cancer had come to take in rather than, “Oh, it’s just a blip on the path. Come watch me on the exercise bike.”

Frankly, somebody should have been coming to speak with me then. I talk a lot about toxic positivity versus genuine positivity, and only looking back on it can I see that that was really toxic positivity. So over the course of time, I’ve come to learn through Lance’s book, when we’re mistaking that genuine positivity for toxic positivity, that’s when we can get into that cycle of perhaps not having the results that we’re expecting, if that makes sense.

Warwick Fairfax:

Just to help listeners know what happened, I mean, getting diagnosed with leukemia is bad enough, but it’s just there were several more beats to the story where it felt like things kept getting worse physically. So just tell our listeners what were some of the other things that happened just to give people the full picture.

Dr. Erica Harris:

Sure. So within the first few weeks, I think the first round of chemotherapy was a three-week process. They do another bone marrow biopsy after that, and I was told I had not responded to that round of chemotherapy. In fact, I only grew more leukemic cells. I think I was admitted to hospital with 27% leukemic cells. After the first round of chemotherapy, I then had 67% approximately. I was then told I would need salvage chemotherapy followed by a bone marrow transplant.

Now, remember, this was only three weeks after I was diagnosed, and I hadn’t even complained of feeling sick or unwell before that three weeks. And now I’m hearing, “Okay, you need salvage chemotherapy.” And I was like, “Well, what’s salvage? What happens if that doesn’t work?” And that needs to be renamed because it inherently denotes questions in your mind. And point-blank, they said, “This is the last course of treatment we have available to treat this. If you don’t respond to this, this is the end of the line.” And I couldn’t compete with that. I had literally just been diagnosed three weeks before. I still saw myself as so physically well, if that makes sense, so much life to live.

I was not nearly done living, and how could you tell me this? And let alone then, now I need a bone marrow transplant, like, “Show me. Show me somebody who has gone through this and they’re now thriving.” Right? And my team was amazing. It’s very rare to have salvage chemotherapy, because you have to be quite young and fit to receive it. But they rummaged through their records and they found this one incredible woman, Mary. Mary came in to visit me on a hard day. I had a septic infection. I was in septic shock, and she stood in my doorway. And I swear she looked like an angel. It just lit up behind her.

And she walked into my room and she put her hand on my leg, and she just said everything I needed to hear. She understood it in a way that nobody else had understood it. And when she was leaving my room that day, she was actually going down the street here in Vancouver to Women and Children’s Hospital. She was off to meet her firstborn grandchild. And for me, instantly, I was like, “Okay. I love this. I’m going to be this fit little granny one day.”

And not only did this inspirational role model give me my vision, but she just gave me so much hope. And I saw myself then as this fit little granny pushing my future grandbabies down the Ambleside seawall here in West Vancouver, and I still see that vision very acutely. I feel the wind in my hair. I can taste the saltwater. I can hear all the laughter around me, and it’s just really a powerful vision that really gets me through hard days.

Warwick Fairfax:

But there were some more hard days. I think you got a stem cell transplant.

Dr. Erica Harris:

Yes. Sorry.

Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah.

Dr. Erica Harris:

Sorry.

Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah.

Dr. Erica Harris:

I did not respond to the salvage chemotherapy. Devastatingly, I was told I only grew sicker again. I think I then had 87% leukemic cells. I was really, really sick. And I was given a terminal prognosis because, again, that was the end of the line for treatment. I was withdrawn all further medical care, aside from palliative care, moving forward at that point. This was back in 2012, on July 31st. The world that I knew then just obviously collapsed in every way, shape, and form.

And I fought to go home. If I had two months to live, I had a lot of living to do. I certainly wasn’t going to do it from a palliative floor. My first stop was to go to Fred Hutch, which is a leading leukemia institute in Seattle. All my eggs are in this basket, and devastatingly, they gave us the same prognosis. They said, “Erica, we’ve got some trials going on. You’re not going to respond to them, but let us learn from you in the name of science.” And I’m not sure if my choice would’ve been different not being a mom, but there was no way that I was going to get my kids down to Seattle and be a guinea pig in that time. Like I said, if I had two months to live, I wanted to maximize every single day.

