How Acts of Love Make a Huge Difference for Cancer Impacted People

Our special guest today is Kim Hamer. She's the author of "100 Acts of Love." She has an incredible story about how she and her husband faced an incredibly difficult time and how that translated not only into her own family but into the workplace. Kim, welcome to our conversation here today.

Well, Brad, thank you so much for having me. It's really good to be here. I'm really excited for this conversation.

Well, I think it'd be awesome. And I mentioned that the name of your book is "100 Acts of Love." Your website, "wonderedactsoflove.com," and we'll get into the details of that in a minute. But because that's kind of a response to the situation you found yourself in, and I'm going to just set it up with the framework that you and your husband were moving along relatively well in life, and then circumstances changed. So can you kind of go from there and help us understand the story we're about to tell?

Sure. So we were this young couple raising three kids in California, in LA. And actually, it's funny, I look back now and I didn't realize how LA we were. He would get up in the morning, go work out, then I'd get up and get my workout clothes on and get the kids up. And then he'd come home, and I'd go work out, and he'd get ready for work and get the kids ready for school. And then I'd come home, and he'd go to work. And then I'd get the kids ready for school, and we'd do our thing. We ate organic food, made sure we took care of our bodies, went to services, went to church. So we were living this life. And then within three weeks, my husband showed some signs. I always laugh at this. We were treating his cancer, because we didn't know it was cancer at the time, with Delson cough syrup and ibuprofen because he was running these fevers, these very little light fevers, 100.5, and he was coughing a lot. So that's how we were treating it.

Just at home, you'd had a bug or some sort of, you thought, is how we're doing, right.

Exactly, exactly. And we also were sort of like, we don't really need to go to the doctor, we're fairly healthy people, or we don't want to burden. The other thought was, we don't want to burden the system. So we fast forward a couple of weeks, and he goes for a run, he comes back very quickly. He says, I can't breathe. We're at a primary care doctor, and she says, Hey, why don't you go see this viral infectious disease doctor because it sounds like something's up. So we go in there, and he takes an x-ray of my husband's chest and does an exam. He comes back in the exam room. It was like something out of a movie. He laced his fingers together, put them on the exam table, and he looked my husband in the eye and said, I think you have cancer. Then he showed us the x-ray with these nodules, white spots all over his lungs, which explained his coughing. It turned out he had lymphoma, and one of the early signs is running mild fevers consistently.

Before we go on, that must have been a thief. That moment takes your breath away in and of itself, does it not?

Yeah, it does. It's funny. I've told the story so often that I've removed myself from the emotion, but I just remember thinking, like, what? Like, just what? And I started to cry, and my husband started to cry. Then the doctor said, I'm gonna give you a few moments. I've got to make some phone calls because we need to get you started immediately. This was on a Friday, and the doctor thought it was so bad that there's no waiting for tests; you need to get going immediately.

No time to play; anything jump into it, right?

We made three calls: one to his parents, one to my parents, and then we called his boss. So those are the three calls we made on that Friday. We went immediately over to see a urologist because they thought it was testicular cancer due to the tumor there. It turns out it wasn't; it was something called large B-cell lymphoma with testicular large B-cell lymphoma, a fairly rare kind of lymphoma. I'm really glad we made the call to his boss because his boss then called some people, and we got in to see a doctor first thing on Monday morning. The urologist was like, "Okay, we're going to wait over the weekend," which the urologist didn't seem to understand how serious it was. So we waited over the weekend. Art's boss got us an appointment with a doctor who happened to specialize in this kind of cancer, and he said the alarm bells, "You need to be on oxygen. You need chemo by the end of this week. I'm not kidding; this thing is going to kill you." That was even scarier because you think you're in good hands, and then this other doctor's like, "No, you need to move fast." My husband went into the hospital on Tuesday night because he was struggling to breathe and was really scared. We don't know what it's like not to be able to breathe, and when you can't breathe consistently for a period of time, it sets off panic. So we brought him into the hospital. He had surgery on Wednesday, and they started chemo. I'm sorry; he had chemo. He had surgery on a Friday, and they started chemo on a Sunday.

