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I AM HealingStrong
Discover how to transform the most challenging chapter of your life with Jim Mann's inspiring podcast. As a stage 4 cancer survivor, Jim interviews famous musical artists like Tasha Layton, Ellie Holcomb, Katy Nichole, and Tim Timmons, as well as health influencers who beat incurable diseases like depression and addiction. Through humor and a renewed sense of purpose, guests courageously share their stories of overcoming the toughest times and learning to trust God. Tune in to Jim's powerful podcast to find hope and inspiration.
I AM HealingStrong
92: Reversing Leukemia with Holistic Nutrition & A Chef's Healing Journey PART 2 | Christina Pirello
Revamp your approach to healthy living with insights from celebrity chef Christina Pirello, who transformed her own life with a diet overhaul following a terminal cancer diagnosis. Christina reveals the simplicity of crafting nutritious meals using fresh ingredients and basic staples like lemon juice, olive oil, and salt. By focusing on knife techniques and embracing the joy of cooking, she makes healthy eating accessible and practical for everyone, debunking the myth that nutritious meals require complex recipes, fancy gadgets or unique skills.
Start your own garden with Christina's practical advice on growing beginner-friendly plants like herbs, cherry tomatoes, and zucchini, and discover the ease of creating simple recipes. Next, explore the impact of different wheat varieties on digestion and gain valuable encouragement for those newly diagnosed with health conditions, emphasizing the importance of patience and peace on the healing journey.
Christina's personal story of being diagnosed with terminal leukemia at age 26 and the pivotal role nutrition played in finding hope and resilience is not an episode to miss. Finally, learn about HealingStrong, a nonprofit that provides holistic support for those battling serious illnesses. Discover the benefits of joining local or online support groups, and leveraging the free resources available to empower your healing journey.
Connect with Christina:
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HealingStrong's mission is to educate, equip and empower our group leaders and group participants through their journey with cancer or other chronic illnesses, and know there is HOPE. We bring this hope through educational materials, webinars, guest speakers, conferences, community small group support and more.
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There's so many resources out there now. I mean there's even meal services that bring you the ingredients and all you have to do is put it in the pan. You know companies like Purple Carrot or Daily Harvest who bring you healthy food that you can either put in your freezer or put together pretty quickly to get you started to like, get you on the path of oh, healthy eating's not so gruesome.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:You know, so there's a lot of tools now that are available to us as humans.
Speaker 3:You're listening to the I Am Healing Strong podcast, a part of the Healing Strong organization, the number one network of holistic cancer support groups in the world. Each week we bring you stories of hope, real stories that will encourage you as you navigate your way on your own journey to health. Now here's your host stage four cancer thriver, jim Mann.
Speaker 2:Welcome back. We have a part two with Christina Pirello and the celebrity chef. Something that's out of my wheelhouse, but I just love that there are chefs in this world. I have four kids, two boys and two girls. The girls can cook but they don't really like to. My wife can cook but she doesn't really like to. My boys they love to cook. They add all kinds of flavors and spices and stuff. I'm like man, why don't I cook? It's just crazy. But my mom kept me out of the kitchen growing up, so she was June Cleaver from Leave it to Beaver.
Speaker 1:So different from the way I grew up. I used to love that show yeah. I thought that was a normal thing, that and a quarterly kitchen, with only one woman in there cooking instead of nine.
Speaker 2:With the pearls on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, always, oh, and heels, don't, don't forget the heels yes, yes, definitely.
Speaker 2:Well, we talked uh last week, uh last episode, about your uh diagnosis and how you met the wonderful robert who changed your life and, well, kept you alive. Let's put it that way because you only had, uh, how long was it to live?
Speaker 1:Six to nine months.
Speaker 2:Six to nine months.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And obviously you passed that. Oh yeah 40 years ago. You don't look past 30.
Speaker 1:Well, thank God, you need glasses or a new one.
Speaker 2:I do have an appointment this Thursday, we'll find out. But this time I want you. Of course you're a new one. I do have an appointment this Thursday, we'll find out. But this time, of course you're a celebrity chef. You've got your own show and I'm definitely going to check that out so I can learn stuff I mean anybody just because I was kept out of the kitchen, I'm not blaming my mother. I mean I'm an adult, I can learn to cook. It's not rocket science, you just got to work at it. If you don't know.
