Life's Bumps And Bruises
Life’s Bumps and Bruises is a mental health podcast that keeps things real. Hosted by husband and wife Luke and Joanne Lee Tet — one with lived experience as a mum and HR professional, the other a registered counsellor — the show is a safe, relatable space to explore anxiety, overwhelm, parenting struggles, emotional wellbeing, and life’s messier moments. This podcast isn't about perfection, fixes, or fluff — it’s about honest conversations that normalise the struggles many people carry in silence.
We tackle the subjects that we all experience and not always discuss. Our purpose is to make people feel as though they are not alone and have practical solutions to life’s difficult moments.
Life's Bumps And Bruises
Episode 7 - Grief: The Pain That Shapes Us
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🧠 Grief isn’t something you “get over.” It’s something you learn to live with — and it changes you along the way.
In this episode of Life’s Bumps and Bruises, Joel Sheldon shares the deeply personal story of losing his brother, Kyle Sheldon, and how that loss continues to shape his life.
Alongside Luke Lee Tet, they unpack the many layers of grief— from losing loved ones to the quieter, less-recognised losses we all carry.
They talk about the silence that often surrounds grief, why it feels so isolating, and how to show up for yourself and others in the middle of it. It’s raw, tender, and a reminder that grief, while painful, can also reshape us in powerful ways.
🎙 This episode is for you if you’re into:
- Real talk about loss, love, and letting go
- Why grief doesn't have a timeframe
- How to support someone grieving without "fixing" them
- Finding meaning in the middle of heartbreak
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🎧 New episodes drop every Tuesday — let’s normalise the conversation, one real chat at a time.
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The Inspiration by Keys of Moon | https://soundcloud.com/keysofmoon
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Life's full of bumps, bruises, and emotional potholes. I'm Joel Sheldon, just a bloke who's battled anxiety and depression. Joined by Luke Lutet, counsellor, coach, and the captain of the chaos. Each week we talk real life, anxiety, overwhelm, family stuff, and those mornings when getting out of bed feels like a win. Plus, level up all the way. This is Life's Bumps and Bruises. We're glad you're here.
SPEAKER_02Denzel. Get around it.
SPEAKER_03Who doesn't love Denzel? Luke, uh, this one is going to be a bit of a tough one, but um, before we get into that, we'll just recap what happened in episode six. If you haven't heard that, go back and listen to that on Spotify Rapper Podcast, How to Be a Better Friend. We unpacked what it really means to show up, especially for someone battling anxiety or depression. I shared a bit of a story about how friends sit with me when I was in the bath in my hardest moments, reminding me they weren't in the bath, by the way. I was on the phone, but reminding us that presence often matters more than solutions. And we talked about the importance of small everyday gestures, checking in, remembering details, and respecting boundaries. And Luke, you shared your toolkit for practical ways to support people without burning out. Um yeah, mate, I've touched on this, said this is probably going to be the most difficult one of these I'll do. But before we get started, a bit of a quick heads up. Um, a couple of things. This episode is going to contain stories about death and grief. And if that feels a bit too heavy for you right now, please feel free to skip that one and come back when the time is right for you. Uh and secondly, I do have a laptop in front of me. There are some details that I'm gonna want to get right, and maybe my mind's gonna start to spin. So if it does sound like that I am at times glancing or reading off a screen and that comes through your ears, I'm sorry about that, but you'll probably understand why once I get into it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, nothing different to a eulogy, right?
SPEAKER_03I mean, seriously. That's true. Uh yeah, so this week we are diving into the topic of grief. I'll um I'll be sharing a story about my brother who passed away from bowel cancer at just 26 and um how the years that followed shaped my own journey through depression and anxiety. It was a time when the world felt incredibly unfair, and we'll explore how grief can ripple through uh life long after the moment of loss. Uh, we've still got all the usual segments, unpack that, rewind Luke's toolkit and what three things made us happy this week. Can you come up with three this week?
SPEAKER_02Or we'll give it a go.
SPEAKER_03You give it a go. Um, and as always, we'll find a way to uh laugh at ourselves along the way. So we are because I think this might be a long one, I'm not sure, but we are going to jump straight into unpack that. So typically, this is where I pose a story or a scenario. This story is going to be pretty obvious. Um, this is about my own life and my own journey. And in some regards, as we touched on previously, if this life event doesn't happen to me and my family, then you and I never meet. We certainly don't sit here, and we're certainly not doing this podcast. So I am going to read a little bit about who my brother was from what's available on the internet as a bit of an introduction as if someone else was doing it, and then I'll get you into some personal stories and what I went through, what my wife went through, what my family went through as best I can. Um, and Luke, you do what you do best, which is unpack grief as best we can, and maybe find some coping ways to help with someone who's either dealt with the immediate loss of a brother or a sister or someone really close to them, uh, be it their father or grandmother, whatever. So Kyle Andrew Oh, let me start again. See, I knew this would be hard. All right, let's start again. Kyle Andrew Sheldon was born on the 14th of June 1989 and faced unimaginable challenges from day one. He arrived into the world with a twisted bow, an ailment so severe that doctors gave him little to no chance of survival. In his first three years, Kyle underwent 36 surgeries at the Royal Children's Hospital, fighting for what many thought he wouldn't have an ordinary life. But Kyle's spirit was anything but ordinary. Despite those early battles, he embraced life with unwavering courage. Passionate about sports and drama, he participated heavily in those activities at Penley at Essen Grammar School, refusing to let his physical circumstances define him. His determination carried him through to earning a degree in journalism from Monash University, pursuing his dreams despite everything he'd already endured. Kyle's journey, though, tragically cut short in February of 2016 by aggressive bowel cancer at just 26, left an indelible indelible mark. In his memory, his family established the Kyle Sheldon Memorial Fund, supporting the Royal Children's Hospital Colorectoral and Pelvic Reconstructive Service. Talk about things you can't say three times.
SPEAKER_02That's huge though.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. A testament, we'll touch on that later. A testament to his resilience and hope he embodied. Kyle's life reminds us that courage, connection, and purpose can shine bright in the face of adversity. So that is a little bit about him. Um is there anything that you want to touch on or should we just get into it?
SPEAKER_02No, I reckon get into it, man. It's um really cool story.