Basically, all this came down in just a period of maybe 10 days or so, two weeks, yeah?

That's about 10 days. Yep. 10 days.

One boom, boom, boom, right after another. Just literally, in his case, might have felt like a kick to the chest. In your case, a kick to the gut, whatever metaphor you want to use. But you were knocked aback by this situation. So unfortunately, it progressed, right? Have you had a reaction?

Yeah, yeah. It was very clear in the beginning that we never said this to each other, but we knew he knew that his job was to beat this thing. It was at stage four, which is the worst stage, so his job was to beat it, and my job was to hold down the fort. That's what we did.

Your marriage and family project.

It became our marriage and family project. Yep, exactly, exactly. So he goes into remission, which is absolutely fantastic. But I think the thing I always expected is once you get that cancer-free, you throw parties and see life as brighter and better. Honestly, we were in shock. We were still in shock. I remember us lying in bed, looking at each other, and just going, "What just happened?" Then we had to put our marriage back together. Something like that really brings out the best and worst in your marriage. I was feeling resentful that he, you know, this was the man of the house, the breadwinner. We lived stereotypical lives, and I was resentful that he got sick. He felt a lot of shame for getting sick. So we had to work through that as well and decide that we wanted to stay together, which we did. I'm really glad for that. We decided we did like each other and worked through the resentment, shame, guilt, and everything that comes along with that.

Yet relatively young children at the same time, tweens. Yeah, we did.

Yes, yes. When he was first diagnosed, they were four, seven, and nine. So then the cancer, we're kind of going about our lives, we were building, we do start to really appreciate each other a bit more and each other's strengths and honor our weaknesses. And then the cancer comes back. It's, you know, looking back at photos, you can see that he's lost a lot of weight. So there was a little bit of denial on both our parts. But the cancer comes back and gets re-diagnosed in January, again at stage four, and then he dies four months later.

Wow, what a, first of all, I'm just sorry, you know, I'm sorry for your loss. And I know it's been several years now, but that stays with you. And you continue to share the story in your book and in your teaching and on a podcast. So you've chosen to be a courageous person to share that story and evolve your children and in other aspects of your life now. And we're gonna talk in a minute about your professional life. But at that, I want to touch him. I want to ask you about something that I think was pretty cool that you and your husband, whose name was Art, did you took pictures even dude and some pretty tough, yeah, really. And I saw some of them on your website. Tell me what precipitated this, this urge to record through photography. What was happening at that time? I think that's an interesting perspective.

Well, I'm really glad you asked that, Brad, because I hadn't really thought about it. So when he was first diagnosed with cancer, I kept a blog. I just wrote, I just felt the need. It was part of my process of processing what was happening in our lives. So I wrote, and a friend of mine said, "You need pictures." And it never dawned on me that I needed pictures. But then I started to get into photography. I didn't, like, get a camera. I just loved photography books. So for my birthday, Art bought me an Annie Leibovitz book, one of her books, and the photos in there are beautiful. But she documents Susan Sontag's death through the cancer, and she documents her father's death in that book. And I thought it was so moving. Then for Christmas the year that he was diagnosed the second time, he got me a camera. So I just started taking pictures, and I remember just thinking that there was that and there's also a friend of mine whose husband died in 9/11. She sent out a Christmas card that year with a ton of little photos of, you know, 25 little photos of them. And she said, "Take lots of pictures." So there were those two things that were sort of in my mind, that Annie Leibovitz had done this, and that this person who had lost her husband on 9/11 was giving me advice to do something that would impact my life. So I just started taking pictures, and he was okay with it. I asked, and he said, "Take away." I'm so grateful I have those photographs.

What a gift, what a special gift.

