Episode 10 A Monster Calls....

When a cancer diagnosis is given, it's not only given to the patient, but to every family member. Like a rock thrown into a calm lake, those waves emanate out, impacting family and friends surrounding the patient. Over the course of our podcast, friend and I have spoken with and heard from friends caring for a friend, spouses caring for their partner, even a parent caring for a sick child. Today we examine dealing with a chronic illness through the eyes of a young person experiencing the illness of their parent. Through her own personal experiences and as an educator in the geratic arts, our guests has been able to help young people confront the reality of a life threatening illness of a parent and to express their emotions in a healthy way. Today's episode is powerful and poignant. I urge everyone to listen closely and think about the young people in your lives that are trying to understand and process what's happening to their parent. Welcome to caregiver companion, a guide for the family caregivers of cancer patients. My name is John Razono. I became the caregiver for my wife Barry when she was diagnosed with a rare cancer in 2014. And I'd like to introduce my friend and colleague, Dr. Fran Baumgarten, clinical psychologist, caregiver and cancer survivor. We are part of a team that created a support group for family caregivers to provide resources, information and encouragement. Now we've created this podcast to provide these resources with greater accessibility. We're not medical professionals, we cannot give you clinical advice or suggestions, those are best directed to your healthcare practitioner. But we are here to offer a friendly voice, the benefit of our experience and remind you there is a path forward through their caregiving journey. We are your caregiver companions. Let us join with you on your journey. Welcome back everybody to another episode of caregiver companion, a guide for the family caregivers of cancer patients. It's been a while since we've all been back together. This is John. I'm here with my good friend and colleague, Dr. Fran. How are you today? I'm doing really well today. How about you? I'm good. I'm doing well as well. It's good to be back. It is. It's been a while. Of course, we both had some, I know you had some commitments, family commitments that you had to deal with. Of course, I was dealing with my surgery and cancer treatment. But here we are. We're back in action. So that's good. And for the listeners to know you're doing well and you're recovering easily, right? I'm feeling good. And as I said before, this week, it'll be three weeks since my surgery and this week really feels like a turning point and feeling, I can't say I'm back to my full fighting strength, but I'm getting close. I feel good. I feel good. You sound good. Good to see you, John. Thank you. Well, I am very excited about our topic today and our guest. So let me first say our topic is something that we've sort of danced around, but we really not have, haven't come out directly and that is when a young person, a child, has a parent who is dealing with a terminal illness or dealing with a chronic illness. Now, we've had the opposite where we've had the parent talk about their sick child, but now we really want to look at this from the eye through the eyes of a child or a young person when their parent is dealing with some serious illness. I know, friend, when you were going through your cancer therapy, I think you said your kids were teenagers. Yeah, I had two teenagers, yeah. And for me, when Mary was in her treatment, my youngest son was 20 when she was diagnosed in 21 when she passed. So in fact, we just talked about that the other day that there's, he said that's been 10 years. So the relationship he and I have, when he's 31, very different at 21, and he doesn't have that with his mother now. Yeah. There's, there's things that just, you know, through the eyes. So we want to talk today about like what it, what it is through the eyes of, of, of the child. So very excited to have a, I guess with us, who's going to help us, understand that. And, and Jenny McClintock is here, Jenny is the artistic director at a, it's a charter program at, at a local high school, I don't know who, if I could say the name of the high school, so we'll just say it's a local high school here in Southern California. And you, you're, Jenny is there as the artistic director and, and works with the theater department with an acting instructor and directs the, the stage productions directly related to that. There was a recent stage production that, that her students did called what a, a monster calls. And we're going to talk about that. And it is about a story of a 13 year old boy who's dealing with his mother's terminal illness and what that was like through the eyes of, of the 13 year old. Now, Jenny also brings a personal experience to that because, as a young person, she lost her dad to cancer. And so I think that, and we'll, and I want to hear more about it, but I, I've got to believe that that informed not only Jenny your vision for the dramatic arts and the, and the artistic expression of these kind of feelings, but also just in general creatively, what, you know, what it meant to you in your life. So without further ado, we would like to introduce our special guests to our audience, Jenny McClendon. Welcome to our humble podcast. Well, thank you so much for having me. I'm honored to be here. Well, we're very excited and honored