SPEAKER_03So I touched on, I'm not looking at the laptop anymore, but I touched on that he had 36 operations in his first three years. So get your head around that. Uh I remember when he went to school, and I think he he he was okay for a while. Like he had growth hormones and he was shorter than most kids, because when you have whatever it is, 90% of your intestines cut out and you've got a short gut, you obviously have trouble getting nutrients into your body because that's how your body absorbs nutrients through the bowel. Just gonna test some of my scientific and uh and and body knowledge, but um I remember he was quite small and he always was, but he uh his belly looked like a pin cushion, so he had tubes put in there and stitches. Yeah, you can imagine the toll that 36 operations take all on a small child. And I remember when he went to swimming as a I'm gonna guess here, I would say somewhere between the ages of eight and ten, um, when they were doing swimming at school, and he looked at other kids and I think this quote's pretty accurate, but he he asked other kids where their holes were because he had no relation, he had no um, he had no reference point that his body was any different to anybody else's until he saw other people. Um so yeah, uh and and for a long time he lived a really normal life. He wore a backpack that had tubes that came out of it that went into his body. Um so it was like he constantly had nutrients being put into his body through, I think they called it a NG tube? Yeah, gastr gastriophy. Whatever, that that word, gastriometry tube or something, I forget what it's called now. Um but so he used to walk around with a backpack at all times, uh like Dora the Explorer. And um, but yeah, for a long time, as I said, outside of growth hormones and other things to get him up to speed and and get him growing, he f lived a really relatively normal life. And then in October of 2015, he had a pain in his stomach. And he went and got tested. And what you need to understand about my brother is because he went through all of those surgeries as a kid, my family believe his pain tolerance was through the roof. And not because he's a fucking hero, just because his body had learnt to deal with so much pain that his base level pain threshold was higher than most. So if our daily pain threshold is zero, he probably walked around every day at a two or three, right? So he had this pain in his stomach, and he sorry, let me back up a little bit because this is important. Kyle had all of his in bowel cut out by a certain number, and apparently you need something like 20 centimetres of I'm gonna get this wrong, but 20 centimetres of bowel, whether or not it's small or large intestine, I can't remember. You need 20 centimetres of your bowel to live, to basically live, yeah, or certainly live any quality of life. And because a lot of his has turned gangrenous and and been infected with a twisting called malrotation of the bowel, that the doctor, Alex Aldest, had cut out all of this dead bow that was fucked, basically. And there was a certain portion of the bow that they just weren't sure if it was going to make it or not. And when all was said and done, I think he had either 14 or 16 centimetres left. Now, from all of the studies that they had done, you needed 20. And I remember the doctor, Alex Audest, looked my dad in the eye and said, ah, 20, 14, who fucking really knows. Right? We'll give it a crack. Um, so the point of that story was I think when he first felt a pain in his stomach. Sorry, again, I'll just back up a little bit. He um no one had made it to the stage of life that he had made it to and not died. So he he was a pioneer in that regard. He was the face of the Royal Children's Hospital because he survived something that he shouldn't have. So they didn't really know what to expect at the stage of life he was at, which at that stage was probably 26. Yeah. So there was no reference point. So when he felt, and this is where I come back to now, sorry about that. When he felt a pain in his stomach and went and got it tested, uh the diagnosis came back that it was stage four bowel cancer. So I think you and I probably feel the telltale signs of stage four bowel cancer long before my brother. But if I'm joining the dots of what I think happened, I just don't think his body felt that anything was particularly abnormal because of what he'd been through. So that was a long-winded way for me to get to that. But I think you understand. Now, my dad is quite I don't even know the right word, pragmatic, I guess is the word, where all he wants to do is work out, well, as you would say, what now and what's next. Whereas I'm probably not so much like that. So the first thing so they did was they got him onto chemo, and the first thing I did as his brother was go home and type in the survival rate for stage four bowel cancer, and that number spat out was 13%. And I remember thinking he's probably going to die, he's probably fucked, but who knows? My 30th birthday was in November of 2015, and I just told you he was diagnosed in October of 2015. So at the time of my 30th birthday, which should have been a huge celebration, 30th January a pretty big party, and it was for us, he had been diagnosed for about four weeks with stage four bowel cancer. So, you know, we've still got photos from that night where he looks pretty relatively normal, um, albeit there were some difficult conversations, and that was obviously a story and a burden that we were carrying, but we didn't really know what was going to happen. He'd fought off bigger things or big things before. So he starts his chemo, and as most people do when they go through chemo, he didn't lose his hair, but it started to eat away at his muscle mass, and he started to get quite hawkish. Um, if you ever saw photos of Lance Armstrong before he went through cancer versus after cancer, you know, his bone structure in his face had changed, and and I knew things weren't particularly going really well. He was sort of battling and things were getting pretty hard. And we decided, well, I decided that I would take him out to play mini golf. And we go to Yarrow Bend, mini golf, and and I pick him up in the car. He's as I said, he's he's going through the cancer treatment at the time, and he struggles to walk the mini golf course. He couldn't bend down to pick the ball out of the hole. Um, so we go and play that day, and he beats me. Right now, as I've told you previously, I'm not a bad golfer, relatively speaking, um, from the general public. And he just stepped up and knocked in everything into the hole from about four or five feet away. And I remember thinking, it's amazing how the small things in life, like being nervous over a five-foot putt, don't really matter when you have stage four bowel cancer. And he um he told me, he goes, 'Well, you just stand up, look at the hole, and knock it in.' And I remember that quote from that day. And that's not me just making up a quote, he actually said that. So I'm not even sure if we get through the full 18 holes, and it was a beautiful day. I still remember, it was a nice sunny day, and we sit down at the table, and he's absolutely gassed. He's cooked, he's exhausted. And I buy him a Gatorade, and I we have the chat, and I turn to my brother and I say to him, I think you're going to die. And he said, Yup. Which is a difficult thing to fucking have a conversation with your 26-year-old brother. Um, and it's not something that we get prepared for, Luke. I've got to be honest for you. And that was the moment I think I told him, I do remember this actually, I said to him, Just promise me that no matter how many days you've got left, I just want you to find some joy in every day, whatever it might be. And he was a pretty independent sort of guy. He sleeps in the car on the way home, and I took a couple of photos of him on the drive home, and it just didn't look like my brother. He had his mouth open and he was wheezing, and it was horrible. Um, and that was the last time that we hung out together. Um, it wasn't long after that, probably only a matter of weeks, where uh he was at his home because he he wanted to be quite independent, and my parents couldn't get a hold of him on the phone. So they drove over to his house and he uh he had collapsed and was unconscious, um, just laying next to his bed. Uh I think if they were a couple of hours later, he would have died then and there. And the one thing that life doesn't really prepare you for, and this is probably a bit of an overshare, but especially with bowel cancer, it I remember the smell going into his house. Like it's like the cancer and the I don't know, the shit smell and infection that seeped out of his body. It just if you've been into a hospital in one of those wards, it can just be quite pungent. It's the the smell will stay with me for a long time. So he gets taken to the ICU, the intensive care unit in the city. And when I arrived, I was told that he was barely responsive and he was sleeping a lot. And I walked in and I said, Yeah, big brother's here, mate. And he opened up his eyes and he smiled at me.