Speaker 1:I'm not even sure you have to work at it that much. My mother used to say when I was a kid that all you needed to make a great meal was good basic ingredients, of course, and lemon juice, olive oil and salt. And I used to roll my eyes and think, oh gosh, mom. Now I look back and I hear myself say to people listen, all you need are fresh ingredients lemon juice, olive oil and salt. Cause she was right, and mostly it's when you're cooking fresh food.
Speaker 1:It doesn't really require very much. You know, you don't cook it very long. It doesn't require a ton of spices, you don't have to. You know like I'm fascinated with Indian cooking and also intimidated by Indian cooking because there's such precision in the way they use spices. And I'm fascinated with Indian cooking and also intimidated by Indian cooking because there's such precision in the way they use spices and I'm not that precise. There are some Indian dishes I can do really well, but I'm not into that kind of precision. I'm more the European throw some of this in, throw some of that in. When I was a kid, my grandmother used to make this great cake and I really wanted to adapt it to a vegan version, healthier version and the family recipes that I inherited are in a saltwater taffy box from the Wildwood boardwalk in the kitchen drawer and the box is from when I was a kid.
Speaker 1:I opened it up and here's my grandmother's recipe for this cake and it said measure four of the blue lid of flour into the bowl what? And use the red spoon to measure baking powder. Okay, so you know, they didn't really measure, they didn't whisk, they didn't sip, they didn't do anything I thought was correct, but they created great food. So I think a lot of cooking is the fault of celebrity chefs. A lot of the fear of cooking is the fault of celebrity chefs. We make it look like, you know, everything has to be in perfect little dishes and everything has to be, you know, perfectly diced. None of that's true, you know, if you have a passion for it, you'll discover it. I mean, you do have to have knife skills. It's very difficult to cook without a level of knife skills. You don't have to be ingenious, but you have to know how to get things done in less than two hours and some people, the preparation is what really intimidates them. The cooking is nothing. Once you put the thing in the pan, it's going to do its thing.
Speaker 2:I can clean.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, and then there's cleaning. But see, I love every step of cooking, from shopping to cleaning.
Speaker 2:I'm wow, I'm one of those wow, okay, and the best thing obviously oh, I guess it's not obvious, but the best thing is uh, to get fresh food is have a nice garden and nice garden.
Speaker 1:If you don't have access to it, we'll talk about gardening. But if you don't have access to a garden, every there's a. There's a wonderful um website called I can't think of it right now, anyway I will think of it but you put your zip code in and they tell you where there's a farm market or a csa near you, right, um, but it's pretty easy with the internet now to find yourself a csa where you buy a share of a farm and you get a box every week and it's all fresh. So if you can't garden which is ideal, we have so much access in this country to places where you can get food, even community gardens. In the most, you know, desperate food desert, you'll find a community garden grown by the neighbors. But gardening, you know, gardening is also as easy as cooking. You put the stuff in the dirt water it and it tends to grow.
Speaker 1:And for me, I live in the city so I don't have a big garden. Growing up we did. My grandfather had a fig tree and a peach tree and an apple tree. We had all sorts of fruit and vegetables. We used to walk up and down the rows of veggies and pick.
Speaker 1:But in the city I just have a little perimeter garden and my squirrel ends up getting, you know, in the yard, gets most of what. I get some, he gets some. We share it. But even if they're growing containers on the steps or on the windowsill of fresh herbs, small peppers, cherry tomatoes, there's something about growing your food and picking it that just changes the way you think about food. And now we have those vertical gardening kits that you can get for I don't know, anywhere from a hundred to whatever, and you put little pods in and suddenly you have lettuce and kale and all these things growing right inside. So if you don't have space, it is a way to garden and that's kind of a no-brainer in that you don't have to do anything except stick the pot in and water it. But it will foster your love of gardening and then you'll move on to containers and whatever you can Like. My yard is packed with containers that I grow in because we don't have a lot of space.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, I have a good-sized yard that I can do that, but I need raised beds because beds beds because, well, I have dogs and I don't want them to water my plants. Yeah, um, and you know, dogs like to mark their territory, it's just they do.
Speaker 1:Naturally, you have to put raised beds and a low fence around it. It would be a little bit of work, but yeah, yeah, it wouldn't be worth it. Yeah, it would.