And a big part of the story that I kind of overlooked was just literally the day before. This is just then the emotional roller coaster of the story. The day before I was given this terminal prognosis was the day that my team came running in after weeks of searching for a perfect donor match. They told me they finally found this perfect, 10-out-of-10 donor for my upcoming bone marrow transplant that I would desperately need. But devastatingly, as soon as I was told that I didn’t respond to salvage chemotherapy and I wasn’t in remission, “You’re no longer eligible to serve as a recipient for this transplant.”

So this gift of life that was just extended was brutally ripped away, literally 24 hours later. But this gift of hope that I had been given, for me, I held on to this. And for me, it was like a sign that I was given this information at a certain point for a certain reason, and just to hold on to this hope, because my goal at the time, in all honesty, wasn’t to get into remission. I didn’t even think that that was possible, given how sick I had become on this journey.

My goal was to fuel myself in every way, shape, and form to live another day, to convince somebody somewhere in the world to give me this transplant without being in remission. And so, my brother is a medical doctor. My brother-in-law at the time was a medical doctor. Everybody was rallying for this hospital here in Vancouver to do this transplant without me being in remission. And so, my goal in this time was only to stay healthy enough to convince somebody.

At the same time, I completely owned this fire-breathing dragon and the power of this dragon of cancer that had crept into my world and prepared for the worst. And I recorded the messages for my children. I made scrapbooks for them. We recorded songs together, all with tears streaming down my face. I was never ready to tell them about my prognosis. I knew when I felt it that I would be ready to talk to them, but they were so small, and I just never felt ready. But I felt it was really important to prepare myself.

A lot of people say, “Oh, Erica, you’re so positive. You never owned what cancer could have done to you, and that was what led to your success.” But I think it’s almost the opposite, to be honest, because let’s say I hadn’t prepared for the worst. Right? Let’s say I was just like, “I’m going to be fine. I’m going to be fine.” And then my kids turned 35. Had I not been fine, they would’ve been like, “Gosh, mom had a terminal prognosis and she didn’t write us a letter?”

But it’s also interesting, because when we prepare for the worst, I assure you, when I was writing out those letters for grade seven graduation or whatever it may be that my kids would go through in their milestones, I wanted to be there. Right? And it made me rise to that even more in my efforts that I was doing to fuel my mind, my body, and my soul. And I became like this human filter for what would creep into my mind or my soul or my body in every single way. And I think owning that power is also equally really important in how we rise on the other side, the power of what is our antagonist, if that makes sense. Yeah.

Warwick Fairfax:

But it seems like, from what I understand, you did find that donor who’d be willing, somebody in Germany. So that was positive, and he had an interesting last name.

Dr. Erica Harris:

Yeah. I didn’t know where he was from at the time. You’re right. I didn’t know where he was from at the time, but I was just holding on to this bit of hope. And miraculously, through doing all of the efforts that I did, we pursued any and everything in the natural healthcare realm. And miraculously, I achieved remission, a complete spontaneous remission, it’s called in the medical world. I call it my miracle, because of holding on to hope.

And oddly enough, I’ve only come to meet him years later, this amazing donor who gave me all of this hope. And believe it or not, his last name is, I’m sure it’s pronounced Hoppe in his home country of Germany, but it’s hope in my world. It’s H-O-P-P-E. But he is just my hope star. He’s incredible. So he is this young mountaineering adventurer, and because of him, I was eligible to receive this lifesaving bone marrow transplant, which serves as like the, quote, unquote, “cure” to prevent against relapse from such an aggressive leukemia.