SPEAKER_00Nice.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, and I don't think I've made this R, but I'm not sure he opened up his eyes ever again. So he sort of gathered up the strength to open up his eyes um and you know say a couple of words to me. So we sit with him for a bit, about I don't know if it was a couple of days after or if it was that night. My memory's a bit foggy here, but dad sends us home at about midnight to go get some rest. So we go home, and then at about 6 a.m. we get the phone call to come back in. And I said, okay. So we go back in, I go back in the IC unit, ICU, and I say my final goodbye. Just him and I together. Um and I can't remember what I said, but I remember sitting with him and holding his hand, and I told him that I loved him and that I was gonna miss him. And I left the room. I I I didn't want to be in the room. I I don't know why. I know my parents stayed in the room until his final breath, but I sat with my wife Tamika in the waiting area uh until mum and dad came out and said um he's gone. And that's you talk about an eerie, surreal stage, and I'm sure you'll touch on this when we talk about grief. But sitting in a waiting room, waiting for someone that is clo as close to you as your brother at a time where things don't make sense. It's not a grandparent that lived to 90 or 95 or 100. This is your brother who's 26 and just wanted to have a crack at life. And you're sitting in a waiting room with just your wife waiting for someone to die, is it's indescribable. It's it makes you numb. It's sometimes you just sit there and laugh because you don't you can't find any other coping mechanism. Um, but it it was it was bizarre. So Tamika and I drive home from the hospital um and we left at about I think it was about six or seven o'clock in the morning if we'd spent all night there, or pretty much, and it was surreal. I remember I'll take you back there, I remember hopping in the car and driving down the Tullamarine Freeway without the radio on, and my wife and or my then girlfriend weren't talking. It's like, what do you say? Like, like what do you like literally, what do you talk about as you're driving back to your house after your brother's just passed away from bowel cancer? Um, I remember that. So he was diagnosed in late October 2015, and he was dead Sunday morning of the 21st of February 2016. So that is four months, which is not a lot of time. I remember I worked through that period as well. I just I didn't know how long he was gonna last or if he was gonna make it. Like, I mean, hindsight's a beautiful thing. You talk about guilt and regret. I don't have a lot when it comes to that, but if I'd have known that he was gonna be with us for three months only from the first diagnosis, I would have spent a hell of a lot more time. So now it comes to the funeral. I told um I told a joke to mum, uh, because I think we carried his coffin either in or out, I can't remember, but I remember it being heavy, and I told a joke to mum on the way in, and I said knowing Kylie would have packed everything. So that sort of made us laugh a little bit, which was probably my way of dealing with it. And at the funeral, I didn't cry giving my speech, and I didn't cry on the day all that much. Uh, and I didn't even cry when I carried his coffin on my shoulders. Um, I think I needed, I felt like I needed to be strong, and I knew that all the eyes were on me. And if I'm being honest, I like having attention on me, and it was like, I don't know, it was there was something a bit surreal about when you know that people are giving you all of this love and attention that you're like, I'm okay. And as we put his coffin down, as I was carrying it on the shoulder, and um I think Skinny Love by Bonnever was playing, or Be Still by the Kills was playing, which uh you know we'll touch on that probably later, but two songs that I just feel completely mixed emotions for when I hear now. But I put the coffin down back into the hearst, and I turned to my dad and I said, Well, what happens now? And he said, Um, well, his coffin's going to be taken away to be cremated, and um that's when I lost it. That's when I knew this is really the last time I'm ever gonna see my brother, and up until then I knew he was in the box, I knew he was here, but this is the moment that he's being taken away, and I'll never see him again. And I still get PTSD going to funerals now, and I don't care if they're in their 90s or hundreds and they've had lived full and long successful lives, and it's a happy day. I've been to probably three or four, I think one of them was my uncle as well. And seeing the hearse, I think it's called a hearse, drive off with the coffin in the back of it, it gets me every time because I remember I get taken back to that moment of this is the moment where I lost my brother, and this is the last time I ever saw him. I find no, it's not funerals, it's the coffin driving away in the back of a hearse that really triggers me. So we go back to my parents' house. Um, it's either that night or yeah, I think it was that night, and everything was on the table. The big life chats that often get opened up when somebody like your brother's just died at 26. And not long after that, I decided to marry my then girlfriend and now wife Tamika. So we get married on March 31st, 2017. We head off to the USA at our honeymoon, and for a while after that, our life was busy, but good. And we travelled and we bought a house and we renovated, and the grief just seemed to wait for me. Um, we didn't talk about Kyle that much for a while in our house. Mum was always mentioning his name in passing, but dad really didn't want to talk about him. He liked to sort of do that in his own way. Um, and clearly we've learnt about me that I like to internalise things, and and there was probably a part of me, even with my own mental health battles, where I probably wanted to protect my mum because she'd already been through losing one of her sons, and I didn't want her to think that she was potentially going to lose another one of her sons. Um, and dad is a bit old school where you don't really talk about your feelings, and he has his own way of processing it, and and not that it's got anything to do with them, but it if I'm just talking solely about me, I probably lost somebody that I could really lay this out with and and open up and and work through it. And nobody prepares you to deal with losing a brother at 26 to cancer and being thrown into that moment because one of the quotes that my dad often uses is experience is the thing that you get the moment after you need it, and this is exactly that. You don't know how to process and handle things when it's just happening to you for the first time in the moment. Um, and so I internalized it and potentially not in a good way, and then that probably underneath the surface I was developing severe anxiety that probably was left undiagnosed for five or six years that probably culminated into full-blown depression at times, that then eventually culminated into burnout of last year, and it's probably how we're sitting here talking about it. Um, the other thing that happened was I went back to playing cricket, they had memorial games, and you know, I wore his shirt and his cap for a couple of games and stuff like that, and I'd lost the love for cricket because Kyle played cricket at the time and I was still relatively young, and I remember ringing dad after cricket games in tears. Uh, and I now see, I only see this now, I now see that anxiety drove me away from cricket, which was a sport that I loved, just because I couldn't regulate my emotions, and then that you know, especially the standard of cricket I was playing, they are these guys are good. If you're a little bit off your game, it culminates, and cricket's a really hard sport as it is. There's not a lot of margin for error, especially with batting. Um, and so I retired relatively young. Yeah, good story is cricket brought me back and has given me a lot of love and joy. Um, so Luke, that's a little bit about my brother.
SPEAKER_02So thanks for sharing the story, man.
SPEAKER_03Uh you're welcome.
SPEAKER_02So I really appreciate it. I hope the listeners appreciate it too, because it's not easy. Can see that it's not easy for you. And um, thank you.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so I've got some questions for you to unpack. Uh, we'll start with the first one, the unfairness of grief. When someone so young dies, um, it feels profoundly unfair. Why does grief often come with anger at the unfairness of life? And what's a well, how do people process that?
SPEAKER_02Anger. I'm not sure if it is anger personally. Um, having quite an extensive history with grief myself, I don't know if it is anger. I think we go to the primal emotions to express an emotion we don't understand. Grief, especially the first time you've ever experienced grief in this way, uh you don't understand those emotions. They're just so new. Right? It's not like you've ever really experienced it before. So, how do you how do you navigate that? That's tough. Uh, so I think that we will use uh anger or aggression to express the actual underlying emotion that we're feeling. Um does that answer your question? What do you got? Something else?
SPEAKER_03Oh, I've got heaps of questions.
SPEAKER_02So what was the what was the rest of that question? I feel like I'd something else.
SPEAKER_03Uh well, I guess how to how do you how do you process it? Like like at the time, I felt really I'm not I'm not even gonna say angry at the world, I'm not sure if that's the right term, but let me get it out. All of a sudden, I just knew that in that moment that life is incredibly fucking unfair, and fuck you. How could he was such a good person? He's when people when you pick when you go to funerals, people stand up and they tell all the best stories, and you think this bloke's never done anything wrong in their entire life. I can tell you, I've never met anybody that didn't like my brother, didn't like him, everyone liked him, everyone appreciated him, but everyone genuinely liked him. He was he was a good guy, and he just wanted to have a crack at life, and he didn't get a chance to do it, and I just found that profoundly unfair. How do you internalize and process that that the world is fucked and deal with it without getting angry like I just did? Or do you get angry?