Speaker 2:So for people who are a little reluctant to start a garden because they get overwhelmed, they can. All these different rows, you see these beautiful gardens, and magazines and stuff all these rows of different things. What would be like a good couple plants to start with?
Speaker 1:You want to grow things that you can't fail with. So herbs like parsley, basil mint in a container, you can't fail with those.
Speaker 1:If you have a container that's about maybe two or three gallons and you put four cherry tomato plants in with sticks, you're going to get tomatoes. It doesn't matter, you can take an avocado pit, put two toothpicks in it, like we used to do when we were kids, and you're still going to grow avocados. I mean, at some point you'll grow an avocado plant. So for me it's about finding the things that don't require a lot of care. They're not particularly delicate. If you have a fence and you can put in some cucumbers and zucchini and let them climb, those are really easy to grow.
Speaker 1:The biggest thing is where you are in the country. Based on the growing season climate, you know you're going to have enough rain for your garden to survive, or you're going to do all this work and you know not be able to water because there's a drought, or you know grow vegetables that can't last because of that. You know a strawberry pot and you put a few strawberry plants in. Even if you have to bring it inside because it's too hot, you're still going to get strawberries. Most gardening is a no brainer, but I would start with herbs or peppers or cherry tomatoes, because once you see it happen, you think, oh, I can do that. Look, now I'm going to plant lettuce, now I'm going to try zucchini. Yeah, so you become encouraged by your success.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's like anything. Once you dive in there, then you realize okay, what was I afraid of the first place?
Speaker 1:Nobody really has a black thumb, even when they think they do, unless you pull the plant out of the pot and throw it in the trash, it's really hard to kill plants.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's not good Throw it in the's not good. Let me write that down.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So on your cooking show, you're Christina cooks. Um how long have you been doing that? 1998 was our first year oh yeah, I was in elementary school, me too. It's more like you say, it's like a classroom. You're actually teaching people how to cook, what's cook, what are some basics that you teach. Again, I'm perfect for that, because I can make breakfast, yeah, so that's good.
Speaker 1:We do everything in the show, from show you how to dice onions to how long to saute them. When you're reading a recipe then it should be translucent Some people think I don't even know what that means and then basic. You know simple recipes that anybody can make. We try to have the ingredients no more than five to seven, not including like salt and pepper. But we try to keep things simple and approachable, not too foreign.
Speaker 1:I might use things like miso, which not everybody understands or can get their hands on, but I kind of use it to create a cheesy flavor and things and you don't have to use it. I always make sure that people know you don't have to use it. But we try to keep it as mainstream, mediterranean, simple and elegant as possible. So people see the food is a beautiful be, wow. I think I want to try that. It looks really, you know, appetizing. And then we show them how to make it Like we're still an old school. Show you how to make the dish. There's no competitions. There's no seven chefs running around the kitchen, you know, trying to win some golden whatever, nothing like that. That the only thing we've added to the show and I think it has enriched it is. We do, uh, one or two segments now in italy with a local cook who I cook with, and we talk about, you know, fresh ingredients and sustainability and you know simple foods and they talk about how you know.
Speaker 2:Italian cuisine's claim to fame is simplicity and it's been really fun to do that yeah, I was told that also, when people who go to visit italy and they eat the pasta and all that stuff it's, they find they don't have the same reaction there's, they don't feel bloated and all that like they do here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a really specific reason for that, and the reason is that most of the wheat that we grow in the States is hard winter wheat, which is higher gluten yield, and we do it because so we can make more bread and more products. In Europe they use a soft spring wheat so their yield isn't as high, but their products pasta bread is easier to digest. So people who say they have issues with gluten I mean not celiac, of course, right, but um, people that say they have an issue with gluten don't have an issue when they're in in italy or france or spain, because the wheat is is literally different. It's not that we gmo the wheat if we use a very different variety because it's a higher yield of gluten for flour.
Speaker 2:Hmm, okay, can we not?
Speaker 1:It's all about the money, baby yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Of course I've never grown my own wheat. Too much work, isn't it?
Speaker 1:That's probably a lot more work than you'd like. Yeah, I have grown my own wheat, but I haven't grown my own wheat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you don't want to do that in just a little pot. No, I don't think so. Okay, lots of people who are listening to this podcast are people who just got diagnosed and, of course, life is over. You know that that gut punch that you get what would you say to them?
