Creating Midlife Calm: Coping Skills for Stress & Anxiety in Family, Work & Relationships

Ep. 156 A Midlife Couple Shares Their Journey With Pancreatic Cancer, Anxiety, and Coping Skills

• MJ Murray Vachon LCSW • Season 4 • Episode 156

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What if the way you respond to crisis could reshape your anxiety—and your relationships?
This powerful episode reveals how one midlife couple used emotional presence, humor, and grounded coping skills to face a devastating cancer diagnosis.

Discover:

1.     Coping skills that hold both grief and joy in times of deep uncertainty

2.     Why emotional honesty—not toughness—relieves midlife anxiety during crisis

3.     How community, faith, and presence redefine mental wellness in the face of cancer

Listen now to discover how midlife anxiety shifts when you stop fighting and start dancing through it.

 




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About the Host:
MJ Murray Vachon LCSW is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with more than 48,000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching her Mental Wellness curriculum, Inner Challenge. Four years ago she overcame her fear of technology to create a podcast that integrated her vast clinical experience and practical wisdom of cultivating mental wellness using the latest information from neuroscience. MJ was Social Worker of the Year in 2011 for Region 2/IN.

Creating Midlife Calm is a podcast designed to guide you through the challenges of midlife, tackling issues like anxiety, low self-esteem, feeling unworthy, procrastination, and isolation, while offering strategies for improving relationships, family support, emotional wellbeing, mental wellness, and parenting, with a focus on mindfulness, stress management, coping skills, and personal growth to stop rumination, overthinking, and increase confidence through self-care, emotional healing, and mental health support.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

in this episode, you'll hear the journey of a midlife couple who shares their personal story of having pancreatic cancer. Welcome to Creating Midlife Calm, a podcast dedicated to empowering midlife minds to overcome anxiety, stop feeling like crap and become more present with your family, all while achieving greater success at work. I'm MJ Murray Vachon, a licensed clinical social worker with over 48, 000 hours of therapy sessions and 31 years of experience teaching mental wellness. Welcome to the podcast and Happy Mother's Day. today I share an encore episode as a tribute to the life of Jay Caponigro who passed away on May 11th, 2023. Just six weeks prior to his death, he and his wife Lynn graciously sat down with me to discuss their journey with cancer. Three days ago, as I was driving to work, I suddenly realized, oh, Sunday's Mother's Day, I paused, is this really the right episode to share on a day meant to celebrate mothers? Then I re-listened and my answer was, and is, absolutely. This episode is about what it means to nurture life before, during, and even after life turns upside down and breaks your heart. Inside each of us is mothering energy. Some of you are fortunate to grow up with a woman who gave it to you in abundance, others perhaps not, and you've wisely devoted your adult life to cultivating that care, to opening your heart and becoming someone who can give and receive that kind of love, because that's the beauty of human development. None of us get everything we need in childhood, but in adulthood, we can heal. We can form relationships with ourselves and with others that can make us feel worthy, loved, and joyful. Out of my 150 plus episodes I've recorded, this one is my favorite. To be honest, it's not really about dying. It's about living. It's about loving, and yes, it's about dancing. It's a longer episode in the format of my first podcast, Inner Challenge. But the real gold is in listening to it all the way through, whether you do it in one sitting or across a few. And if you know someone suffering from cancer or working in the field of cancer care, consider sharing this episode with them today. It might just be the most meaningful Mother's Day gift you could give. So won't you join me as we go back to two years ago and this beautiful conversation. On the podcast today, I have invited Jay and Lyn Caponigro who a year ago this month. Learned that Jay, a very healthy 53-year-old father of four fantastic humans, senior director of community engagement at Notre Dame and husband to one phenomenal woman was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer. As many of you know, a cancer diagnosis throws a person and their loved ones into a complex medical system full of experts and different opinions, ups and downs that are not only physical financial. Emotional, psychological, and spiritual. I have known and admired these two people for such a long time, and I'm so grateful that they're willing to talk with us about the role that mental wellness has played in their life as they have move with this journey of cancer. Thank you both for coming today. Thanks for the invitation. We're humbled. Wonderful to be with you. MJ, you're just two of my favorite people. I always start the podcast asking people to define mental wellness for themselves, and how do you know when you feel mentally good?