SPEAKER_02What's wrong with being angry? It's okay. It's it's not every emotion's a good emotion. Every emotion is a good emotion. Anger's a good emotion, tells us a story. Just like every other emotion of happiness and joy tells us a story. I personally I think um I don't think it's a bad thing. What's wrong with being that way, feeling that way? I think the real issue is when you don't allow it to be expressed. We need to express it obviously in a safe way, safe for you, safe for other people around you. Uh however, if you don't express it, you carry it. Just like every other emotion. If you don't express it, you carry it. And that's something to be mindful of. Just because society says that it's a negative emotion doesn't mean that it's negative. And if you need to because here's the thing I want to say about this, right? Society says that it's a negative emotion, anger's a negative emotion because we don't like it, right? And we don't like it when people get angry, but that doesn't mean that it's a negative emotion. It's when it's how it's expressed that's the problem. If you express it well, nobody cares, right? You're uh you're absolutely allowed to feel angry. Um permission is important if you don't give yourself permission to feel that anger, that things aren't fair, because realistically, it's not fair. Is it? I mean, it's not fair your brother died, regardless of who liked him, right? It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter who liked him, who disliked him, it's not fair that he died, it's not fair that he died in the way he did. But so I don't know, I think that it's okay.
SPEAKER_03So then, I mean, I've got heaps of questions on this, and we probably just want to tick through them because I think it's important. I do remember, and I don't think I do it as much anymore, but there was a period, even be it two, three, four, five years. I think he's coming up ten years dead, or since he passed uh next year, which is interesting. Um, but I remember carrying around a fair bit of I would call it probably guilt, but I'm gonna wrap it up in motivation. There was a long time there where I would be all in and work like a maniac trying to do things, be it build projects or whatever it might be, because I could, and I I carried with it, knowing the fact that he never got to do it. All he wanted to do were the things that I'm doing. So you better fucking go out there and do all the things that he couldn't do, or else you're a piece of shit. Right? Because I can, right? I can, so I have to, and that is that's a different type of weight. You want to talk about something that's real, I think that is real. I carried that for a fairly long time. I'm not sure I do any more, but there was a period there where I wanted to do all the things that he couldn't, and I'm not sure always in a healthy way.
SPEAKER_02Guilt's like an over-protective dog that just keeps biting you until you die, right? Uh I I know a lot of people that felt that they felt guilt and they went and did things like yours talking about, and they go out there and you know, wasn't fair that that person died, so I had to push and push and push because I could, right? And and I should live up to their name and and all these expectations they put upon themselves. Uh and I don't know if that's complete guilt. Uh and I'm not saying that we don't have an element of that, but when we start to communicate and talk through the guilt, we generally find that uh most people aren't guilty, they're they're running away from grief, they're running away from the the sticky emotions that are going along with grief. Uh because they're not ready to process that yet, uh, yet being the operative word, um, and that's okay too, right? But I guess the real important part is uh am I being safe for me? Am I meeting my needs? If I'm not, then I'm I can't meet anybody else's. And if I'm not meeting my needs, I can't connect to my grief anyway. Grief's not a bad thing, it's a good thing. It means something very important to you is no longer here. Uh don't run away from it.
SPEAKER_03You talk about meeting your needs. When something like this has just happened, how can you be so clear and rational about this is what I need when you are completely in an irrational space? Like the world does not make you have got your hand on a fry pan and people are asking you questions.
SPEAKER_02Like what my family, they're not the greatest with each other. Uh and if they're listening now, some of them will maybe listening now, just to make sure that I'm uh that I'm living up to expectations. But um, I would say that they're not great with each other. When someone dies, they're awesome for each other. Why I don't know, but it it tends to allow them to lean on each other, even though they all call them each other names we probably shouldn't use here, like CNX Tuesdays and all those types of things. Yeah, um, they uh but then when someone dies they they rally around each other collectively. Um so uh I think when it comes to needs, right? Especially when you're going through grief, if you were to say to somebody, I need 10 minutes, I need 20 minutes, I need half an hour, whatever, they would give it to you. Then you run the risk of you then interpreting that as I'm being selfish or self-centered, I'm trying to run away from people. There's nothing wrong with that. You do what you've got to do personally. There's no real right way of grieving. You do what you've got to do.
SPEAKER_03How do you know what you need to do if you've never been through it?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I've got some things for that in our toolkit, but um, but yeah.
SPEAKER_03Okay, well now I've got I've got other questions. So I still remember the little moments like the mini golf, or you know, why I've got some examples of this, and this is geez, if you haven't been through this, this is the shit that catches you up. So, why do the small ordinary moments often hit harder than the big events after someone is gone? So, for example, the first Christmas without Kyle, horrible, first birthdays. Um, you know, not seeing my daughter Harley being born in the moment, it was the most the best thing that's ever happened to me. We've got it, and then 10 minutes after she was born and I had her in my arms, I remember thinking, I wish Kyle was here to see this. And I cried, you know, the happiest moment of my life was seeing my daughter being born, and 10 minutes later I'm crying sad tears because he never knew that she existed. Um and I was telling you off-air, Luke, about and you talk about the small moments, it wasn't long, or it might have been years after he passed, doesn't really matter to the story, but I had a question about something in AFL football that I needed answered, and I remember thinking, oh my brother would know the answer to this. And it was like I'd forgotten that he was dead and that I couldn't just ring him up and get his answer, and I couldn't just ring him up and hear his voice. Um, why do those moments seem to hit harder than most things? And is there a way that you can better prepare yourself for all the shit that's gonna catch you off guard where they would have normally been a part of your life and aren't?
SPEAKER_02I think that's the adjustment period personally. Uh I think that uh grief is really difficult. I think the remembering is even harder personally. I don't I don't think that that's an easy process to go through. I also think that um we don't really give ourselves time for adjustment, so then you know, like you were talking about, you're driving down the Talamarine freeway, but you're watching all the cars go by and everybody's just going about their world like, yo, my brother just died. Yeah, right? Like shouldn't you be sad too? Right? Um, and that'd be natural sort of thing. It happened to me quite a few times. How does the world continue to move? You know, when my world has completely stopped and it's feels like it's fallen apart. Uh is there a good way of managing that? Don't know. Actually, don't know. Uh I don't I don't know if anybody really does. I think that it's a it's a natural process, and I don't think we give ourselves time for adjustment period, no grace at all. It's just like, oh yeah, well, I've got to do what everybody else is doing, which is go back to work and do all these things. Um and yeah, we get our three days from work for what is it called? Uh bereavement or whatever.
SPEAKER_03Bereavement leave. Trust me, the yeah, your bank doesn't in regards to your mortgage, they don't care that your brother passed away. No, they don't. Those repayments are gonna keep coming out every fortnight or month or whatever.