And he’s this young, super healthy, fit gentleman. And because of him, my blood type changed from O- to A+, which is also crazy. Who even knew that that could happen? But I thought that that was a really good score on this test, and I was just so overjoyed. And instantly, from that day forth, I’ve lived my life incredibly differently. Hearing the words “you have two months to live” has been the greatest gift, despite all the turmoil that still happened even after that, because you really do learn to be ever so present and maximized today in every way.

Warwick Fairfax:

Wow. And I want to get to some of those lessons, but there are, I guess, a couple more beats, one obviously involving your lungs and then marriage after that. So talk about, just like things seem to be getting positive, and then wait, stop, and then something else happens. So tell us about the whole issue with the lungs.

Dr. Erica Harris:

Yeah, I call it the rise and fall. It just seemed like I kept rising and falling. And every time I’d come to the surface for another gulp of air, I felt like I was just violently pulled back down again. And so, yeah, you’re right. After this bone marrow transplant, I had a few bumps in the road, but generally I grew strong quite quickly. I was on my skis by the end of that year again, skiing down the local mountains here. That was one of my goals.

I got back to hiking Grouse Grind, which is a pretty strenuous hike here. I was then teaching my kids how to ski, which is, you have to be really physically fit to be teaching kiddos how to ski the mountains here. But I really was. But then on my hikes, people started to pass me, Warwick, and they were like, “Oh, thanks for letting me pass.” And I was like, “I am not trying to let you pass.” I couldn’t seem to catch my breath, and I couldn’t seem to talk in the same capacity I’d always done so before. I seemed to be losing my breath.

And so, I mentioned it to my physicians, but at first, they were like, “Erica, you’re just so…” I’m so much more active after transplant, and I was just so grateful to be alive. I didn’t care if I was hiking in the hills anymore. And so, I would walk the seawall here all the time, and I was just so happy to walk the seawall. But then that same shortness of breath very quickly caught up with me on the seawall and in the flats, and then even caught up with me walking across my kitchen. And they learned a little bit too late that my new, hearty immune system kind of woke up, looked around, and decided it didn’t recognize my own lungs, and embarked on this fierce process of attack through rejection and literally obliterated my lungs.

It’s called a process of bronchiolitis obliterans. I fell to 80 pounds. I was crazy sick, on full-time oxygen. And gosh, those days were brutally hard. So in contrast to hearing the words “you have leukemia” and everything happening so fast, now I have this decline in my lungs. All the tools that I had previously used to miraculously survive cancer, there’s nothing I could do now to gain control of this process happening within, where I kind of described it to my kids like I’ve got these two friends at the playground, my body and my donor’s body, and they’re not getting along. And there were no tricks that I could come up with to get these two to get along.

And it was really, really a defeating process, let alone to be declining quickly and on this everyday gradual progression. I was then told that my only hope of survival would be a double-lung transplant, which, for me, sounded brutal. Brutal. Like for something great to happen to me, something terrible has to happen to someone else. How do you come to grapple with that? That was just playing on my mind and all my emotions for the longest time, and I lost so much function. I ended up developing these steroid-related cataracts. I couldn’t see, so I couldn’t even drive. I couldn’t watch a movie to take my mind off things. I couldn’t read.

Everyone’s just saying, “Oh, just rest.” But there’s only so much rest you can do. Those days were brutally, brutally hard to lose all of my independence. And then actually, on my worst day, what was once my worst day, July 31st, 2012, when I was told I had two months to live, fast-forward three years, July 31st, 2015, that was the day I had the call saying new lungs were waiting for me. And I was gifted new lungs the very next day on August 1st and the gift of breath with the thanks to a family, the family of another who bestowed the most incredible of incredible gifts.

And this family is an incredible family. I’ve only recently met them, and I am so honored to carry the lungs that I have, and I’m just the luckiest girl ever. More bumps in the road happened and I ended up getting a virus that I had never been exposed to before with these new lungs. I spent almost a year in the hospital, to be honest, trying to fight this virus. I grew resistant to all forms of treatment. I was called the Hail Mary of the hospital all over again.

