Speaker 1: This is Let's be clear with Shannon Doherty. Hello, my friends,
Speaker 1: welcome to this wonderful podcast. I am honored to be
Speaker 1: here as a guest. I love that you all have
Speaker 1: a different one every time. This is all in the
Speaker 1: spirit of Shannon. I know you spend a long time
Speaker 1: love and listen to her. And I am Melissa Ethridge
Speaker 1: and I'm looking forward to chatting with you a little today.
Speaker 1: I want to bring the topic of love and fear
Speaker 1: and the importance of joy. Now. I know we lost
Speaker 1: Shannon to cancer, and I myself was a cancer I
Speaker 1: experienced cancer. Let's say that. I like to call myself
Speaker 1: a thriver. Now. I don't think I'm just surviving. I
Speaker 1: believe I'm thriving. It was twenty years ago I had
Speaker 1: my experienceperience with cancer, and my life has been very different.
Speaker 1: And I tell people, I let them know that cancer
Speaker 1: was actually the best thing that happened to me. I
Speaker 1: know we've lost many people that we love. I know
Speaker 1: there's many of us who are out there right now
Speaker 1: dealing with it that are very fearful. Well, let me
Speaker 1: tell you my experience. That's all I can do is
Speaker 1: tell you my story, because that's all we are is
Speaker 1: our stories now. If you aren't familiar with me, I
Speaker 1: am a singer, songwriter. A people ask me what I am.
Speaker 1: I say I'm a rock star because I like that.
Speaker 1: I like to let people know that I write songs
Speaker 1: and entertain and I've always loved that. I grew up
Speaker 1: in the Midwest in the sixties and seventies, and it
Speaker 1: was very well my family. I didn't have a a
Speaker 1: terribly bad childhood. I had a very quiet childhood, I
Speaker 1: like to say, because I grew up in the time
Speaker 1: where my parents lived that life of if there's anything
Speaker 1: wrong in the family, you don't talk about it, you
Speaker 1: don't air your dirty laundry, you put it, you know,
Speaker 1: under you pretend everything's okay. And as I grew, as
Speaker 1: I became a teenager and adolescence, I realized that my
Speaker 1: mother was incredibly unhappy. She was very intelligent. She had
Speaker 1: a job working, which was unusual in the seventies, and
Speaker 1: she actually made more money than my father. But the
Speaker 1: work that she did, she was one of the first
Speaker 1: computer programmers. If you know the movie Hidden Figures, that's
Speaker 1: what she was. She worked in those big rooms and
Speaker 1: she programmed the computers and she did it at the
Speaker 1: army base which was next to our town of Leavenworth, Kansas,
Speaker 1: and she would work and never get the credit and
Speaker 1: certainly got paid half as much as anyone else was
Speaker 1: getting paid around her. And she'll see she was very unhappy,
Speaker 1: and so I was really looking forward to getting out
Speaker 1: of that experience. My father, on the other hand, was
Speaker 1: a high school teacher. He was a coach. He was
Speaker 1: a really great guy. He supported my crazy dream of
Speaker 1: being a rock star by actually taking me on the
Speaker 1: weekends to play in bands in bars and clubs around.
Speaker 1: I had a very unusual childhood, I realize, but it
Speaker 1: was those experiences that that sort of set me up.
Speaker 1: And as I look back, I don't look back and
Speaker 1: want to change anything or think that it was bad.
Speaker 1: I look back and I'm again grateful for that experience
Speaker 1: because it enriched my life. It made me want, It
Speaker 1: made me desire, and as I went through and tumbled
Speaker 1: through my life and had loves and realized I was
Speaker 1: gay and lived in the world in the eighties as
Speaker 1: a as a gay woman in southern California, which was
Speaker 1: very delightful and very educational. There's a lot of women,
Speaker 1: a lot of feminists in southern California in the eighties.