to, to, to have you as well. So, so if, if I, if I can and, and you're, and I'll kind of let you gauge just how, how far, how much you, you want to talk about these things because, you know, they are sensitive topics. But you did say that you lost your dad to cancer as a young person. So, and then that, that, I, at my mind, I've got to believe that that's, that informed kind of where you took your life and, and what you did with, with, with, among other things. So if you, maybe, if you would mind just maybe giving us a little bit of that backstory and, you know, what happened with your dad and what you were dealing with and kind of how you saw that through, through your eyes at that time. Yeah. So, my dad was diagnosed with colon cancer when I was in college. I was maybe 20, 21, so, um, similar age that you mentioned with, with your son. And I remember going, when it, when the diagnosis came in, my mom called me and told me over the phone and it just sort of hit and I didn't really think much of it. I went to college. I went to school the next day and I had to leave like it, it, it hit me then just, oh my gosh, what does this mean? What's going to happen? I had all these questions. I was trying to go to school and I, you know, it just, I, I remember just walking out and, and driving home and crying. And then I, because I was separated from my mom, I don't mean in any bad way, I just mean I was, you know, literally not living with her or going to, yeah, physically not living with her and going to, to school. I didn't have a mother there to help me process it. The way I processed it was through my work as an actor. I was going to school. I was in college. I was studying scene work. I was studying monologue work. I was studying acting tools and I was kind of taking what I was learning at school and then using my father, using that emotional reality that I was experiencing it kind of infusing it into the characters given circumstances and it was helping that it was helping me process it. No one told me to do that. I just sort of felt like this was something I could do because I had this tool. I knew that that's what I could use to process what I was going through. Because the years went by, I think it took about seven years and he did pass when I was in my later 20s, again, I was still not with my mother. I was married by then. I had a young child and my mom was so caught up in caregiving for him. She wasn't caregiving for me, not that I expected her to as an adult, but she, that wasn't her primary focus. And so again, I felt like I didn't know how to process this. So again, what I did was, I knew I could write, that was something simple I could do, I wrote in a journal, I just put all my thoughts down, just kind of blah. And then I'm also, I am someone who talks, some people don't, they shut up. I tend to actually really talk and talk through my thoughts. I tend to process things better when I say them out loud, even if it's to myself. And I have been found to talk to myself. Signing intelligence, you know. I wrote, and then I talked about things. And when things came in, when people would say things to me that didn't feel real, I would kind of bounce ideas back and say, that doesn't sound right, does this sound right? And I would, you know, things like, he's in a better place or he's going to be okay. You'll see him again. I would kind of bounce off that and say, you know, I'm not sure about that. I don't know that that is exactly what I'm feeling. Let me process this. So I just, I talked, I wrote, and I, I processed it through my work as an actor. And, you know, that's been many, many years. It's been nearly 18 years since my father passed. And here I am as an acting teacher. And I wanted to give my students that same opportunity when this script came by and I read it. I thought, this is an opportunity I have to not only put on an incredible piece. I read the piece and it really is a beautifully written piece. I should have on doubt who wrote it is someone who passed away from cancer. I believe she wrote it with the point of view that her children were experiencing her as a mother passing from cancer. So she, she clearly knew what she was talking about and had that experience and that context. So when I read it, it ringed true to me. And I thought, I have an opportunity here to bring this piece to my students. I knew they can handle it. I've been working with these students for several years now. I knew several of them were navigating their own grief journeys with parents who had either passed or have cancer diagnoses. I didn't know the extent of it. I knew about a handful of kids in the cast were experiencing it, but when we sat down and chatted about it and we had several sessions after rehearsals where we would talk about it, so many kids shared their experiences with grief more than I anticipated. And being able to provide them with just the opportunity to talk is therapeutic in and of itself. I gave them all journals to write in so that they could then again write. And of course, I gave them the tools and the opportunity to process it through their work. So this, this piece was absolutely informed by my experience with grief and what worked for me. It's certainly not the only thing that works of course, but it certainly worked for me and knowing my students, knowing how passionate they are about their work and acting. I knew that it would at least give them an opportunity to have an outlet for processing their grief. So I watched the performance on YouTube and it was, it was, it's a powerful and really poignant story for our listeners, could you. You watched her children's, her teens performance, right? I want to make sure the audience understands you watch actually what they produce. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Could you for our audience just kind of give us a, give them a set up and what the, what the story, the plot, the sort of, you know, what it's about so people can, can, can understand that. It would be good. So the, the play is about a young boy, honors roughly 13 years old, whose mother has a terminal illness. He's never actually spoken about the illness, but it's quite clear that she is sick. And he is struggling to process what her illness means for him in his future. He has a father who is not really in the picture, lives in another country. The grandmother is in the picture, but he and the grandmother do not get along. He is being bullied at school. He is, he feels very alone and isolated. It's clear that he and his mother have a wonderful relationship, but she is doing what I think a lot of parents would do or do do, which is to, you know, be a cheerleader and to tell him everything's going to be okay. It's going to be fine. I'm going to get better. I'm going to do this treatment. I'm going to do that treatment. And even though he hears that, he, it doesn't bring him peace of mind or solace or pain. And he comforts because he still feels quite alone and quite isolated. And he's struggling to figure out how to manage what's going on and what the adults in the room are not telling him. So he is visited by this monster that comes in the form of a uterus, a little bit abstract. And I just say something here, of course, he not only feels it's different. He sees it's different. You can visibly see her ill. You see that she's not okay. So what people are telling him and what he's actually experiencing are not the same. They don't match up. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. I'm sorry. No, thank you for that. And so he is visited by this monster who comes in the form of a uterine. And this monster tells him three stories to help him understand really what he's experiencing that life has many nuances that people can say one thing, but mean another. And it's helping him to just understand what he's going through. The monster then expects him to tell the story of his truth. His truth ultimately being that he has always known his mother was going to pass. And he has this nightmare that continues to present itself at night. And in the nightmare, he lets go. You know, his mother is there. Don't let go. Don't let go. Because ultimately, that is what he has been experiencing. He knows his mother is going to pass. He needs that kind of reassurance that she is going to pass. And no one is telling him that. And he feels so much guilt, so much guilt that he let her go. He thinks it's his fault. He thinks that that's why she's going to go because he's always known she's going to pass and he's letting her go. He needs the guilt in his life to let him know that this is what's going to happen. And it's okay to feel these things. And he doesn't have that because they're saying to him, she's going to, you know, we're going to get better. We're going to another treatment. And I'm going to keep fighting, so that's what the place is about. And ultimately, Connor creates this monster. This monster is, of course, kind of comes in this very magical sort of way, but Connor created the monster. He needed an adult in the room to help him process really what he was feeling deep down inside. And face the reality of what was really happening as opposed to what he was being told. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting. You know, so with, and Fred knows this story, but the experience was, was my wife Mary when she was first diagnosed, so I got three sons. And she was the ultimate mama bear and wanted to protect her kids. So she was adamant that we didn't share with them. And they knew she was sick, but the degree to which and the fact that the treatments and things were not working was kept from, from them until, until basically the very end when it was, when it was obvious. And I can't, you know, I could say that that wasn't really my, I would, I would have preferred not to handle it that way, but I also didn't, I'm not going to battle, get into a battle with, with my wife, with, she was dealing with, but my sons did tell me afterwards, you know, you guys were saying, oh, you know, mom's going to get better or we're going to try this. We're going to try that. And when it finally, when she finally passed, he, she, my one son said it was like she was in a car accident because all of a sudden it came so suddenly, you know, you didn't prepare us for it. Talk, talk to us about that, you know, so the play is obviously seen through the eyes of the child and what he's dealing with, but the adults in the room, obviously there's a lesson there that the play talks about, but, and, and, and even maybe from your experience as well, you know, what, what are those, what are those kids, what, what are they saying when you were, when you were kind of doing it, when the journaling and sort of the preparation for the play, what do they want, what do they want to hear from parents, other adults, so that they could, you know, really be able to process what was happening in a, in a healthy way. Well, so before I get into that and I, I will answer that question, but I think