I would literally get out of the hospital every day to pick up my kids from school. I’d drive from Vancouver back over to the North Shore, pick up my kids from school, get groceries, make a family meal, take them to activities, and tuck them into bed before I’d race back to the hospital. And I’m sure a million people could have done that, but I needed to do it. I needed to keep my fierce sense of purpose in this world. I couldn’t give that up. And so, I had to advocate for myself at 7:00 AM if my nurses were late hanging my medications. I was like, “I’ve got to go. I’ve got to be out of here at 2:30. You’ve got to get these meds up. I’ve got to get out of here.” Yeah. It was a really hard year.

And then miraculously, I had another miracle in the spring of 2017 on Easter weekend, literally, where I just started to develop my own immunoglobulins to this darn bug, which is a feat of feats for a girl who doesn’t grow her own immunoglobulins at all after this bone marrow transplant. I’d go for transfusions every month where I borrow immunoglobulins that other people produce to keep me strong from colds and bugs. And here I am now developing my own immunoglobulins to this bug. It was a complete miracle in itself.

And then I grew strong. And six weeks after I was finally out of hospital, my husband chose to divorce. And this family unit of four that I had just cherished, again, the world that I knew was being ripped away from under my feet. And I had to face a move very quickly thereafter. I had to adjust to life as a single mom, and I really had to reinvent myself from that point forth. I was standing there and I just literally had to dust the dust off and figure out how I was going to reorientate the compass and move forward.

And my path ahead really all came from this point of service. I had always been asked, “Erica, what did you do on your path? How did you maintain your mental health? How did you survive all that you’ve survived? How did you do this?” I had so many questions. I had so many people from the hospital and other avenues wanting me to speak for their organizations.

And so, I started speaking, I started coaching, I started mentoring, and I started doing this podcast, the Rise Today Inspirational Podcast, just like you do, to share these stories of hardship and to really open up the conversation of hardship, but to also propel tools of resilience and resolve and fortitude to help others stay the course and to hold on to hope. And that’s why I’m here. I try to serve as a beacon of hope for others who are hearing the most dire of dire of words, just to hold on and to fight in ways that you can and that you feel most proactive about.

Gary Schneeberger:

And one of the things that you probably can’t know is what you’ve just described is something that is a critical aspect of what Beyond the Crucible, what Warwick created, what it stands for. Warwick calls it a life of significance, and he describes it as a life lived on purpose, dedicated to serving others, and that it’s impossible, really, to have a life that’s, quote, unquote, “successful,” truly, without doing that. So, again, I’m going to play the role of the guy who says, “Are you paying attention, listener? Or are you hearing it?”

Warwick Fairfax, his crucible story, you know well, takeover of the family media dynasty, succeeds for a bit, ultimately fails, 150 years of family history washed away, at least in terms of what’s owned, at a $2.25 billion, with a B, price tag. Then you hear Dr. Erica Harris talking about everything that she’s been through. Completely different than what Warwick has been through, but listen to the emotions, and not just the emotions of what they felt when they went through it, but where they ended up.

You just said, Erica, that the only thing that helped you going through what you went through when you finally got through what seemed like maybe the last part of that, and it’s never really the last part, is that you dedicated yourself to service. You’re living right now that life of significance. And from where I sit, in the cohost chair, love hearing those stories. And Warwick, I’m sure that means everything to you as well, hearing someone, who you did not know before this conversation, living the same sort of story that you talk to listeners about all the time.

Warwick Fairfax:

Yeah. I mean, very well said, Gary. I mean, to me, part of the challenge of life is try to make meaning and purpose out of tragedy, out of pain. We don’t necessarily know why it happens, what’s the reason, but I think a lot of folks we’ve had on the podcast, myself included, have tried to use what we’ve been through to serve others, to help others in some fashion.