Speaker 1: That shaped sort of the person that I am now,
Speaker 1: so that when success finally came to me, I had
Speaker 1: a good, solid foundation sort of in feminism and then
Speaker 1: was able to achieve my greatest dreams. You know, I
Speaker 1: played Madison Square Garden. My dreams came true. I had albums,
Speaker 1: thousands of people listening to my music and wanting to
Speaker 1: hear my music. And yet personally I was unhappy. I
Speaker 1: was unfulfilled. I didn't understand what relationships were. I was
Speaker 1: in a cold relationship or relationship that I kept thinking
Speaker 1: I had to make that person happy. I kept thinking
Speaker 1: their job was to make me happy. And I'm telling you,
Speaker 1: when you think someone else is supposed to make you happy,
Speaker 1: that is the first ingredient in unhappiness. Your happiness is
Speaker 1: your choice. Your happiness is your job, your responsibility. A
Speaker 1: lot of people, well, they think differently, but this is
Speaker 1: what I believe. I was going through a divorce, my
Speaker 1: first divorce. I was just trying to figure out who
Speaker 1: I was. I had two children. I didn't want them
Speaker 1: to have a broken home. I thought I had failed
Speaker 1: at that, I had failed at relationships. I'd failed the
Speaker 1: lg BTQ community by being a role model and then
Speaker 1: doing it all wrong in my mind mind? And what
Speaker 1: became of that stress and that desire to keep that
Speaker 1: fame that I had by eating less and trying to
Speaker 1: look a certain way and trying to be something, trying
Speaker 1: to fit in. When when the nineties went from singer
Speaker 1: songwriters to more pop music, I was like where do
Speaker 1: I fit in? And I started just burning up with stress.
Speaker 1: And this fear of losing everything and doing it wrong
Speaker 1: and what other people thought of me was the beginning
Speaker 1: of my cancer. It's very very lonely, very hard when
Speaker 1: you're living your life afraid of what other people think
Speaker 1: about you. That's crazy making you can't ever get out
Speaker 1: of that hole. So I'll tell you. Being diagnosed with
Speaker 1: cancer stopped my life all of a sudden. I was like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, this is life and death. Now we're
Speaker 1: talking about why is cancer with me? Yes? Cancer was
Speaker 1: in my family. I'd lost my father cancer, my grandmother.
Speaker 1: It was the way my body absorbed stress. It's the
Speaker 1: way my body reacted to stress, and the way I
Speaker 1: was eating. It was living on Vinti, Starbucks and power bars.
Speaker 1: It was all just acid acid. Acid and acid is
Speaker 1: what creates cancer. The environment around cells in your body.
Speaker 1: That environment changes the cells to cancer cells, and all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, you've got these rogue cancer cells that
Speaker 1: are living in acid, and your body puts a tumor
Speaker 1: over it. So that you'll know and maybe you'll change,
Speaker 1: Maybe you'll change something. And the ones that survive are
Speaker 1: the ones that change and do not fear change. Change
Speaker 1: is everything. Changes is what you can do every single morning.
Speaker 1: Change is what you can do right now. Changing your
Speaker 1: mind is what you can do right now. I threw
Speaker 1: myself into books and spiritual teachings. Nothing, nothing organized organized religion.
Speaker 1: That's That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: your own relationship with your inner person, that that voice
Speaker 1: in your head. Some of the books that I started reading,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've heard of Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements.
Speaker 1: I'm telling you, it's like a handbook to the human,
Speaker 1: the whole human. If you if if you want to know, oh,
Speaker 1: what's what? What? What? Four things can I do to
Speaker 1: have my body run better, have my body run in
Speaker 1: at at optimal speed and joy? Well, these are the things.
Speaker 1: Don't take anything personally see don't take anything personally. That's
Speaker 1: probably the hardest. I took everything personally. If someone I
Speaker 1: used to. I used to think it was a badge
Speaker 1: of honor to be able to walk into a room
Speaker 1: and think I knew what everybody was thinking. And that's
Speaker 1: the second agreement. Do not assume. I assumed all the time. Oh,
Speaker 1: that person likes me. That person doesn't. Oh, my partner's mad.
Speaker 1: They're mad at me. It comes from my mother. I
Speaker 1: thought she was unhappy because of me. She was unhappy
Speaker 1: because she was unhappy. And when you start going, okay,
Speaker 1: my happiness is my responsibility. I choose, and that's where
Speaker 1: love and fear comes in. Is the choice. We all
Speaker 1: have a choice every day about how we feel about anything.