the most poignant line from the play is when Connor asks the monster, how can I say this, how can I say this and he's ultimately trying to say goodbye to his mom in the last moments. And the monster says, if you speak the truth, you can face whatever comes your way. And so I, I said that line after one of the rehearsals, I think actually that was the one friend you were at and I said, I'm just opening this up. So I said that line and I said, I'm just opening it up for anyone to speak about what their experience has been. And overwhelmingly it was that, yes, it's hard to hear the truth and, and to face people's passing. But the truth is always better to hear. I had a student, this wasn't necessarily related to cancer, but it was a student whose friend passed away, tragically, a young child passed away, not from cancer. And because the circumstances of her passing, she, she was not told, first of all, that her best friend had died, she was not even told for several days. And they had, they were someone, they were a couple that spoke every day. So this was something unusual for her and of course caused her quite a bit of anxiety. And then after she passed, she was not told about the circumstances of her passing again. So constantly, the truth was not told to her. And she said it made it so much worse, having to navigate the grief of losing her best friend. But then also trying to also navigate the lies that the adults were telling her and trying to process why were they lying and what does that mean as a young person that can be really, really confusing. And I also know from my experience, and then I'll talk about the students, I wasn't told of course that my father was dying because my mother, as his caregiver, wanted to stay positive. And my father was not a talker, not at all, is it the opposite of me? I talk a night, talk enough for a moment. He just kind of kept going forward, went to the treatments, did what my mom suggested. And they came to the agreement together to do. And like you said, when my father landed in the hospital that last week and finally passed, it did feel sudden. And I laughed because it wasn't sudden he had cancer for seven years, but it did feel like all of a sudden he just died. But I, and I've never shared this story, but about six months before that, I was speaking to friends and granted I was still a young adult. And I'm not sure what I wanted when I was saying this, I'm still kind of processing that. I just said, I kind of lied and I said, you know, the doctors gave my dad six months to live. That wasn't true. I don't know why I said it. I think I was probably wanting some kind of sympathy or maybe just wanting someone to help me because my mom was caught up in my father. I didn't have a mom to go do to help me navigate my grief. And I think that was an interesting thing to say. And it ended up randomly just being the truth, roughly six months after he passed. And I think I just needed someone to help me come up with what actually was happening. I needed to know what was really happening here. Something tangible. Something tangible, something I can hang on to, even as bad as it was. Even if that truth meant I would lose him, the not knowing was worse. And that's something that Connor said. And that's something that my students shared as well, that the not knowing kind of wondering about it, not being told all of the truth is absolutely worse than being hidden from them. But ultimately, they still have to face it. And like your son said, it feels like a car accident, it will feel like a shock. Even though Connor says, and even though I knew, deep down, I always knew, deep down, I always knew, which is why I said, I think there's going to tie in six months, I was like, I always knew. There was also a part of me that was trying to believe that it was not going to happen. So it's, I think, living in those dualities is exhausting, especially for kids. Hearing one thing, believing another, trying to convince ourselves of another truth when we ultimately know that our loved ones are going to pass. So as tough as it is, I think the truth is ultimately the best, the best way forward, the best path forward. The other piece of this, what happens in that when you don't tell the kids, the teenagers, the young adults, it's very isolated. So you know, this is an opportunity when a parent is dying to really help the kids kind of deal with it and manage it. And when you're included in something, you feel more taken care of rather than pushed away. So that isolation, knowing your parents dying and you're not in the circle of being cared for, it's like you say with your mom, I mean, but that's what it feels like. It really feels like you're out there on your own. And the parent, the families that I work with, my biggest challenge is getting parents that are terminal to be that parent, to be the one to help those children and those teenagers through it. Because the words that that parent speaks can be the healing words. Nobody else can heal you like that parent walking you through and really helping you with that. So it's a big task, but it's very empowering for the person who's terminal because they don't lose their position in the family. They don't get pushed aside as if they're still not that parent. You're that parent. So your last breath is what I tell everybody, you know, and you can make the difference. Your words will make a difference for forever. Knowing that you've done everything that you have to accept this at its part of