Speaker 2:as, as far as I know one thing, you say just just calm down, you're not in a hurry. Uh, like I've, I've. I've heard it so often. I don't know if you know of Chris Wark or not, but everybody I talk to usually knows about us through Chris Wark. But you came through a different door, so I like that One thing, chris. He wrote the book Chris Beat Cancer and he tells people you know, first of all, you're not going to die today or this week. The doctors want you to do something really fast and you want to do it right now and just take your time. It's your life. You made the decision. Your health is in your own hands.
Speaker 2:So what would you do to encourage people on what to do, rather than run to the doctors and freak out?
Speaker 1:Well, you do freak out for the first you do freak out.
Speaker 1:I remember the day I was diagnosed, like yesterday, getting in the elevator and just for some reason thinking to myself if I can memorize the pattern in the carpet in the elevator, I won't start screaming and realize that my life is over. And it was a gray carpet with a maroon floor delete pattern. And then I got outside and stepped into the spring day. It was April and everybody was going about their life as though everything was fine. And so my panic was quickly replaced with rage of I'm 26 years old, what the heck? What, what, what and um.
Speaker 1:And then I went home and sat in my apartment in the dark for 24 hours and tried to figure out what I was going to do.
Speaker 1:But when I finally came to my senses a couple days later, even before I met my husband, I thought all right, I'm not going to die tomorrow. There's got to be something that I can do here, even though they're telling me there's nothing. And we didn't have the internet then. So of course, I went to the library and read everything I could find on my form of leukemia and realized that one of the contributing factors and this was before I knew anything was sugar, and I'm thinking I live on sugar Like I live on sugar Duh.
Speaker 1:So you know, I think that if people it's so easy to educate yourself now and yes, there's a lot of questionable information out there, a lot of questionable information out there, a lot of questionable health gurus telling you things that I watch them on social media and think, oh dear Lord, I hope no one watches this person and does what they're saying, because it's ridiculous. But sensible things like looking at your pantry and saying how much processed food is in there and the reason I say processed food is I can't tell you definitively if processed food causes cancer, but I can tell you that there's no life in processed food and what you are lacking when you are diagnosed with cancer is access to life.
Speaker 1:So, if you want to rebuild your body from the inside out and give yourself a fighting chance, you need to eat food that was alive Fresh vegetables, whole grains, beans, tofu, tempeh. If you choose to eat animal food fish and eggs, or a lean meat if that's your thing, good quality fats, like you really have to look at your pantry and if you have the time, lifetime, every week, you take out an ingredient that you know isn't healthy and we all know what they are and you replace it with a healthy one. If you only eat white rice, replace it with brown rice. If you only use a vegetable oil mix, replace it with a really good olive oil. If you only use table salt, replace it with sea salt. Like, take these little steps and in a month or two, your pantry is restocked, your cooking is reformed and when you start to cook for yourself with whole, fresh ingredients whether the ending is what you choose or not, you have taken control of your life back.
Speaker 1:You have said I'm going to at least contribute to giving my body a fighting chance against the treatments. I'll be as strong as I can, as healthy as I can, with the strongest immune system that I can muster before I have to take chemotherapy or radiation or surgery or whatever it is. In my ideal world, if someone was diagnosed and it wasn't acute, they would have a month or two to work with a nutritionist to establish a diet that could work for them within their lifestyle and within making them stronger before they started treatments. So you don't go in to treatments on your last leg. You go in with some fight, with some resources to draw on to give you a leg up. I mean, that really is what I advise people to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's excellent advice. I know I don't normally look at our reviews for the podcast because I figure everyone's giving us a five star because we're amazing. You would think. Then I saw this one star. I thought what in the world Did someone?
Speaker 3:not understand.
Speaker 2:They said. But it was saying and I hear this a lot but it was saying it is cruel to give false hope to people. What?
Speaker 1:There's no such thing as false hope.
Speaker 2:These are stories of people who have overcome cancer. It's not really false hope. That's the mindset that we have to battle. I have a dear friend who lost his mother-in-law. I understand his point of view. She heard from a friend who overcame cancer by a certain diet. It was like I forgot. It was very, very narrow what she did, but it's what she needed. And so his mother-in-law said well, I'm not going to do the chemo, I'm just going to do this diet. But it wasn't what her body needed. Everybody's different, exactly. So she. By the time she went back to doctors cause she wasn't getting any better.