Speaker 1: Nobody can make us feel. If you find yourself saying
Speaker 1: oh they made me feel sad, no, you observed something
Speaker 1: and you chose to feel sad. I started playing a
Speaker 1: game with myself. I would I traveled a lot, so
Speaker 1: I'd be in the airport a lot, so I was
Speaker 1: around strangers a lot, and I would I would I
Speaker 1: would see someone and where I might assume right away,
Speaker 1: oh that person is angry at this. I played this
Speaker 1: game called Tell a different story. And if my initial
Speaker 1: reaction was Oh, that person's mad, Oh that person's mean,
Speaker 1: Oh that person whatever, I would switch it in my
Speaker 1: head and go, No, that person is an incredible sensitive
Speaker 1: person who might have had something really horrible happened to
Speaker 1: them just a few minutes ago, and they're fearful and
Speaker 1: they don't understand, and so they are speaking it out
Speaker 1: and it has nothing to do with me, not my business.
Speaker 1: I used to see. I used to even go so
Speaker 1: far as to someone I remember in an airport. I
Speaker 1: didn't understand. I saw someone who absolutely looked homeless, yet
Speaker 1: they were in an airport waiting for an airplane. They
Speaker 1: were like wearing a trash bag, and it just twisted
Speaker 1: my mind and I went, wait a minute, this is
Speaker 1: not a homeless person. This is the son of a
Speaker 1: billionaire who is messed up about money and he doesn't
Speaker 1: know what to do, you know. And I just I
Speaker 1: changed these stories in my head. And when you do that,
Speaker 1: you change the way your whole world looks. Get curious,
Speaker 1: study study your own biology. Study what makes the human
Speaker 1: brain work. The human brain is amazing, and yeah, we
Speaker 1: only use part of it. We don't even understand how
Speaker 1: what we see and how we perceive it creates around us.
Speaker 1: So when I understood that there is a choice between
Speaker 1: love and fear all the time, that these are the
Speaker 1: dual things that are happening. We live in a dualistic universe.
Speaker 1: There's this reality is dualistic. There's light and dark, up
Speaker 1: and down, good and bad, and you can't have one
Speaker 1: without the other. And because we have both, we see,
Speaker 1: we experience. You know, there's life and death that's going
Speaker 1: to happen to all of us. The third agreement is
Speaker 1: be impeccable with your word. Now, some people think, well,
Speaker 1: I'm honest, but it means so much more than that.
Speaker 1: It means that everything you say, everything you create in
Speaker 1: your mind and then it comes outthing is important, everything creates.
Speaker 1: Being impeccable with your word is not just what you
Speaker 1: say out to other people, but what you say to yourself.
Speaker 1: And as women, man, we are the worst at what
Speaker 1: we say to ourselves. What do you say to yourself?
Speaker 1: The moment you wake up is your first thought, I
Speaker 1: shouldn't have had that chocolate cake last night. Oh I'm
Speaker 1: so fat, I'm so we are we are so mean
Speaker 1: to ourselves sometimes, I you would think, as a rock star. Oh,
Speaker 1: she doesn't have any problem? Are you kidding? When when
Speaker 1: all I used to do is compare myself to other
Speaker 1: female artists, to movie stars, to people you'd see on
Speaker 1: the screen, it was it was torture. And I know
Speaker 1: what other women are going through. It isn't it is not,
Speaker 1: and nobody escapes it. You're not thin enough, you're not
Speaker 1: pretty enough. It's why, inexplicably, these women that we think
Speaker 1: are so beautiful will get their face is done because
Speaker 1: it never ends. There's no there is not a woman
Speaker 1: that's like, that's right, I'm the most beautiful and I'm
Speaker 1: fine with it. No, we all torture ourselves because of
Speaker 1: this culture we live in. So it took a while
Speaker 1: for me after cancer. I would get up every day
Speaker 1: and I would look in the mirror and I looked
Speaker 1: like hell. For a while after cow was bald as gray, ashy,
Speaker 1: it was not good. I would look at myself in
Speaker 1: the mirror and I'd say, hello, gorgeous, Hello, gorgeous. I
Speaker 1: just leave it at that. I wouldn't think about it.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't let myself go, oh you're not gorgeous or something.