it, I mean. So I think, you know, I think the isolation, and I think that's what we got from the kids in that group a lot. It was just being isolated on the outside with nobody kind of saying, hey, you're with us. You're part of this. And that was very true of Connor. Connor was isolated at home, as you mentioned, with that experience, not being included in what was really happening with his mother. He was isolated at school because he felt so alone, he felt so sad and depressed. And the students picked up on that and bullied him for it. So it can, yeah, like you said, really feel isolating. And something that happened with me that may be just unique to my story, but like I said my mom was so busy taking care of my father, keeping him alive was her goal. And then when he was in the hospital that week, she kind of, she gave up and turned all the decisions over to me because I think she didn't want to have to make those decisions. The decisions that ultimately would lead to his final passing, the decisions like, you know, there's nothing more we can do. What should we do? So here I am, this 20-something-year-old, making final decisions for my father. So talk about not really appropriate. I wasn't adult, so I wasn't, of course, a 13-year-old child, but I think those decisions would have been better to make, like you said, as a family unit, altogether being included on them with my father, of course, also in the mix. And by that point, he had a tube down his throat, could not speak, too weak to write. So I mean, it was a bad situation all around as far as like, don't wait. We shouldn't have waited until that very last minute to come up with a plan of what we were going to do as a family. And I can't tell you how often that happens. Okay. It's really very common for, you know, a husband or a wife at that end to be so out of resources that they turn it over to the kids. It's not uncommon. And unfortunately, it's not uncommon to wait until it's too late to that the person that's terminal really has to say. I mean, that happens more often than you would, than you could possibly believe, Jenny. Well, yeah, it's, yeah. And that's partly, too, because things are not talked about early enough, right? Because then, you know, and I, you know, the doctor's don't bring it up early enough with the feeling that nobody says, let's kind of just talk about things and figure it out and give you a path to help. So I think it's just, yeah, yeah, yeah. The other thing I, I found I'd love you to talk about is, you know, John, each of these kids had to play a different role. So there was somebody that played mom, there was somebody that played acts and dad, there was somebody that played grandpa. So I mean, grandma, so, you know, and kind of, of course, Connor and, and of course, the, the monster. So these kids not only had to look at the play and kind of understand it, they lived in their characters. Can you talk a little bit about what that was like for them because that was, I think, the most heartwarming part for me was to see these kids embrace these characters and care about them and want to know how they felt and how they should feel and how they should act. It was stunning. It was stunning. Well, thank you. I know. I love these kids so much. I'm just going to say that. So I think maybe I should back up and say that my approach to acting has been always has been bringing this, the character, the, no, sorry, bringing the actor's emotional reality to the characters given circumstances. What that means is everything that lives inside of us, everything we have experienced. We bring that to our characters. So we aren't pretending to be anything on stage. We are not putting on a role or putting on a character. We are bringing ourselves to that character's given circumstances. And so in doing that, we're actually being our most authentic selves. If we have the courage to tell the truth, to examine our lives with 100% honesty and truth and vulnerability, allowing the audience, allowing people to see all of that, then we're applauded for it. And I tell my students that all the time, if you have the courage to just speak the truth, be truly who you are, the audience will react. Well, thank you for it because it gives them permission, of course, to then also be reflective and honest about themselves. So that's another reason this place spoke to me because it is so much about the truth. And I'm always about the truth. I celebrate each student exactly who they are. They do not have to be anything else or anyone else. So I think they, they latch on to that because it, again, gives them permission to be themselves and who doesn't want to be themselves, have that permission to be themselves and then be celebrated for it. So they take to it. I give them the tools in order to do that to analyze the script and to bring the character to life through a series of many, many tools. And they embrace it. Even characters that are a little bit more difficult to embrace like the father, right, who is absent and confused and maybe a little selfish and just not getting it. He's removed from Connor's life. I really push the students to find that in themselves. That's not easy to do all the time to find those moments when you might be absent or selfish or confused. And, you know, it's easy to bring the hero to life. Yeah. It's easy to. The less desirable character it should say. A selfish character to life. The villain. So, but we all have it in them. And I always break it down to what is this