It doesn’t make maybe the physical or emotional pain all go away, but it, a bit like drops of grace, I think, really definitely helps. I want to focus, one of the other things that you’ve said is, “I choose to focus on the blessings.” Now, listeners hearing about leukemia, lung transplants, divorce, and I think you said, sadly, it’s more common than people think. I think you’ve mentioned previously maybe 50% of marriages don’t survive cancer, so it’s, yes, all too common.

Dr. Erica Harris:

I’ve said this in my TED Talk, and thank you for bringing this up. It’s a really important stat to share, because they don’t tell you this when you’re holding your husband’s hand facing your diagnosis. And you’re right. 50% of marriages don’t survive a cancer diagnosis. They don’t tell you this. There need to be more resources in tow to help these young couples and young families. There are no resources for my children. Contrast that to a child who has cancer. There are resources for the parents. There are resources for the siblings, but there are none when it’s a young parent who is ill.

And so, that’s a really important topic that you just brought up. But when you’re a woman facing a cancer diagnosis compared to a man facing a similar diagnosis, with a similar prognosis, you actually have a six times greater chance of divorce. And they don’t talk about it. There’s no discussion on preserving… My kids deserved our family having a better chance. Of course. My husband at the time went through his own journey. He almost watched me die over and over and over and over and over again. He would’ve had to pull back emotionally. Right?

And there are hardships going through that. I’m not saying I was perfect going through cancer either. You don’t even have time to focus on your marriage. You’re still prioritizing the children. When one person is living at the hospital, you’re pulled in so many different directions. And these families, I don’t know, for any of your listeners, if you know any young parents facing health issues, support those families.

I just wanted somebody at the soccer pitch to cheer on my youngest and to be that pseudo-mom for a day. I needed somebody to bake a birthday cake. I needed the basic things that you don’t even think about. When you take a young mom out of the house, you need a lot of resources in place to help those young children, and those families need so much more support.

Warwick Fairfax:

Absolutely. It’s the unseen challenges. The seen is the physical. And hospitals and healthcare providers, that’s what they focus on, as they should. But it’s the unseen, marriages and kids and relationships, that… You’re right. We need to do a better job of caring for that. But I want to shift to… It’d be hard for a lot of people to believe there could be blessings from what you went through.

I think you’ve said also that you felt like you started as a caterpillar and became a butterfly, as if somehow this cancer and this pain was maybe part of the process of taking you from a caterpillar to a butterfly, which, if that’s what you meant, most people would say, “That makes no sense. How could there be any beauty in cancer? It’s evil. It’s awful. How could there be a blessing? How could somehow this transform you from a caterpillar to a butterfly?” Talk a bit about blessing and that whole caterpillar-to-butterfly metamorphosis.

Dr. Erica Harris:

Great question. It’s so true. When you face your own mortality at such a young age, you realize the fragility of life that we often otherwise take for granted. Actually, I’ll take it back a second. When I was hearing the words of my diagnosis, I was sitting in this doctor’s office building downtown Vancouver, and I heard the words, “You have acute myeloid leukemia.” And I saw my physician try to conceal a tear in her eye, because I looked so well. I just looked so well. And my husband, as any caring husband would do, started off on this rampage of questions. Right?

And from that point forth, I heard the words in the room, but it was like this muddled, I don’t know, this muddled video playing in the background almost. And I turned my gaze out the window and, as per this point that you were just talking about, I saw this young woman. She looked like she was walking home from work after a day in the office. She had white sneakers on, professional attire on underneath. She had a backpack on. And her hair literally bounced with every step she took. She said hello to everybody she passed by. She just happily greeted everybody.

It was a walk I too had done many times before with that same beat in my step and the same energy and the same vim and vigor to see people walking by. And I pictured her walking home from work to going home to make her family a meal, and it was in that moment that I had never realized before how lucky I was just to get to go home and make a family dinner. And all I wanted to do in that moment was to go home and make a simple family dinner, the task that we do every day, the simple mundane. All I wanted to do was to get to do the everyday mundane that I had always taken for granted.