Speaker 1: It's just boom, Hello, gorgeous until now. It took a
Speaker 1: couple of years until one day I went, hello, gorgeous,
Speaker 1: and I looked and I went, ah, oh, I am gorgeous.
Speaker 1: I believe it. People say seeing is believing. Believing. You
Speaker 1: got to believe it first, then you will see it.
Speaker 1: You will never see it if you don't believe it.
Speaker 1: So you just you just water that part of you.
Speaker 1: You keep it going. You go as long as you
Speaker 1: can in your day with good thoughts. I mean I
Speaker 1: would have like thoughts already written down. Things good things
Speaker 1: that make me happy. Oh the way my children smiled,
Speaker 1: Oh my dog, Oh when I looked out this window.
Speaker 1: It's so beautiful. That appreciation, appreciation and love are the
Speaker 1: same thing. The feeling of appreciation and the feet of
Speaker 1: love the same thing. So find things to appreciate. First
Speaker 1: thing in the morning. You're gonna get up bam. You're
Speaker 1: gonna be impeccable with what you say to yourself. The
Speaker 1: things we say to ourselves, would we ever say them
Speaker 1: to anyone else? Make sure those words, those things are
Speaker 1: true and kind. If you want a kind world, especially now,
Speaker 1: which we might be on the fearful side of when
Speaker 1: we are choosing how we think about the world right now,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of fear. Well, if you want a
Speaker 1: kinder world, you got to be kind. You've got to
Speaker 1: believe kind You've got to believe that kindness exists. You've
Speaker 1: got to find kindness. You've got to walk down the
Speaker 1: street and think, I'm expecting kindness from this person, and
Speaker 1: then you'll see it. And that's how we change. That's
Speaker 1: how we change, not only ourselves, but the world around
Speaker 1: us is how we perceive it. And the fourth, the
Speaker 1: fourth agreement, that's the easiest. Just do your best, do
Speaker 1: your best. If you just do your best, then you
Speaker 1: can't be hard on yourself. If your intention is, oh
Speaker 1: I want to live a healthy life. I want to
Speaker 1: be healthy, I would definitely put health before weight. Oh lord,
Speaker 1: how much we weigh? Like there's an optimal weight for people?
Speaker 1: There is not. There is where we land is We
Speaker 1: are human beings and what is the healthiest thing? What
Speaker 1: is the healthiest for us? Think about health every day. Now,
Speaker 1: some of us we are under the influence of sugar,
Speaker 1: of substances that make us feel good because we are not.
Speaker 1: We don't we're not allowing ourselves to feel good about
Speaker 1: things and so we turn to things that physologically make
Speaker 1: us feel good. Sugar is one. So I cut down
Speaker 1: on sugar. I understood. I understand even now that sugar
Speaker 1: is sugar does a number on our body, and refined
Speaker 1: sugar probably the worst I would I did. I went
Speaker 1: through my life and I took all refined sugar out
Speaker 1: and it means just you know that going for a
Speaker 1: Snickers bar, that's that's not the choice anymore. That's gonna
Speaker 1: hurt me. You know what, if I need that sugar,
Speaker 1: if I'm feeling down and I want to do something
Speaker 1: and I want to feel better, I'm going to make
Speaker 1: something or I'm gonna have a bowl of cereal of granola,
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna look and it's gonna be you know,
Speaker 1: sweetened with honey, which is which is a type of sugar.
Speaker 1: It's just less refined and so as it hits your body,
Speaker 1: it doesn't, you know, put the glycemic level up, It doesn't,
Speaker 1: It doesn't hurt your body as much, but you're still
Speaker 1: getting that sweet that makes you feel good. And then
Speaker 1: another thought to put in your head. My life is
Speaker 1: sweet enough. I have a sweet life. There are sweet
Speaker 1: things in my life. My children are sweet my lover
Speaker 1: is sweet. Oh this music that I love, it's sweet.
Speaker 1: This book that I love, this television show, I love
Speaker 1: this walk that I take, these clothes that I wear,
Speaker 1: they're sweet. I have sweetness in my life. And then
Speaker 1: those days when someone's got that favorite thing that you love,
Speaker 1: that cheesecake, you love, that carrot cake or whatever it is,
Speaker 1: go you know what? I love myself. I love this.