SPEAKER_02So you could do what you've got to do, but it's what you do with the time that you have after those that time. So I I look at grief like this. I said to um I I learned this, nobody taught me this, kind of learned it organically, that uh, and I use it a lot with young people, but I also use it with adults, um, but mainly with young people that say you're in an exam, right? And uh and say it was your your brother who passed away, it's a good example.
SPEAKER_03That's a very good example. Just say how'd you come up with that? I don't know, they just sort of come to me. Amazing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it could be him channeling, I don't know. But um get around it.
SPEAKER_03Uh so uh could also be the previous 35 minutes of discussion. Oh no, I wasn't paying attention. Okay. Blackboard. It's good to laugh again. Come on.
SPEAKER_02So um I'm in I'm in an exam and my brother calls me, right? He's a life. Would I take the call? And most kids are like, well, I can't take the call because I'm in an exam, I don't even have my phone on me because I'm not allowed to have it in it. Okay, cool. Then what do you do? After the exam's finished, what do you do then? Well, I call my brother back. Cool. That's kind of why we've got to live life after we have an event like that. It's like, okay, cool, I go to work, do the thing that I've got to do for the basic needs that I have to meet. Then I call back because I know grief's gonna knock on my door throughout the day, then I need to answer that door later. You'll be you if you treat it like a phone call, it's okay. If you don't, right, and you don't call back, it stays with you. Yeah, and then it stacks, and then it stacks until it at some point your body stops you, and your body could stop you in a whole different types of ways. It could stop you from anxiety, it could stop you from depression, it could stop you physiologically where your muscles start to give way on you.
SPEAKER_03Stop reading out my class notes.
SPEAKER_02Oh, you got that?
SPEAKER_03No, this is exactly everything you're just saying, is exactly what I went through. Yeah, it's you talk about what are case notes that you take, like yes, which leads me to our next question. After Kyle's death, I quit cricket, something I'd loved my whole life. How can grief take away passions or parts of our identity? And what does it take to rediscover yourself? Because I changed.
SPEAKER_02That's a big question, man. Does any one person have the answer to that? I don't know, man. I actually don't know. A part of you just died.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02A part of you just died. So, yes, we are uh managing the the the death of our loved one and that part of them that lived inside us as well. So there's a there's layers to the grief now. It's not that simple. How do we manage that? I don't know. I don't know. I've got something in my toolkit that we can use and we'll get to it. Okay, but I would say to you that um you didn't die, that part of you did. How do I separate that is an important part? How do you do that? Don't know. Individual. I think that when we are able to talk it through, that changes things. I used to like when we um we would get together and tell war stories, right? We'd sit around and we talk about my grandfather or who who my my mate G or my cousins or whatever that have passed away, and you're sitting down, you're talking to them, even my dad to a degree, and you're talking about them with the people that knew them. That was the most enriching time through grief, being able to have those discussions because it was like they never left and it filled the void for now, and that was okay for now. Didn't have to fill the void every day, but it filled the void for now.
SPEAKER_03I think um that's another thing that annoys me a little bit through no fault of his own, but he wasn't a big social media user, and he died in well, I think we just said 2016. Oh, hang on, whatever, I always get what whatever it was. Um, and so Facebook was kind of still in its infancy and those kind of things, and Instagram wasn't around, whatever, doesn't matter, he just wasn't a big social media user. The point of this whole story was if I want to look at a video of my brother, I can't because he doesn't have any videos on his Facebook, and it's the in memoriam section set up in memory of Kyle Shell and those Facebooks. There's another story, yeah. When you die, how yeah, you get your accounts deactivated and turned as someone that's passed away, but they leave them open to access things. But um, and I'm assuming there are videos of my brother back from Christmas days that are all on the old VHS, and no one has a VHS player.
SPEAKER_02What about this, right? Sorry to interrupt you. No, no, not at all. This happened to me yesterday. Legit. Yesterday I was thinking about my my mate Graham, uh, who was one of my best mates. He just fucking understood me. And we got along really well from the first day that we met each other. First day we met each other, we're at a ballpark, and he's like, uh he was parts of my own part uh Maori, and he's like a big big boy then. Yeah, a big strong boy, yeah, but but uh gentle, yeah, really nice, really nice man, one of the best men you'll ever meet, to be fair. Uh go along with everybody, a very much like a mother archaeotype, if you like.
SPEAKER_03Bro, oh you're Luke. I bet I bet he would have said Hebrew.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. You're Luke, yeah. Yep. Oh, you're related to Kathy, yeah. I heard heaps of things about you. Oh, that's really cool. Want a beer? Yes, let's go. So that was the that was the first two minutes of us ever meeting, right? And we just hit it off, hit it off really well. Yesterday I was for some reason, and I and I actually don't know why, but I was thinking about him. And his wife is also past now, too. And when his wife's mother died, uh, it was a very difficult time for that family, and I came across a song. I don't even know how I came across it, but I came across this song. Old song, what was it called? Um oh my god, had Dion Warwick, um it was an old song. You're on your own, you man. Oh come on, buddy. Stevie Wonder, Elton John, and someone else. I can't remember what it was. Oh, what was it? It's killing me. Um we'll cut this out. No, we won't. Um anyway, I thought uh I sent that song to them. Um and just to remind them that you know that uh they were very close to me and I loved them and they were going through a tough time. Don't forget that you know we got people here for you too. And uh so I was thinking about him yesterday.
SPEAKER_03The song is called That's What Friends Are For.
SPEAKER_02That's What Friends Are For, thank you. You're welcome, thank you so much. Uh and yesterday, as what most people do, I'm sitting on the toilet, flicking through, scrolling through TikToks, and that song played in the afternoon, and I'm like I never looked that song up ever anywhere. How did that song come up? Right? And I'm like, I'm listening to it, and I'm like, oh my god, I'm gonna listen to it. I'm gonna burst that bubble. So I listen to it, and I'm shitting and crying at the same time. That was a really weird experience.
SPEAKER_03We'll clip that up for that's gold.
SPEAKER_02Doesn't sound right, though, does it? But anyway, um finish up, walk out, and I'm wiping the tears off my eyes, and I'm like, I look on my wife and I go, fucking G. Because what called him G. Fucking G. She's like, what? Like, completely thrown by it. And I said, you know, today I've been thinking about G all day. And I said, and I'm scrolling through TikToks, and this one song that I sent him and Polly after Polly's mum passed away, shows up in my TikTok. Is somebody spying on me or what? Because how are they spying on my head, or is that him? I don't know, and you know what? I want to choose to believe it was him, and then I I said it and I said out loud, I love you, I love you, man. Right. It was unreal, unreal situation, and then we're talking about grief. It's cool.
SPEAKER_03Alright, should we move on?
SPEAKER_02Let's do it.
SPEAKER_03All right, let's get into rewind. This will be a uh a bit of a quick one, I think, but this is where we revisit something from last week or something that stuck with us. Last week in episode six, we spoke about being a good friend. I was wondering if we could talk about maybe being a good friend um and dealing with someone who is dealing with grief or supporting someone that's dealing with grief. I wonder if we can mesh the two together. Yep.
SPEAKER_02Um I've got something real good for that.
SPEAKER_03Go for it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03What do you got?