My focus was always on the big adventures. What was the family trip that was going to be next? What was this? Often overlooking the beauty that lies in the simple mundane. All I wanted to do was make a family dinner without a care in the world. And cancer brought me that gift of appreciating the simple mundane, and there’s so much beautifulness that unfolds from that. I have a calm in my heart that I never otherwise had before. Before, I lived on autopilot, “What’s coming next? Where am I going?” I was so, “Go, go, go, go, go, go, go.”

I never paused and took the time to really be appreciative of the moment, because I was always thinking ahead to what was coming next. I always say now that I have lived a million more lives each and every day than I ever could have before cancer. I’ve almost been gifted 11 bonus years. On July 31st, it’ll be 11 from the time that I heard I had two months to live, and I’m just the luckiest girl in the world. I could have lived till I was 120 before, but I’ve already outlived that life that I could have lived before now.

Warwick Fairfax:

Life is in the little things. The blessing is in the day-to-day, as you say, cooking a meal, walking in nature, being with your kids at dance recitals or on the soccer pitch.

Dr. Erica Harris:

You’ve got it.

Warwick Fairfax:

That’s part of the tapestry of life, right?

Dr. Erica Harris:

That’s the secret of happiness right there, the everyday, simple mundane.

Warwick Fairfax:

There are so many tools you talk about. One of the biggest things I think is just that whole mindset, mindset and mindfulness. But why is mindset so important as you go through challenges in life?

Dr. Erica Harris:

Gosh, that’s how you choose to react. Right? What we face, it’s not a choice. It wasn’t something I did wrong that brought on cancer. There are so many adversities that we face that are outside of our control. I couldn’t impact my husband’s decision. I knew things were hard on our marriage, but I always assumed once I was well and out of hospital, we would have time to fix that. So that was probably the hardest thing for me, was that we didn’t have that time.

But we can’t choose what happens to us, and there’s no fault in the adversities we face. But unless we choose to assign meaning to it, we lack that purpose, and then we focus. We choose our focus to focus on the hardships. And Tony Robbins often talks about what we choose to focus on, we give meaning to. It is a choice. If I choose to focus on all the hardships I’ve been through, that is where my mind goes. That’s what I become. Right?

But I choose to focus on living life to the fullest. I choose to defy everything that’s on paper in the hospital about me, and I choose to live life, every bit that I can, when I’m outside of those walls. There’s nothing more that I love more than when I walk in to meet a new doctor, and they’re like, “Wow, you look nothing like what I expected you to look like from what’s in here.” And that’s the choice piece. Right? That’s the mindfulness piece. We can all choose how we rise to our adversities.

Warwick Fairfax:

So well said. And part of that choice, as you talk about, is using what you’ve been through to live a life of service. And I so love that concept of just helping other people that may face illness or may face challenge and just giving them hope. Part of being healthy, I think, psychologically is making meaning and purpose out of what you’ve been through and using it in a way to serve others. And so, that’s obviously a clear part of that. Yeah.

Dr. Erica Harris:

Yeah. I’m so passionate about that because, like I said, even when I had 60 people come to see me every single day, I felt so incredibly alone, because they all come in. Right? They are dressed to go to the beach after. They are dressed to go to work, and you are the one that is stuck in there. They get to go home and have that family dinner at their house. Right? You’re the one that’s stuck in there, left alone, and you can feel so incredibly alone. And unless you’re connecting with other people, you can also feel really guilty about the feelings that you’re experiencing.

And so, I try to create this safe space by being really real about the ups and downs that I still face now today through my social media and through my coaching and through speaking efforts and through my podcast and through everything that I still do today. I feel so compelled to pay forward all that I’ve been gifted. Look, this complete stranger rose to help from halfway around the world in my time of need. Who does that? I breathe through the lungs of another. I have the bone marrow of another flowing through all parts of me. I am seriously the luckiest girl ever. It’s been a team to get me here. And I’m so passionate about paying all of that forward and helping other people feel less alone on their journey and holding on to hope.