I think we forget. You know, this has been my story. I'm coming up on 14 years since his death. So I often, you know, like what you just did, you stopped me from telling the story for a moment because it was like, Kim, this is a big story. And I often forget that that was a huge moment in my life. And when I have those pictures, I can remember. And when the kids see those pictures, they can remember. So it almost verifies and validates, you know, this was a big deal. This happened, this hurt, this was painful, and you're resilient, and you were able to move forward.

I'm a big believer that we have to be sensitive to these special, and sometimes final or almost final gifts. We often don't remember the last words. There are books and books written about the last words people say or deathbed confessions and things like that. Why? Because people remember some of those stories. Photographs taken, videos, or moments, or even a song on the radio. I was talking to a person not too long ago who lived near where 9/11 happened in New Jersey, and the smoke from the fires of the Twin Towers, and for her, smoke triggers her. Right? It's a trigger. That can be good and bad, or poignant or sad, or all kinds of things. I'm sure you also see it in the pictures. I just pick it up here. You tell me when you see pictures of your children in that era, who are now young adults, I presume, you know, it just puts it in a different perspective as well.

And I've used those photographs with them to remind them of what resilience looks like, right? Because we don't, you know, resilience isn't just popping back up; it's putting one foot in front of the other. One thing I remember very clearly, and I just said this to someone yesterday, is your back is up against the wall. And turns out the walls have really good support, right? So that's resilience, standing and using that wall.

Resilience can help you move against the resistance and keep moving forward. Because if you just stay otherwise, you're just stuck. That's part of what I think happens to a lot of folks. I want to get into how you apply this theory to real-life situations in a second. But just to kind of point, a lot of people are stuck in the moment, stuck in their grief, dissolved into not able to function anymore out of their grief or their situations, be it cancer or whatever it may be. And you have to make some really conscious decisions, take some actions to move forward. You noticed, you picked up on some things people said. So I think people didn't say that were helpful, and some of them not so helpful in this process. And that tells me that even in the midst of your pain, some things just felt weird, some felt bad, and some felt good. Am I anywhere near correct here?

Absolutely right. Yeah, I couldn't even describe it sometimes why they felt good or why they felt bad. But I just knew that they were, well, wrong or right.

Let's go there with some of the statements or some of the types of things that were said that kind of fell into those categories: good, bad, and weird, if you will.

So one thing I tell everybody all the time is, "Don't say, 'If you need anything, let me know.'" And I know that probably 99.9% of your listeners have said it. I used to say it all the time because it feels like it's really helpful. But there are really four specific reasons it's not helpful. The first one is when someone is sharing their pain with you, they really need you to share. I'm not saying you need to feel their pain, but what they want, they need witnesses. We all need witnesses. We need people to see us in the moment, in those bad moments and in the good moments. And when you jump into, "If you need anything, let me know," you're not witnessing them. So taking that moment to just be shocked by the information is okay. It's okay to burst out crying. You know, it's not okay to get them to comfort you, but it's okay to burst out crying. It's okay to say, "I don't know what to say." That the gravity of this situation means that the gravity of the situation strikes you so hard that you are speechless. That's a beautiful thing. So I think that phrase does not do that. The second reason it's not helpful is, what is anything? Like, what is anything?

Anything, you know, is literally nothing in a way.

Exactly. I had a toddler, a four-year-old toddler when my husband was diagnosed. Did that mean that you were going to take your brand-new, just clean, just detailed car up to preschool to pick up my vomiting toddler? Or did you mean that you'd be happy to drop off a bottle of wine? Anything is too vague. The third reason it's not helpful is because now you're putting the pressure on the person who is dealing with this terrible thing to figure out what you mean by "anything." And I don't have the energy. I have barely enough energy to function in my life as it's currently turned upside down to figure out to break apart my day. And then the last reason it's not helpful is because I don't know about you, but most of us aren't very good at asking for help. And so now you have this vulnerable person who might have come up with one thing that they think might be helpful to them, and now you're asking them to ask you to do it, risking that you might go, "Oh gosh, well, you know, they're not going to do it." Nobody wants to be vulnerable like that. So that's often why people use that phrase, and nobody and they don't, you know, and the person doesn't call you to ask.