Jay Caponigro:

Pre-cancer, maybe my definition would've been a little different, but I'm not sure yet. I'm still working through that. I would've said a healthy balance, uh, physical health. Definitely having a purpose, sense of direction. Work is tied into my mental health. Being able to have a perspective of others, be part of who I am and how I do what I do. Balance with community, balance with my own need for taking care of myself. I, I think those things are all pieces of it. And then being able to know my feelings. I think this has become a little bit clearer to me with cancer is knowing my feelings when I'm having them and accepting them. Lynn and I often talk these days about having waves and waves of emotion. It's not something that we can name. Sometimes it's joy, sometimes it's sorrow. Sometimes it's fear. It's just a wave of emotion, I think more than ever. I'm clear that's just part of life. That's something that. I need to accept in myself and in Lynn and in those around me as part of our acknowledging our mental health. These things happen while purpose is still really important, work is still really important. Naming feelings, sometimes it just is overwhelming, but that's okay. We'll get through that together. And that's where I think community has really grown tremendously in importance for my mental wellbeing.

Lyn Caponigro:

I think a big part of mental wellness for me is knowing who to go to, when to go to them, and in recognizing those waves, sometimes those waves can be all of those emotions all at the same time, which is really an interesting phenomena. Laughing and crying at the same time. Who knew that you could feel those both as strongly at the same time, but then having the people around us, and that's one thing that I really feel like has been solidified. Through this journey and through this whole experience is the community and how important that community is, and knowing where to go and knowing that there are multiple people who, that we can go to, we can go to each other, but then beyond each other we have resources that we can go to. When I'm mentally well, I am identifying those people and going to those people and getting the support that I need. So

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

part of what I hear you both articulating so beautifully is. It's really this one, two dance of super intense feelings that you have to do something with. I wonder if you could talk about what that feels like. That super intense, overwhelming sense of two paradoxical feelings at the same time that then the other part of the dance is, what the heck do I do with it? How do you know how to do something with those over?

Jay Caponigro:

Warming feelings. I think the Holy Spirit helps a lot with that. Some might call it serendipity. Sometimes it's just grinding it out. I love the word dance though. I'm really becoming a fan of that word in terms of my relationship with cancer. It's funny that you use that. A colleague and I were talking the other day and I was sharing that I really hate this language about. Fighting cancer and this war. There's all sorts of verbs being used to talk about cancer that are negative. And it is a dance. We are playing a game. It's not a game. It is a dance. Cancer is moving ahead and we are trying to stop. We stop it a little cancer moves ahead, can, then we nip it a little bit and, and that physical feeling of being manifest in the mental health side of things is, I like the language of dance because. Sometimes I do step on Lynn's toes still, and the emotions are overwhelming either for me or for her, but sometimes, wow. We get in the swing and it feels really reassuring. It feels comforting.

Lyn Caponigro:

I feel like there's a lot of grounding that's involved. That's great. Yeah, there's a lot of grounding. There's a lot of just breathing together, just being together, celebrating when there's something to really celebrate. But yet, then just being there with each other. And it's not only us, we've really brought our children into this, brought our children into this dance and to the point where we accept them wherever they come from and whatever they bring to this. And so we're dancing with them to and through their emotions and we check in with each one of them separately, and we check in as a group. And I think one of the parts that we definitely held onto. Is humor and how humor has a role in all of this has a role in this dance and how we, we can be having our fam FaceTime together right after we've gotten bad information and someone's cracking some kind of joke to lighten the mood and to say, Hey, we're still celebrating life. We gotta find all sides of this.