Speaker 1:It was too late and you know and and even within macrobiotics and Chinese medicine. You know we look at everyone and say depending. You know we, we focus a lot on yin and yang. You know expansion and contraction.
Speaker 1:So, my disease was a cancer of a system. It was blood and lymph that's considered very expansive. So my diet was very restricted in terms of long cooked foods to create the opposite. I'm going to say energy in the body. But if somebody comes to us and they've got liver cancer or colon cancer or bone cancer, those are very contracted, restrictive For them. I would recommend juicing Raw salads, maybe a raw diet for a while. You have to create the opposite, energy in the body, to create change.
Speaker 1:From a Chinese medicine standpoint, and diet's not for everybody. Not everybody has the wherewithal to do it, the courage to do it. I can't tell you the number of times I've heard well, suppose this doesn't work, and I've spent the last year of my life eating this crappy food and then I die anyway. Right, well, we're all going to die. I mean, we're all going. Nobody can say I was alive, that's right, and I can't argue with that. I can't say to them well, I can guarantee you, in a year you'll be better. I, I don't know that. I, you know, nobody knows that unless you're calling you know, hey, how's it going. Like ricky gervais does this very, um, this very funny bit about you know people who say you know, god says you should do this. And he said do they call? Do they call and say so when Jim Mann had a tree fall in his car, was that you? Oh yeah, yeah, that was me. That was a hurricane, oh, okay, thanks. You know, we don't really get to call and demand what weather we want, what health we want, what path we want.
Speaker 1:So I think that everybody could benefit from taking away ultra processed foods and then from there, you know, you hopefully can work with some professional or a nutritionist to figure out what's the diet that best suits you to make yourself as strong as you can be, because one of the things about cancer is that you don't come to it in your best shape. You know it's rare that somebody like Lance Armstrong gets cancer. Usually we're not taking care of ourselves. We're not athletic, we're not. You know there are those rare cases.
Speaker 1:But if we can give you tools to make your body stronger before you start your treatments, I've given you something, or whoever it is has given you something, right. So, like that's the practical advice, I think I mean food can be your tool, even if it's to help you get through the treatments. You know brown rice or baked potatoes can help you battle the nausea that comes with some of the drugs or chemotherapies. Sweet potatoes in the oven can help you with what you feel after radiation. There are so many tools in the food kingdom that we can give you that help you get through it. If that's not the only tool you want to use and if you want to use just food.
Speaker 1:The problem with using just food is it requires 100% commitment. You can't go in and go. Well, I'm going to partly do food and I'm still going to have a Twinkie on the weekends.
Speaker 2:No, You're in or you're out. I did love Twinkies.
Speaker 1:I did love Twinkies too. That's why they keep coming up.
Speaker 2:Why couldn't God put vitamin C in Twinkies?
Speaker 1:Why, yeah? Why couldn't you know? Why? Couldn't daikon taste like a Twinkie?
Speaker 2:Oh well, well, yeah, you make a good point. You can't go wrong with eating something healthy or getting rid of something that's not healthy.
Speaker 1:And it doesn't have to not taste good, because it's healthy.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:That's not true anymore.
Speaker 2:That's where you step in.
Speaker 1:There's so many resources out there now. I mean there's even, you know, there's even meal services that bring you the ingredients and all you have to do is put it in the pan. You know companies like Purple Carrot or Daily Harvest who bring you healthy food that you can either put in your freezer or put together pretty quickly to get you started to like, get you on the path of, oh, healthy eating's not so gruesome.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:You know so there's a lot of tools now that are available to us as humans.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what I do, I always go to Christina Cooks and I hope so. Because she's an Emmy award-winning chef and I still don't have my Emmy anywhere. In fact, I don't have any participation whatever. They were little trophies you don't have a trophy just for showing up. No, I'm not from that generation.
Speaker 1:They don't do awards for podcasts, yeah, or do they?
Speaker 2:Probably I should have a bunch of those.
Speaker 1:You should. Yeah, this was great.
Speaker 2:I'll have to look into that. I do have one certificate. It's the only thing I've ever won in my life. I can see it from here. I was a finalist in the best of the upstate for a morning show DJ, so that's something.
Speaker 1:That's something.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you, thank you everybody.