I'm a retired pastor. I've conducted in the neighborhood of 300 funerals in my 40-something years. And what you described as a scenario is so ridiculously common. It's, you know, I've been there, standing next to the casket, people say things like, "What else can I do?" And the things I found better and better is when somebody just shook your hand or gave a look and just said something like, "I'm here for you," or "What specific thing can I do for you?" So let's go there from that. Because I know your book is "100 Acts of Love," which tells me it's slightly different than "100 Words of Love." So I don't know anywhere close to what you're about. But go there with what sort of things you found that were good or helpful.

Well, I do want to let people know, you know, you hit the nail on the head. The best thing you can do is to honor them in that moment and then be specific about the kind of help you're willing to offer and offer it more than once. Because again, this person is not dealing with a full deck of cards, and they're going to forget or they're going to think you really don't mean it. So we all have helping superpowers, things we like to do, things we are good at. Those are the best possible ways to help somebody. Other things that people did, one of the most helpful things someone did for us was they put a cooler by the front door. And this was the second time my husband got cancer. And it was so helpful because it relieved me from the need to answer the door. And sometimes I was in the mood, and Art was in the mood for company, and sometimes we weren't. And oftentimes, people show up with a meal and they want to connect. And they say, "How are you?" And then I would feel the pressure because they just brought me a meal. I would feel the pressure that I need to respond, right? I feel like they just did the law of reciprocity. You just gave me something, I need to respond in kind. And I don't want to respond. I'm tired. I've had a really long day. We just got bad news from the doctor, whatever it is. And so that cooler by the front door allowed me and Art the option of responding. And after he died, it allowed me the option of responding. So if I knew a meal was being dropped off, I didn't necessarily have to answer the door. And that was a really great thing. Another great one is, I often tell people, just do the little things. Bringing a meal every Monday is great, and I will never downplay that. But a car needs registration. Kids need to be picked up from school or have a night out. A worker needs a hot cup of coffee. So it's the little things. The book is full of these little ideas, simple ways that you can show up. I wanted to make it easy for people. I wanted people to know that it's not the big, overwhelming things that really make a difference. It's the small, little things that you do, that you show up, that really help.

What you're sharing in your book is essentially a list of tips or activities that people can do. It can generate ideas for the specific acts that they think they can do. And I think what I'm hearing you say here, and I'd like for you to go deeper into this a little bit, is that part of what has to happen for people to navigate tragedy or navigate these things is they either have to be an action-taker themselves, or they have to engage in some form of activity, something that needs to be done, an activity. So I'd like you to delve more into that because you then chose to do some activities yourself. I'm thinking of writing. Some of the things that you did to help process this yourself. What are some of the activities that you think people can do to be helpful to navigate through something like the tragedy you experienced?

I think writing for me was a very important one. I didn't really consider myself a writer until that book kind of came through me. Writing was very important. I think if you're the person who is dealing with this loss or this cancer, finding your people to talk to is really important. Not everybody is going to be your person, and it's just sort of the way it is. And so finding those people who are going to be able to hold space for you, and you can have different people. You can have the people that you call up hysterically crying, feeling lost with, and then that person holds you, and you know, holds you physically or figuratively, and lets you process. You can have your prayer group, your prayer group that you just need some extra prayers right now, and today. So you have those people in your life. You know, you can have the logical people in your life like, these are my options for this type of cancer treatment. What do you think? Can you pull up some research for me? So you can have all different sorts of people in your life. I think the most important thing, though, is to have people in your life. Oftentimes, what I see is someone will have a cancer diagnosis or deal with loss, and they have been hurt, and so they don't they figure everyone else is going to be like this. So they pull back.