Jay Caponigro:

I think humor has been very important. The first night we found out what this was about, not the depth of it all, but that there was a real issue. It was cancer and it was significant. I. I called a priest friend and I told Lynn, I said, I need to call this particular person because I need to say, I need to

Lyn Caponigro:

practice saying, I

Jay Caponigro:

need to practice saying what we have, and yeah, exactly how do I talk about this? But how do I talk about it with some humor? It's been part of my life. It's gonna have to be part of this journey, and I need to do it with somebody I trust and who I know has a good sense of humor and can see the gravity of it, but also be able to see the levity. Or at least bring some levity to it. And I think that's been helpful. Back to the original question about how do we manage the dance. I said serendipity and I said the Holy Spirit, and sometimes they're the same. I was talking to a close family member and they said something that was offputting to me about cancer, and one thing we learned early on was that we don't have to solve everyone's grief for what we're going through. We don't have to solve how they're feeling. They do. And I've had to remind a few people along the way about that. And this person being pretty close, I've had to remind a couple of times us feeling a little angsty about that. And then the next day I had a meeting with a colleague, and the colleague is the person who brought this dance language to it, to the table, and I just thought, gosh, that just changes my perspective and makes me feel validated. Also gives me another way to talk about this and be more positive about it and have a perspective that I can engage people with in a way that's how we've tried to live our lives together. Was that serendipity or was that the Holy Spirit bringing that person into my life that day. Yeah. So that helps. There are other days when. We are coming back from a trip to this or that doctor and you go, ah, what are we gonna manage this next step? Lynn and I talk about the in-between stages. It's one thing to be on a treatment and say, okay, let's take this one for what it's worth, the harder stages of this dance, or when we don't know what the next step is, and knowing that there'll be a time when there won't be a next step. That can be paralyzing if we don't wanna hold each other's hand through that, and then receive the love and the caring and the prayers from so many people around us. Being open to that is really, I think, a gift that I cherish.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

A little known fact about mental wellness is it's really spiritual, not necessarily religious, but part of what I hear you saying, Jay, beautifully, is from the very beginning, you listen to yourself. This little instinct, holy Spirit, no synchronicity, whatever one wants to call it, that says, call this person. And from the beginning you connected to the spirit of laughter of humor, which is medicinal. There's actually studies that show that you also have connected to the spirit of community first with each other. It was never a question to me if I would have one of you on, because one of the things that my clients have taught me, I. My dad taught me who also had cancer was it is a community experience and the dance of the community that you are in is always needing to be updated. Re choreographed might be a better way of saying it because you are the only two who know what you need for yourselves as you move through this, how much you can take. Care of other people. How much you can give other people is so intensely personal and it's updated all the time. I too, I don't like the cancer verbiage of fighting. I know that we live in a super fighting kind of culture, but that's not been my experience of people who've been able to live with cancer, where the dance metaphor, I think is so much healthier and really just leans people into. Spirit, whether it's their religious spirit, their spiritual spirit, or their mental wellness spirit. What were you gonna say, Lynn?

Lyn Caponigro:

I was just gonna say a very poignant moment for me, a memory that I have from the very beginning. The very first time that we went to a scan and realized there was something going on because they sent Jay back in another time, and you could just tell from the medical personnel, I'm a nurse, I know what the language is, I know what the body language is when something's going on. And Jay just reached over, held my hand and said, here we go. Wow. Yeah. And it's been that. It's been here we go onto the next step. Here we go. Across the country. Here we go. Yeah. Yeah.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

It's how you started out, right? And this is the in sickness and in health. Yep. When you said that, I imagined how we often felt on our wedding day. Oh, here we go. It's the for better. Yeah. This is the for worst, it seems to me that. Under the, here we go, is a tremendous amount of fear at that stage and at every stage when you're walking through this. And I'm just wondering if you can put into words, how do you tame the fear?

Lyn Caponigro:

That's a really good question because I think we have realized that we have a different fear. We have different fears in this, and it took us a while to come to that understanding. That there are different, other different approaches, different things that are going on for each one of us. A big part of taming the fear, I think, was finding ways to prepare ourselves, getting things physically set, prepaying for a funeral plot, funeral, and all those kind of things of those kind of fears, financial fears, those kinds of things are being addressed and continue to be addressed. And then there are other fears that have come along the way as the fears come. We try to address the physical parts that we can deal with. Are there still other fears that come up? Absolutely. There's a fear of watching him be in pain.