SPEAKER_02Most people tiptoe around it. Right? And they don't recognise that they create the eggshells.
SPEAKER_03Oh, this is true. I like where you're going. They do, man. They create eggshells. Oh, I know. Oh, and I reckon I already know what you're gonna say. Sorry, but I need to jump in. Is it when you're like for the person who's going through the grief like I have when I've lost my brother, is it like, can you just be a fucking normal person so that we can have a normal interaction, please? Is that what you're gonna say?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, after my um my mother-in-law, she was she was dying. Um beautiful woman, and we're in a hospital, and I call one of my mentors at the time, his name was Rod, and he and it was late, and he's like, You alright? And I go, My mother-in-law's like minutes, bro. And he goes, And you need to be human, yeah, man. Cool, let's be human. Um that was really cool. It was really cool. Do you need to be human?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, oh that's good.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, he's got pearlers, man. I'd love to get him on here one day. He's got pearls. That's good. Do you need to be human? And uh what I uh what I found with most people with grief is they tiptoe around it, and then when they go and speak to that person who's grieving, they come there and they go, Oh, how are you doing? And they go straight into it. It's like, yo, stop. I've I've dealt with this every day, all day. Can we just do something different? Yeah um where for me when I approach somebody with grief, I approach it like let's just see where it goes. So I go to them, hey man, how you doing? What's happening? And we just have a chat like normal. See what comes up, right? And then just see what comes up. If they don't want to talk about it, let's talk about it. If they don't, cool. And generally they do, they talk about a story about something that happened with that person, and then we laugh and cry and do all that stuff together, and it's really cool. But if they don't want to talk about it, I don't know, I don't go there. Let's just go and have a good time, let's go live. Because you're living now.
SPEAKER_03And would you ask them what they want, or would you just let the story unfold and let them lead you with their mouth and their ideas, I guess?
SPEAKER_02I just let them lead me.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's good, Luke. So that's tying to the last week's show. With this is that's helpful. I like that. I think if you're looking for a practical tip of someone who's dealing with impending or recent loss, I think that is a ripper.
SPEAKER_02And if you go back to the last episode, we were talking about not offering solutions. Yeah, you don't have to how do you offer solution to grief? Good luck with that. That's a great question. If you can work that out, um, you're about to make millions of dollars. Go for it. Uh, but as a friend, yeah, what can I give? Yeah, I can give like Rod did for me that day, uh, the uh opportunity to be human again. Yeah. Which is really true.
SPEAKER_03I think I think that is that's so good the opportunity to be human. I just I take myself back, and there's no faces when I say this, but you think of your immediate extended family and they're coming up to you like, hey Joel, how are you going, sweet? How are you? And you've got to do the whole pretending, oh yeah, you know it's battling through. You know what the worst part is? Sorry, you know what I want to say? Shut up! Can we talk about the footy or something? Which is weird because I love my brother and I want to talk about him, but I can't write near. And you're not the person I want to talk about it with anyway.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, but you know, the worst part about it is is now I'm managing your grief and I'm the one grieving.
SPEAKER_03Oh, very good.
SPEAKER_02Why the hell am I managing your grief? Go do that yourself. I can't do that for you and manage my piss off. You know how often that happens? Yeah, off the charts, man. Yeah, that's good. But every time that somebody approaches you and and like giving you an opportunity to be human, uh, you value them. And then when you at the wake, right, you know those people, right? Because you see the groups of those people together and they're hanging out and they're yahooing and they're having a good time, and and uh, and everyone's looking at them like, oh, should you be doing that you're awake? So true. It's like piss off, man. We're just enjoying ourselves because guess what? If G was here, this is exactly what we'd be doing. Well, I gave a eulogy at G's funeral. Yeah, family asked me to do one, made the most inappropriate joke, but I knew that's why we're friends. Yeah, it's the first thing I said. Um I I can't remember exact words I used, but it was something like um um Should we leave some space so we can cut this out? No, no. Because this is the type of relationship me and G had, right? Yeah, and I I remember pre-warning saying something along the lines of um G would get this, right? And I said, Um, because G's in you know in the coffin. Isn't G the coolest room person in this room right now? Right, the whole joy laughs because the room was stinking hot. Everyone's standing there sweating, bullets, man. It was bad. And I make that and it was it was fun, but um, and everybody took it well, thank god. Um, especially because they're all big boys, they would have kicked it.
SPEAKER_03Not too dissimilar to as I said, when I was carrying Kyle's coffin, I'm like, it's a bit heavier than I thought he'd be considering it, and I'm like, no, my brother, he fucking would have packed everything. Um, yeah, but you're right. Like, can we just be human? Like, can I not talk like how you feel like you want me to talk? You know what I really want? Three shots to key or and to play nine holes of golf. That's what I'd really like. Yeah, let's go. And you know what?
SPEAKER_02When you've got a friend like that who says, That's what you want to do? Yeah, let's go.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. Only because I don't know what else I need right now, but that seems like you talk about ask yourself what you need on it. Well, what I want and what I need, we've discussed that. But I think in that moment you can just about give yourself a hall pass for if this is what I feel like I want, that's probably as good as need in the moment.
SPEAKER_02And isn't that okay?
SPEAKER_03I think so when it comes to that sort of trifle.
SPEAKER_02You are staying safe. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. All right, Luke, let's move on because I'm looking forward to hearing this one from you. We're gonna jump into Luke's toolkit, something you can actually use. This is where you give listeners practical strategies they can try in real life, keeping it simple, actionable, and jargon-free. Can you give us something in your toolkit in dealing with grief? And I hope you bring up the thing that I hope I'm thinking of. And if not, I'm gonna make you talk about it because it's really helped me. But go.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I probably am. Tell me.
SPEAKER_03So this was a game changer for me, right?
SPEAKER_02Uh rip the band. I don't want to hear what it is. My yeah, shut up. Um whiteboard. My uh you know, we started to have people that were passing, and I I'm working at a school, and I just started having heart palpitations uh from some of the stories that the kids were telling me that were matching some of my experiences at the time. And I remember lying on the floor and I'm like trying to breathe and I couldn't. And uh Rod again, Rod says to me, you know, go home, right? And just do what your body needs you to do. Talk to those that are that are gone. Like, okay. The first time I tried it didn't really work well because the timing wasn't right. So then I would get up at five o'clock in the morning, so I made time for grief. Remember, I said to you before it's like it's like a phone call, you've got to make the phone call. So I made time for grief, five o'clock in the morning, alarm goes off because that was the time I chose. Doesn't mean you have to do five o'clock in the morning, but that was the time I chose because my kids are asleep, my wife ain't gonna talk to me, my phone ain't gonna ring. Yep. Sick. Yeah, boom. Five o'clock in the morning, set an alarm for 45 minutes. Okay excuse me, and then uh I would do whatever my body wanted me to do. So that would mean that uh I would some days I'd wake up feeling really good, I'd read a book because I wanted to learn, or I'd tap into some online learning stuff that I was always involved in. So I would do that. Um, sometimes I needed to move, so I'd get up and walk around. Um, but the one thing that was the biggest thing for me was talking to those that had passed.