They've had experiences and they say, "Forget about it, I'm out."

Exactly, Or seven people have said to them, "If you need anything, let me know." And they're realizing that's not helpful, and no one's taking action. They get angry, and they get hurt, and they pull back.

That exacerbates the pain. So let's address the I heard you say several things there. You talked about writing, people, prayer groups, logical people, and medical people to be comfort and hold your hand. Let's go there. The mention of prayer, I just want to go there to the area of the role connected to our Higher Power, spiritual plane. What role did this play in helping you navigate this situation, since he's passed away? Tell me the role that a spiritual life plays in everything that you're about here.

So in the beginning, not much. We were going to church, and we stopped going because I couldn't go. I didn't want to take the kids by myself. We had someone coming in and talking to him, a spiritual adviser who would meet with him once a week during the first round of the first time he had cancer. But after that, we didn't have it the second time. So there wasn't a lot of spirituality in our lives at that point. We had people praying for us, which was helpful. Where it really came in was when I was brought to my knees after he died. It wasn't just the first year; I was not brought to my knees until the third year after he died. When I realized I could not continue going on the way I was going, I couldn't raise my children. I was dealing with depression, messing around with alcohol. I knew there was this little voice, God, for lack of a better word, that just said, "You're in trouble, and you need to get help." It wasn't that I wasn't even connected enough to hear God's love. I was only connected enough to hear God tell me that I needed to get help. So that's where my spiritual life really took off, in that complete surrender. I couldn't do my life anymore the way it was going, and I was afraid that I was going to harm myself or harm my children and mess up even worse. That little voice was just like, "You need help," and I was like, "You're absolutely right." That's when I started to get help, and that's when God stepped in. I was open, as you hear the stories all the time, where people are brought to their knees. Even then, it took me a while to get on my knees. I would pray to God standing up because I was too willful. Things really started to move when I got to my knees.

Well, it seems to me you strike me as a woman who, in many ways, would like to think that I can figure this out. I can get through this. But you found that you needed people and you needed the spiritual plane in order to ultimately deal with us. I don't know if that's anywhere near correct or not, but that's my take on it. I just play that's basically true for everybody. You need people, you need to have the physical aspect of it, if you will. You need to get active, you need to get engaged. You can't stay locked in the house under the covers the whole time. You've got to get out and get engaged, and you need to make a connection to something greater than self, including other people, and then share those gifts with one another. And it sounds like you did a pretty good job with that. And it's an ongoing process, and you're involved with it now. And I see, as we share with you, that I was looking at your website and talking to you a couple of times now. You have a kind of a beautiful smile that's about you, that resonates inner joy, and that's a good thing. And yet I know that whatever people have great pain, there are tears, there is anger, there's all the emotions that come into play. And I just want to ask about where have you found in this whole process, how have you found and experienced joy or laughter or even experiences with your husband that put a smile on your face? Tell me where you get that from, if at all. I just want to talk to you about joy and laughter and that part of things.

Yeah, that's a really good question. I don't know. I just think that there is something that, you know, I have always kind of liked and laughed at things, I think. I think it's, it's, that's a really good question, Brad. I think what I find is, it is it's just sort of this optimism. It's sort of like, you know, things are bad, and they could always be worse. Okay, I know. I know. That sounds like, you know, when RT was first diagnosed in January, the second time he was diagnosed the second time. Lebanon was bombing Israel, Israel's bombing Lebanon, I don't remember which one. Right. And I remember thinking, we're not there. Yeah, I just remember thinking we could be really relocating the whole family to a different part of Israel to a different hospital because the hospital that we were going to is being bombed. I know that people think, well, that's sort of a survival mechanism. But it is, and it worked, and Art and I laughed about it. We were like, could be worse, we could be being bombed, you know?

Kind of a 'sucks to be you' type of thing, right?