Gary Schneeberger:

That sound you heard was the captain turning on the fasten seat belt sign, indicating that it’s time to begin our descent to land the plane. We’re not there yet. Before we get there, I do want to give you the chance, Erica, to talk about Rise Today. And I want to read the mission statement that you have for Rise Today, is, “To open up the conversation about hardship and to equip you with tools to stay the course, to take back the power from adversity, and to thrive like never before.” You described all of that in this conversation we’ve had. Talk a little bit about… I’d be remiss if I didn’t give you the chance to let listeners know how they can find out more about Rise Today and about the services you offer.

Dr. Erica Harris:

Sure. I always say we are not defined by how hard we fall, but rather by how high we choose to bounce on the rebound. We’re also not defined by how many times we fall. I’ve fallen a lot, but rather by how many times we choose to rise. And I encourage your audience to choose to rise and choose to do so again and again and again.

And at Rise Today, we are a community of support for others who are navigating these hard days. We have coaching courses available, a speaking platform available to inspire your audience at your next event. We’ve got a podcast that a lot of people appreciate, and you can find more at risetoday.com. Instagram is probably my most active platform, 60daystolive2012. But other formats are Dr. Erica Harris for LinkedIn, Facebook. You can find me anywhere online. Yeah. Search Dr. Erica Harris and risetoday.com, and I will be there.

Gary Schneeberger:

Awesome. Warwick, as always, it’s the founder and host’s prerogative to ask the last question, or two if you want. Take it away.

Warwick Fairfax:

Well, thank you, Erica. It’s just a pleasure and a joy to have you, and what you’ve been through is so amazing. But as amazing as that’s been, what’s more amazing is just how you’ve approached it, not stuffing emotions, but yet seeing blessing in the lessons, using it to pay it forward and serve others. That’s what’s really truly remarkable.

There may be a listener today, maybe today is their worst day. Maybe they’re in the bottom of the pit. Maybe they’re in hospital or some other kind of challenge, and they may not see really any glimmer of hope. What’s maybe a word of hope that you would offer that person? Because I realize hope doesn’t necessarily mean, “Oh, things will be fine.” Right? But I mean, I don’t know if the word is realistic, but what’s a word of hope for maybe a listener who’s listening today that today may feel like their worst day?

Dr. Erica Harris:

Break it down. Take the focus off the long term and bring it right here to today. Fuel yourself in every way that helps you maximize this moment right here and right now. Whatever is going to bring you the most joy right now, do that. I feel by taking my focus off cancer and by living life and by fueling myself in every way I could, I’ve extended those two months into 11 years. I don’t know what happens tomorrow, but by maximizing today, I’ve sure had a great ride in between.

Gary Schneeberger:

I have been in the communications business long enough to know when the last words have been spoken on the subject, and right there, listener, you heard Dr. Erica Harris speak the last word of our discussion on this episode of Beyond the Crucible. So all I’ll say is this: Until the next time we’re together, listeners, do remember, and you’ve heard it here in great detail, with great emotion, and with great hope, that we understand that your crucible experiences are hard. Erica’s crucible experiences were hard. Warwick’s were hard. Mine were hard.

But we also know this, that if you learn the lessons from those crucibles, if you dig in, you take that one small step, as Warwick calls it, you take those little mindset shifts that Erica talked about, if you do those things and you apply them and you compile the lessons from your crucible experiences, you can lead the best life imaginable. It’s not the end of your life. It’s not the end of your story to go through a crucible. It can be the beginning of a new story that will lead to the greatest, greatest destination of your life, and that’s this, a life of significance.

If you enjoyed this episode, learned something from it, we invite you to engage more deeply with those of us at Beyond the Crucible. Visit our website, beyondthecrucible.com, to explore a plethora of offerings to help you transform what’s been broken into breakthrough. A great place to start? Our free online assessment, which will help you pinpoint where you are on your journey beyond your crucible, and to chart a course forward. See you next week.