SPEAKER_03Yep, this is what I was hoping you were gonna say.
SPEAKER_02And and it all really comes down to your belief system, right? Yep. Do you believe in speaking to the dead or do you or did their spirit or do you um do you just feel like you're talking to somebody nothing? Or do you and this is the other part is because I don't know whether it's true that we can talk to those that have passed. Yeah, I like to believe we can, but I also think that even if I'm not, I'm speaking to that part of them that lives in me.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I that's where I land on it. I am not religious, I don't know if it's agnostic or whatever else, I don't know. Um but you taught me this technique, and as I've just told you, my brother will be gone 10 years next year, I think, in February. And I've only learnt this technique in the last few months, and I honestly I felt like it was a part of me that was missing because my brother got cremated, as I touched on. He's his ashes currently live in my parents' bedroom, which is a side note, I was patching up a hole in their room the other day, and my dad goes, I'll just put Kyle on the bed, which is weird because I had to move his ashes onto the bed. But to me, they're just his ashes, that's not him. And I don't have because he's been cremated and because that lives in their bedroom, I don't have a site to visit in terms of a grave site, which is fine, but it's not somewhere where I can go, and you often see this in TV shows like How I Met Your Mother, where um Marshall's dad died, the character and that, and they go to the gravesite and have beers and cook-ups and stuff. So I've never had that. And when you gave me the technique of talking to my brother out loud, and I think, and I'd like you to talk about it, but just talk to him and ask the questions. Yeah, sorry, talk to him and ask the questions, and you know what his voice sounds like and see what the answers come back.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that was the that's the biggest part of it, right? So, um, so 45 minutes, I might sit down and I'm talking to those that have passed. The one that comes up for me at the time, because there were quite a few all at once. Um and uh I would just talk out loud. For me, I talked out loud because I don't care who hears me. But for some people they may not want to. That's okay too. You can speak within yourself, that's fine. And I go with the very first response that I get back, right? Whether that's that part of them that lives in you or the spirit, whichever way you want to look at it, doesn't matter, whatever works for you. And I'm telling you, you always get something. Yeah, always, yeah, yeah, never have I not, then you get that back, and then before you know it, you're in a full conversation. Yeah. Right? And it's weird. It's so weird. But I'll tell you what, how cathartic is it?
SPEAKER_03It's so good. So this can I sorry, I'm excited. Go on. So when you gave me this technique, I thought you're a fucking moron. This is weird. And then when I tried it, I I did the I did my backyard, but I've also done my car. I went to the backyard and I looked up. This is this is my parents are gonna hear this for the first time, I think. My wife knows this. And I looked up in the sky and it was a queer night sky. It's not a night sky you typically get in Melbourne, you typically get it in the country, but it's a queer night sky, and I could see the Southern Cross. Now, I have a Southern Cross tattoo on my back shoulder, of course I do, because everyone got them when you were 18 years old, and then it became the Bogan symbol of the country. It wasn't at the time that I got it. As I said, I was 17, I'm 39 now. My wife has the Southern Cross tattoo in her foot. She probably is a Bogan. You take the kick and take the girl out of ringwood. Um, and so I looked up at the stars and I was doing this technique, and I just decided that my brother, his soul, whatever it that means, lived in the middle of the Southern Cross, which is linked to Australia, which is on our flag. And I started having the conversation with him, and it was like I just went, hey, I I literally said something to these words out loud. Sorry it's been so long, um, but I'm gonna get you up to speed on what's been going on. And I spoke about my anxiety, I spoke about my depression, I spoke about getting married, I spoke about my first daughter Harley. But but we're talking big things, and as soon as I got it out, you're right, we started having this little conversation, and I got that off my chest, and it was great. And I said to him something along the lines of, or whoever he is, what's been happening? And he said, Oh, not a whole lot. Um, I I've made a friend, a 400-year-old Roman, and I said, Of course you have, you fucking weirdo. And so now I just have this story in my brain that if I want to talk to my brother, I know exactly where he lives. To me, he lives in the Southern Cross, in the middle of the Southern Cross, and I can call on him if I need to. Now it doesn't happen that much anymore, but if I just feel like I've got some news, and normally I do this in the car now, I just pretend to ring him on the phone and touch base and get him up to speed with what's going on. And I don't know what's happened other than the fact of I now feel like I have an outlet and a connection to my brother that I didn't previously have, even if it's only me carrying out the entire conversation. You are right, it is amazing how things can flow and somehow they can come out both ways, and just having a point where I think that he lives and I can touch on if needed meant that I was able to reconnect a little bit that I previously didn't have. And I thank you for that. That was awesome. It's been great.
SPEAKER_02What I love about it is it means that they never really left you.
SPEAKER_03That's exactly what I'm coming back to. For a long time, he was gone. Again, I didn't have a grave site, I couldn't just walk into my mum and dad's room, or I didn't feel like that was him anyway. But this way it's like, okay, I've now got him on speed dial again. Should I need him?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, because ultimately you were the one blocking him.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you've got to do that.
SPEAKER_02And and that's that's the hard part. I mean, uh uh to protect ourselves from grief, we block, right? Fuck yeah, which is fine. I I can appreciate why we would do that. Um, but at some point we'll come back, no, and I think that's a really beautiful way. So 45 minutes, I do what I need to do. A lot of time I would be crying in that time because it was so heartfelt and warm and never really want to leave. But the at 45 minutes the alarm goes off. I walk for 15 minutes, I move my body for 15 minutes, which was a key thing to do because it allowed me my body to expel the energy, and and I would walk with a purpose. I would either be walking really fast and then slow down, or walk slow, walk fast, slow down again. Um and that's a whole regulation thing. But I would do what I had to do through that 15 minutes, the alarm goes off again. Six o'clock in the morning now. I have a shower and hit my day, right? Because the kids are about to start waking up, my wife's about to tell me to do some stuff around the house, most likely. Um, and and then my phone will probably ring at some point. So um I got it out when I could, and I didn't do it for long. I also did yoga too, to help with the body thing, um, which is another conversation that maybe we'll talk about one day. But um the and the things that happened for me in that time during the grief. But I would say that um those things changed everything for me from a grief perspective because it allowed me to express my grief through connection. Whether that was real or not, I don't care it was real for me. Yeah, that's it. And that's all that matters. Yeah, I agree. It doesn't have to be societal acceptance that gives a shit. They're not the ones living through what I'm living through, they're doing their thing. Yeah, and that's okay. I don't care what you think. I'm gonna do what I have to do to get through. Yeah, and that's okay.
SPEAKER_03I um we can cut this bit out if you want, but I've thought this topic was really interesting, and it might be an unpack that or a rerun in the future. You know how when at funerals people just say the best thing about you, and you're I've you know, people for an hour they tell stories and they tell you how much they loved you and what you were great at, and they never got to hear it. The person because they died. Would you like to do a topic on what would you like people to say about you at your funeral? Would you ever unpack that?