Exactly. So I think it is about finding the joy and finding the sweetness. What I've learned through this process, and through my spiritual process, is that I heard this quote, actually, it's so good. It was by an actor, I've forgotten his name, African American, a young black actor, new to the scene. And he said, he really wanted a steady life. He's like, I'm so tired of these highs and these lows, and his therapist said, you know, you get a heartbeat, and it goes up and down. But if you go with the same, you're flatlined.

I've not heard that. But that’s awesome.

What I remember is that those lows are really low, and they're hard. But the highs are really high and they're great. And so, and I tried to tamp myself down with the alcohol and with everything else I was trying to use. I was trying to tamp it down because I didn't want to feel. But I also realized I was afraid of feeling the highs. I was afraid of those incredible moments. Once I worked through that, even in the lowest moments, you know, I shared with you before we started recording, you said, "How are you?" and I was like, "Well, that's up there yesterday." So the conversation, and in those tears, even in the moment of crying, I was so grateful I was crying. At one point, I'm on my knees, I'm laughing and crying at the same time because I'm laughing at the old Kim who would have never been on her knees. And I'm crying because I'm in such pain and I want God to inspire me one way or the other. I'm also crying because I'm so grateful. So I had all these sad, grateful, and joyful moments all in one. When you can open yourself up to that, there's that piece of it. And also, it's just really fun. I have to say, I was at Camp widow two weeks ago in Tampa, and there's such a thing as Camp widow, love it, and we made a lot of jokes about dead people. And when you're in that group, you get to make those kinds of jokes. And it's funny. And it's a way to connect with each other, and it's joyful. If you don't have a dead person in your life, you probably look at us like we're crazy. Same thing with cancer, you know, we made a lot of jokes. When he was bald, we talked about going to a restaurant and complaining that they found hair in his food.

That's a great story.

So it's the ability to understand that laughter isn't an escape. No matter how bad the moment is, there is a moment where you can just take a breath and give a little giggle. It relieves some of the pain and the harshness of it.

It's a real human emotion, just like crying is. That is, you're feeling something. I'm sure there are moments when you think of art and think of your family, moments, good and bad, that just bring a smile to your face, right? So absolutely, that's awesome. The time comes, though, in this life, Cam, when you can't. You mentioned it's been 14 years since the last him, and one of the things that some people get stuck, and what I'm all about here on this podcast is helping people get unstuck and get back to life, get back to living. That was the case for you. You had to get back to your life, get back to your world, and your business world. You had to face a few challenges there about that because not everybody is equipped to deal with us in the workplace. So let's take our last few moments and deal with that, the business side of things. It's an important part of your business that you run. You're an HR person. Tell me about this scenario that you found in the workplace, that is kind of a unique thing that became a problem that you are now helping to address.

Yeah, so most people don't know what to say or what to do. And I go into the workplace, and I realize it's the same thing. Most people don't know what to say or what to do. It was painful to see because I saw a group of people who wanted to help this employee dealing with cancer or an employee dealing with loss, not sure what to do, looking for direction. On the other side, there's this person who wants and needs support. We spend a third of our lives at work, working with individuals we see more than our partners. They want support, but they don't know how to get it. So that's where I went with the business. I'm now helping managers and HR teams understand what to say and how to work with employees dealing with cancer, loss, or even if there's an employee death. I think it's something that, in the end, I want to say this: for those people who are really struggling, it's about putting one pinky toe in front of the other. I didn't get here by taking leaps and bounds. Those early days were really hard, and there were days I didn't want to go on. I learned to lower my expectations for myself, which may sound counterintuitive to raising your expectations, but what I found is that expectations often turned into resentment when I couldn't meet them. So my mentor always says, "Expectations are resentment under construction." So having really low expectations helped. Some mornings, it was just about getting my feet on the floor. What's next? Probably go to the bathroom. Great, done that. Now, wash your hands. Great. It was one step at a time.