Speaker 1: This isn't going to hurt me will I will eat it.
Speaker 1: And it's one thing to eat sugar. But the thing
Speaker 1: that's really going to get you is if you feel
Speaker 1: horrible about eating the sugar. That horrible feeling will make
Speaker 1: you sicker than just eating the piece of cake. If
Speaker 1: you're going to eat it, celebrate it. I deserve this.
Speaker 1: This is something I love in my life. This makes
Speaker 1: me think about this, and it's going to go through
Speaker 1: my body. I'm going to feel the effects of it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to love it, and it's going to move
Speaker 1: through and move on. Be impeccable, impeccable with your word,
Speaker 1: what you're saying to yourself. It's all about you, not
Speaker 1: about anybody else. You don't need anyone else to do
Speaker 1: anything to make you okay. To make you feel better.
Speaker 1: Only you can make you feel better. You have a
Speaker 1: choice of love and fear every day. You can look
Speaker 1: at a piece of cake and you can love it
Speaker 1: or you can fear it. And then the responses you make,
Speaker 1: the reactions you make come from love and fear. You
Speaker 1: can look at someone and you can choose to love
Speaker 1: them or fear them. You might say, oh, how can
Speaker 1: I possibly love this person? You know, you don't understand that,
Speaker 1: you don't know how horrible this person is. You know, well,
Speaker 1: get basic, Get as basic as you can, and find
Speaker 1: a place of appreciation. I could go on and on,
Speaker 1: and I guess that's what this podcast is for. But
Speaker 1: as I close this up for you, I want to
Speaker 1: I want to emphasize that health enjoy are partners. I'm
Speaker 1: now sixty three and I want to live a long time.
Speaker 1: I have three children that I want to see grow.
Speaker 1: I want grandchildren. There's so much more I want to
Speaker 1: do and create in this life. So I plan to
Speaker 1: keep my meat suit. I plan to keep it strong,
Speaker 1: and I know that starts with a strong mind, strong thoughts.
Speaker 1: I'm going to think about joy every day. Joy is
Speaker 1: primary when a request comes in, when something comes in,
Speaker 1: first thing, as is this going to bring me? Joy?
Speaker 1: Is this going to bring and if joy is a
Speaker 1: weird thing for you to think about, say satisfaction. Is
Speaker 1: this a satisfying thought that what I'm thinking about this
Speaker 1: person or this place or this instance, or where I'm
Speaker 1: going or whatever it is. Is this a satisfying thought?
Speaker 1: Choose a better thought. You can change your life absolutely.
Speaker 1: Read things go down crazy spiritual thoughts. If you are
Speaker 1: dealing with cancer, know that this is a time for
Speaker 1: you to change. And it's not about anybody else and
Speaker 1: what they think you should do. It's about you. Our
Speaker 1: medical system is set up to do what it can,
Speaker 1: but it really is all up to you. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not a it's not a burden. Responsibility is not a burden.
Speaker 1: It's your ability to respond. How are you going to
Speaker 1: respond to this situation? Well, you're gonna you're going to
Speaker 1: not assume anything. You're going to tell the best story
Speaker 1: about everyone. You're not going to take anything personally. You
Speaker 1: don't know when anyone else has been through. You're going
Speaker 1: to walk with your own light. You're gonna you're gonna
Speaker 1: do your best. You're going to know when you go
Speaker 1: to sleep at night, you know what. It might have
Speaker 1: turned out horrible, but I did the best I could,
Speaker 1: and tomorrow I'm going to get up. I'm going to
Speaker 1: do the best I can again. Now, you're beautiful, more
Speaker 1: beautiful than you know. You're more powerful than you know.
Speaker 1: We've got this every day because the more light that
Speaker 1: comes from you, the more light there is in the world.
Speaker 1: I hope I shared my light with you. I hope
Speaker 1: you have enjoyed this. I'd love taking this time and
Speaker 1: sharing it with you. Be strong, speak true, spread the peace,
Speaker 1: and choose only love. It's a choice. Thank you very much.