SPEAKER_02I've already gone through who I don't want at my funeral with my wife. That's that's a different podcast. I would say, um Would you find that interesting? I would say that what I would like and I do now, more so than ever before, is I uh draw people into having conversations where I tell them what I think of them, how I love them, yeah, how I feel about them. And organically they start talking about the same thing back, but I want them to know now.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's so I'm pretty good at this, letting my especially in light this is one of the you know, you talk about the greatest shit as gift. This is one of the things about losing a brother, someone so close to you so immediately and so young, is that I tell my friends that I love them regularly and check in with them and tell them how much I appreciate them. So yeah, if there's a lesson out of that, don't wait till people are dead to tell them everything that you like about them, um including your family. All right, mate, we are almost done. Let's move on to what three things made us happy this week. This is where we pause to notice the little things. Luke, I will go first. Um, by the time this episode goes to air, my wife will have had our second baby because we do have a couple of episodes in the can. So I expect that this by the time this actually goes to air on Spotify, that will have happened. Um, but we finally chose a name for our new baby. I am not going to tell you what that is just yet. I wouldn't. No, no, I wouldn't. Um, but we finally sort of compromised and we came up with a name. So we're and now that that's locked in, we're we're kind of happy with that.
SPEAKER_02So that's one I held you with.
SPEAKER_03No, it's good.
SPEAKER_02Good. That means it must be better.
SPEAKER_03No, no, it's not that. Uh it is so little baby Lucas off the table. Yep. No, no, that wasn't that, you bloody fool. Number two, I went to the footy with my parents, which is always nice. My footy team haven't won a game in about 11 games, might be 12, might be 13 by the time this goes to air. Um, but that was nice. And number three, I played golf, as you know, I like to do um get out once a week and I played a bit better than last time, so it was okay. Still shit the bet on 18, but story for another day. I um yeah, I needed to get up and down on the 18th hole to shoot 80, which is not a bad score. It's okay. Like a lot of people would love to break 80. Um, it's relatively common, relatively speaking, for the handicap up our playoff. Um, and I need to play a big flop shot where I need to open up the face and get right under the ball and to hit it over a bunker to get it close to the pin. And I knifed this thing the ball right in the head and I bladed it into the clubhouse out of bounce and walked off with a triple buggy. So um a shit the bed, but the day was nice. So that they were my three. Have you got three things for us that made you happy this week?
SPEAKER_02Love a go. Um first, I am very appreciative of you sharing your story. Thank you. Because it's not easy. So thank you for sharing that um and showing the trust in not just me but our listeners for sharing that. Um thank you. Um I would say I'm uh very grateful for um my family. They just get me. They just let me they let me do what I need to do. And it's never uh and my wife especially, but it's it's never conditional. Do you know what I mean? It's like, oh, that's just your thing, go do your thing. You know, you it's not like I'm going anywhere, and then I come back and it's all good. Um so I really appreciate that. Um and I I would I know I've sort of brought this up before, but I like to really put a shout out for any of the clients that I that are listening to this that I work with, because they teach me so much. Oh my god. Um they teach me so much. So thank you for everybody who come and see me because um uh like you like I've said to you before, Jolly, I've got an 80-20 rule, 80% for you, 20% for me, and that 20% is gold to me. Yeah. So thank you.
SPEAKER_03I think I often think about that with this podcast. I think of all of the I've I've spent tens of thousands of dollars on therapy in my mental health over the past whatever, 10 years. Like I've literally got a spreadsheet, to be honest. It's closer to 13 grad. I know that because I regularly update it. And every time we sit down to do this podcast, I'm like, Luke doesn't know this, but this is kind of fucking free therapy free cancelling, and I'm getting away with it for free. Uh, but yeah, I I like these this podcast hour because it's not therapy, but the stories are relatable. So um, mate, that's it for us this week. I'm glad I got through it. That was that was a tricky one, but I um I think I told the story okay, and hopefully Kyle will I'll tell him about it tonight when I look up at the Southern Cross.
SPEAKER_02And don't forget, you've got is that uh you got your family started a foundation, didn't they?
SPEAKER_03We did. Uh so we have the Kyle Sheldon Memorial Fund. Um after he passed, I started up a golf day that has now been running for the amount of I think it's been running for eight or nine years as well. Um it's actually a story, it's a really good story. So we started raising money from that where we started at 5,000, got up to 20,000, and ticked over to 30,000 a session a year or whatever. And I'm gonna get these details wrong and I wish I had them written down, but I will get them very close. But my family tipped in about 200,000 to start this fund and then uh started helping with that colorectoral and pelvic care um and getting in a full holistic approach with a dedicated team of doctors and nurses and psychologists to help families and um the patients and and those kind of things help better understand that care model because it is a very complicated model where doctors talk in lingo about complicated shit that you and I probably can't understand. So we've sort of been trying to help those patient outcomes as best we can. I hope dad I've explained that well enough. But basically, the the real I don't know, pivotal landmark moment was when dad sat down with the government and said, Well, here's what we've been doing off our own coin, and we've you know, with seed funding and whatever else, we've got it to 200,000, and this is what we can do, and we can keep doing this if you like. And the minister for health at the time that he sat down with, I assume, uh the government turned around and tipped in 4.6 million dollars off the back of something that we've started. Now, fast forward to today, I've recently in the past year or so heard him sit down because uh this is my dad sit down with a Zoom meeting with either the Minister for Health andor the Real Children's Hospital, but the government have decided to scrap that uh and pull that back with the latest government. I remember him yelling at someone on the Zoom call and saying, I'm probably gonna get this wrong, but you fucking assholes that have gotten rid of this. Which is nothing more than a rounding error in your budget. And he uh that was a pretty powerful moment to hear your dad say that. So hopefully I haven't broken too much confidence there, Dad. But um I know now that our money's going to be redirected into some other patient care around the same sort of thing, whether or not it's exactly in what it previously was. But to build something from scratch to get it to 4.6 million to have it then or something like that to get it taken then away from you is um is pretty heartbreaking for the fund, but hey, we've overcome other things. But yes, if you want to follow us, we are Kyle Shell Memorial Fund on Facebook. Um, and yeah, that is a fully um licensed charitable organization that you can donate through and even get tax receipts and stuff. Uh so yeah, you can find that on there. So that is that, and I'm sure if I've got that wrong, someone will pick me up on that. But uh, in terms of our social and listener involvement, if you've liked this story and you want to hear other stories like this and other guests that we've got coming up between now and whenever, uh, we'd like it if you'd leave a review, preferably a good one. Uh, but there, obviously that'll help us get to the top top of the algorithm. The other thing I'd like you to do if you can right now is click that follow button in either Spotify or Apple Podcasts. And the other thing I didn't know about is there's a little bell icon that if you click that on when our episodes are released, you'll get those notified directly to your phone. Episodes come out at 6 a.m. Give or take every Tuesday. You can get us at lifespumpsbruises at gmail.com or from Instagram and Facebook under Life's Bumps and Bruises. And yeah, hopefully we've got some topics to talk about over the next couple of weeks, mate.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, no, we got plenty. We got plenty.
SPEAKER_03Luke, thank you again for listening, and uh yeah, that was a good one. Yeah, it was a good one. Don't say it.
SPEAKER_02You're gonna say it. See you next Tuesday. There it is. See you next Tuesday. All right, mate. Take care, guys.