Toes at a time, just tiny steps.

Exactly. And it was also remembering to say, "I can't." It's not "I don't want to." It's "I can't," and letting that be the okay answer. Because there was always this thing of, "I really want to" or "I should be able to" or, you know, "I will when I really..." I can't. I can't. I just can't right now. So it was making sure that I was giving myself permission to say, "I can't" right now as often as I possibly could. I just wanted to put that out there because I think that's something that there's no magic.

That's a part of the process that you teach HR folks and corporate types, and it gives them some tools to work with. Because I know HR folks are dealing with, you know, all the protocols of the workplace and all the management of personnel and other things. A lot of times, it's the human emotion that we have a hard time dealing with. I know they are given certain protocols on how to emotionally handle hiring and firing and that kind of stuff, but not always this kind of situation. I think it's a real need. My wife works at a large law firm, and this is a relatively common thing. People do get sick, and they do die in a law firm with 1,000 people in it. It happens, and you have to deal with it. Even in my small offices that I dealt with, we just had four or five people, and the little things, "Hi, how are you doing?" that makes a difference. I just want to thank you for giving us some handles to work on here for the workplace. Is there anything you want to say specifically about how this might be helpful if there's an HR person listening to us today who says, "Okay, this is exactly what I need"?

I want people to know that there is a balance between empathy and productivity. I think what happens in the workforce is something like this happens, and we back off because we're afraid of asking people to step in and show up. That's one of the biggest mistakes we make. There's a way to be empathetic and still drive productivity on a team without being mean. You don't have to be mean to do it. It's not as difficult as people think. People want to help, and they want to show up, and they also want to get work done. You can work with employees dealing with cancer, loss, depression, or grief on a team in a way that helps the team do both of those things. When you do it well, you end up driving employee engagement higher, you have more connected employees, and that leads to more productivity. So there's a business reason to do this as well.

Well, let's close with this final thought here. I always like to close with a sense of the results of what's happened here. The name of your book is "100 Acts of Love." I'd like for you to tell people how to get it, but give us one or two, give us one freebie. Share that with us in the context of a story of maybe someone who's been helped by the book or by your own personal counsel or something like that. Give us a story.

It's interesting you asked for this. I just got an email yesterday from a woman who's been on my email list since I was doing a different business. She shared that her husband died two years ago in the middle of COVID. What my book gave her was the opportunity to know exactly what to ask for help. She made copies of the book and sent it to people, saying, "This is what I need." She used it as a guide, sharing specific tips with people. When they would say, "If you need anything, let me know," especially those close to her, she'd say, "This tip is this, and you can do this." She found it really helpful. I want to tell a quick story too. My neighbor, Nate, came to my house after my husband passed away. He asked, "When was the last time you changed the oil in your car?" I had no idea and was hesitant to accept help. Nate insisted, saying he'd take care of it. He asked me to leave the keys in the mailbox, and he changed the oil, washed the car inside and out, and filled it with gas. When I got in the car the next day, I was overcome with emotion. Nate's simple gesture had relieved a tremendous amount of pressure for me. In the early stages of grief, remembering anything was impossible. His act of kindness illustrated the power of simple gestures. I thanked him later, and he told me, "I want to thank you for allowing me to help you; it helped me too."

Sure. First of all, you can go to 100actsoflove.com/what-not-to-say. You can download four other phrases never to say to anybody dealing with cancer or loss and what to say instead. I don't want to leave you hanging. That's 100actsoflove.com/what-not-to-say, no spaces, no capitalization. I'm on Instagram at 100actsoflove, and I'm also on LinkedIn. I post Tuesday tips and do a Thursday live. If you have any questions about what you should do for an employee, just ask me, and I'll answer them on the live. I'm also launching a YouTube channel next month.

Awesome. And that's 100actsoflove, and I would just point out that's numeral 100.

Yes. Thank you.