character's objective? What do they want? And it's always something primal like I want power, I want you to love me. I want unconditional love. And if we can break that down and we can find in ourselves when we have wanted that, there doesn't need to be a judgment on the character. Because I have felt powerless at points in my life. And I have done things that maybe I'm not proud of because I have felt powerless. And so I'm going to bring that to life. It doesn't have to be judged or I don't have to worry about what I did. It's just a matter of I can relate on a human primal level to this character and what they're doing because I have been there. I have experienced something similar. You know, I've maybe not murdered someone, but I have certainly, not that, there's no murder in this play. But I can, on a primal level, relate to that feeling of powerlessness. So that's what it is. And I think that's another goal of my work as a teacher with these students is to get them to be empathetic humans by realizing we are really all the same. Know that behavior is not acceptable, of course, and that is not necessarily who I want to be. But I understand that they did that out of powerlessness or feeling a certain sense of greed that I have also felt in my life. So this work breeds empathy, understanding, celebration of people and who we are as human beings, flaws and all. And I think that's another message of this play is about speaking the truth, finding where we are as humans and, you know, being empathetic to people in their situations, especially when they are at their most vulnerable. And the kids love it, they get those tools and they just lie. I don't give them line readings, it's not like I'm telling them, you know, go up and pitch here, go down and pitch there, I'm not telling them to do anything. They find this on their own and that's the creative part of it for them is figuring out who these characters are because their emotional experience has informed that. And I think in watching them perform, you can see that. You could sense that this isn't just, you know, your typical high school play where the kids are just, you know, playing a role. This is, you could see that this is coming from their heart. Yeah. And it's, you know, they're touched and by virtue of that, they're touching the audience as well. And they really did to speak about that. The audience had a very visceral reaction to this piece, as you can imagine. Many people in the audience, of course, having experienced grief. Some people had to leave early. Most people who left stayed all the way to the end, left just in puddles of tears. And yeah, it was, it was very, very visceral for the audience to experience as well. And again, it's because of that truth, again, going back to this theme of the truth. It's because the actors had the courage to bring their own selves to the play. Yeah. And I think there was some conversations the kids said with their parents afterwards. That, you know, sounded kind of really interesting. I think it opened up some lines. But the other, the other part is your, I think with the kids, because it was such an emotional piece. And especially with so much of what the kids were going through themselves in their lives. But you're trust in them that they could do this. I think that was really important, that you knew they could hold these emotions. And they could follow through with that. And that empowering of them, I think, really made a real big difference for those kids that were grieving. Well, thank you. Thank you for saying that. I do, I do know them. I would not have selected this piece as my first piece out the gate at this school, because of course, it really was a lot, as you know. But because I've worked with these students for some of them for four years, I knew that this was something that they could tackle. But more than tackle, I think what they're going to look back on as the years go on. And as adults, kind of understanding what that was, was how you entrusted them with it, right? That you really believed that they could do this and they could hold this. And you weren't afraid of the emotions that were going to come up, and you knew that they were. I mean, we saw some things even in the group of some of the kids who had a hard time, you know, containing it, but that they could get back on stage and they could do it. So I think you're trusting them and you're allowing them to have that experience was extremely healing for a lot of those kids. Thank you. And there was, of course, back to the audience and their reaction. Lots of compliments, of course, about them and their experience with grief. But the one that was probably the most profound to me was a friend of mine who mentioned, she had lost her son to cancer 10 years ago. She mentioned that when Connor at the end said, I can't stand anymore, I want it to be finished. I just want it to be over. She said that that released in her a little bit, a little bit of the guilt that she felt having a very similar feeling with her son, not that of course she wanted him to go, because she wanted the suffering to be over. And so that was really, that was really important to me to hear. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You did a beautiful job. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. That's going to help a lot of people to watch that and hopefully we can, we can put this on our site. I think we can do that where we can put the link to YouTube on our website so people can watch it. That'd be a great idea. Do you have, well, you have the link, John, right? I have the link. Yeah. I've got to just now I'll see if I can. Yes. That would be copied over. I would encourage every parent where there's a family with cancer to watch this. Yeah. And to kind of really grasp and understand, you know, the difference that they can make. You know, so that the kids and the teens don't have to suffer by themselves. You know what? And friend, you said something earlier that I think is, as always, you always have profound things to say. But I think this is really important. And, you know, the patient, and we've said this before, you know, don't let the disease define who you are. You're still the parent, you're, you're still, you still have that position in the family. But it's only, it's only the parent, the sick parent, who can really give permission to let the kids, you know, that the kids can know what's happening and to bring them in. Nobody else in that community can really do it, except for the patient themselves. And I think that's important, you know, for people to think about that. You know, they're, the patient's dealing with the illness and everything that's associated with that, the physical, the emotional, the psychological, the spiritual challenges. They hold the power to let their kids know it's okay to bring them in, let them understand what's happening. Because even though it hurts in the beginning and the long run, it's a, it's a form, it's a form of healing. It will help, it will help with the healing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And when we don't get that opportunity, we hope that there are teachers like Jenny to kind of take the, take the ball and make that, make that happen, make that happen. Yeah. So true. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you, Fran, for coming and your support and your expertise in the field. I was not an expert. I was simply someone who was putting on the show, but you coming and being there and being that expert and sharing your book with me and all of it was, was so, so helpful in how I approached the, the piece as well. So I've, thank you. It was really a pleasure to meet the kids. They were phenomenal. It was one of the, one of the better things I've done this year was really phenomenal. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Don't you have any more questions for Jenny? No, I just, I'm so, you know, appreciative of you coming on and sharing your personal story and, and then, you know, with the kids and, and the, and the students, I should really call them kids, but, and the actors and how, you know, that, I think there's a certain catharsis right in the healing that, that when they're able to do something like this really, really helps with their own, their own personal grief journey. So thanks for, for doing that for, for your students and, and the audience and, and, you know, we'll certainly want, you know, our folks, our audience here to, to, to, to experience that as well. I think it could help a lot of people. So, thank you. Yes. Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure. So, mention the name of the play again and the, can you verbally say about the link or do we just need to post it? Where can we find it? I think probably the best way is to post it because I, it's probably on YouTube, but it may not be on YouTube, on a link that is shareable or I'm not sure. So the one I shared with you, though, is viewable by you. So then it should be viewable by your, your, your, okay. Yeah. Yeah. The place called a monster calls and the school is hunting to beach academy for the performing arts. We put it on and, yeah, it's, it would be a pleasure for other people to see it. Yeah. Well, I'm hoping that, that our view is due because I think it was just phenomenal. Yeah. Yeah, I think it'll be a very, we're, I highly recommend all of our, all of our listeners to take, take the time and, and watch it and, and really take it in. It's, it's a powerful story. And when you see young people able to, to convey those emotions in such a genuine way, it's, it's, it's moving. So. Yeah. Thanks, Emilio, for coming on. It's great seeing you again. You too. Thank you. Jenny, the pleasure to meet you. Thanks. Thanks for sharing your story and, and, and, and being part of our podcast. Yeah. It's me, too. Enjoy the rest of your summer. Bye. We'll see you, everybody. Take care. Today, we heard from Jenny McClintock, an educator and also the child of a cancer patient. The play of monster calls, performed by Jenny's high school students, themselves dealing with loss, grief and illness, let's us see through the eyes of a young person just what they're going through as your parent is experiencing a life threatening illness. It's a unique and powerful story. We put a link to the performance on our website and I urge everyone to watch it and take in the lessons that it conveys. I want to leave you with the words of American inventor and industrialist, Henry Ford, who said, quote, "When everything seems to be going against you, remember that an airplane takes off against the wind." Thank you, everyone, for tuning in and listening to this episode of Caregiver Companion. We would love to hear from you. You can visit our website, www.caregivercompanion.libson.com, that's l-i-b-s-y-n.com. You'll find other episodes and send us your comments and questions. We'll try to answer your questions in future episodes. Thanks again and remember, you are not alone. [BLANK_AUDIO]