Speaker 1:I agree, I agree.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's it though though I mean winning.
Speaker 1:Winning emmy was a very surreal night, I have to say yeah, that's a big deal yeah, I mean, I'm sitting there with my producers and you know guys, from whyy our tv network in philadelphia and we're in new york and we're doing the thing, and they announced you know, the nominees.
Speaker 1:And then they said my name again and I leaned to my one producer and I said does the guy have a stutter like, why did he say my name again? She goes for some. You won go up. My husband kisses me on the cheek and goes don't trip.
Speaker 1:I'm like what, don't trip yeah, put that in my mind thanks, and then yeah, so but it was really, it was, it was real. And then you know, you sit there and I've you've got the emmy in front of you and I have my hands on it. And the one producer said what's going on? And I'm like, oh, they're any second. Now they're going to walk over and say we made a terrible mistake and I think we won because we were so weird, like who was cooking tofu on TV in 1998? Nobody. Good point, yeah.
Speaker 2:How do you make tofu taste good?
Speaker 1:You marinate it. Tofu tastes like nothing.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So whatever flavors you want it to take on, you put in your marinade or in your oil mixture in the pan. It really likes to be pan fried, lightly pan fried and flipped Crunchy on the edges. Delicious, but it tastes like you want it to taste like.
Speaker 2:Like you marinate it in chocolate and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:You could Probably not my choice, but there's way better ways to use chocolate.
Speaker 2:Okay, that's a good point. Well, christina, you've given us a lot of stuff to think about. Obviously, like I said on the last part, if you didn't listen to the last episode and find out Christina's story, you need to go back there right after this one and find out your little healing journey, how you defied what the doctor said you were supposed to do. You were supposed to have died.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a long time ago.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and here you are.
Speaker 1:And here we are.
Speaker 2:Just cooking, cooking away.
Speaker 1:Working.
Speaker 2:What do you see happening in the next five, ten years? Just continuing on with what you're doing?
Speaker 1:Until it's not fun anymore. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean I may find myself walking away from social media sooner than I think, because there's a lot of I don't know toxic stuff out there. I'm a pretty benign presence on TV. I cook vegetables. People follow the way to turn that into either something political or negative and some days I just think for my mental health I got to walk away from this at some point. But our travel business will continue for at least another couple years. I get help with cooking now so I don't have to cook every meal, which is nice. I get to be with the guests more the TV show. Until it's not fun, we'll keep doing it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah.
Speaker 2:That sounds great Well.
Speaker 1:I really want to leave the world a little better than I found.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think you're doing that.
Speaker 1:I hope.
Speaker 2:I'm going to go plant some herbs and see what happens.
Speaker 1:They'll grow. Just got to water them.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, there's that Little detail. Well, Christina, it was nice meeting you and talking to you on these two episodes and if people want to get a hold of you, just go to Christina Cooks. It's spelled just like it soundscom, and all the information is there. Your background, your story.
Speaker 1:Everything.
Speaker 2:Yeah, even the titles of the 13 books. Yep, not seven, like I said earlier. That's okay 13 books and, of course, by the time I get there, it'll probably be 14 books.
Speaker 1:Yeah, pretty soon Actually next year it'll be out. I think I'm still working on it, so I'm not sure.
Speaker 2:All right, well, thank you very much.
Speaker 1:Thank you very much, it was a real pleasure.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. You've been listening to the I Am Healing Strong podcast, a part of the Healing Strong organization. We hope you found encouragement in this episode, as well as the confidence to take control of your healing journey, knowing that God will guide you on this path. Healing Strong is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to connect, support and educate individuals facing cancer and other diseases through strategies that help to rebuild the body, renew the soul and refresh the spirit. Help to rebuild the body, renew the soul and refresh the spirit.
Speaker 3:It costs nothing to be a part of a local or online group. You can do that by going to our website at healingstrongorg and finding a group near you or an online group, or start your own, your choice. While you're there, take a look around at all the free resources. Though the resources and groups are free, we encourage you to join our membership program at $25 or $75 a month. This helps us to be able to reach more people with hope and encouragement, and that also comes with some extra perks as well. So check it out. If you enjoyed this podcast, please give us a five-star rating, leave an encouraging comment and help us spread the word. We'll see you next week with another story on the I Am Healing Strong podcast.