Jay Caponigro:

What are you talking about? I'm never in pain,

Lyn Caponigro:

but I know a fear for him is what is the pain that's coming? And he can speak to that himself. And that's where I come back to that community. There have been so many people been put in our path. People that are from our past. People that we have reconnected to from our past, but we haven't been as close to that. We are now developing deeper relationships with. So there are people that are able to help me put that in perspective. Just being with them and letting them help me through that fear is very, very powerful for me. I think

Jay Caponigro:

fear is, obviously, you're absolutely right, it's part of what we encounter day to day, but I don't think I've ever put it in the same. Spaces gratitude to uh, kind of compare them. So I guess better said is I haven't really considered the relationship between fear and gratitude and how they work off each other. Or maybe in my case, gratitude helps me deal with the fear. We are in a clinical trial with some of the best minds in the world at the National Institutes for Health. How the heck did I get there from the south side of Chicago? How did that happen? That's more than serendipity, but I'm incredibly grateful for it, and I'm grateful for a team of clinicians that are thinking with, I get the feeling they're even thinking about it at home. Well, how great is that to be working with somebody who sees that we wanna make this happen? Yes, we're working humor with that relationship too, and we're honest about the fears with them and. I think we're all in it to figure out a way to make this better for somebody at some point. And if it starts now, we'll be even more grateful. But I do think it's not giving into the fear to be grateful. It's not fighting the fear to be grateful. It's just being overwhelmed by that other really positive emotion and praying for that gratitude because sometimes you don't feel it. But it helps to keep resentment at bay. It helps to keep anger at bay. I'm not afraid of being angry about this. I just don't find much value in it, and it doesn't make me feel better physically, and it doesn't make me feel better mentally. But gratitude does that eases my discomfort. I hadn't really considered that, that relationship. Maybe I'm overdoing it, but it's working for me and prayer is there all the time and the prayer is. For gratitude, it's prayer is for grace, and the prayer is for yes, serenity, and that's an important prayer for us right now. There's no prayer of why me, Lord, this happens to people all over. If what we've seen at Mayo, at our local oncology place and at the federal level, people that are suffering everywhere. We're blessed to be in a community, to be suffering with folks that connect with us in this suffering.

Lyn Caponigro:

Speaking to that piece that you said about the why me, how is it that I, from South side of Chicago, from this working class family, am now at the National Institute of Health getting treatment, and I think so much of that is part of that serendipity or part of that, what has been placed along our way? Why am I a nurse? How did I get to be to that point where I can read through and sift through a lot of the information that I'm looking for? Why did my brother find this article that said, here's a medication that might work for you? There's just so many different pieces along the way that I feel like are leading us towards this greater purpose. We've often felt that sense of a greater purpose. I. I think that really helps with the fear is that knowing that there's a reason, there is some greater reason why all of this is happening, and maybe we can be a part of that. Maybe we can use our gifts and the people that have been along our path in order to help us get to that, to see some meaning in all of this. That

Jay Caponigro:

is so true. I think you remind me of stories that we've heard from people who have experienced cancer and other serious illnesses, and they've said, you need an advocate. Make sure you have an advocate going in. One of the things I'm so grateful for is your medical training, but also your just dogged determination and persistence, and you ask questions that I wouldn't ask early on. I, I almost wanted to shush. You don't ask that question. And I was smart enough after 30 some years, not to shush you, but also smart enough to watch in awe to just sit back and let you lead. Really the wisdom there, if I had any, it was. Watch you lead and advocate and, and then to admire you because the doctors were saying things like, yeah, we should try that, or let's call somebody about that. Or, oh, I know somebody who could help. When I said, arriving at NIH is something I'm grateful for. To me, it wasn't serendipity. I agree it was a path of relationships that connected to relationships, but you were at the beginning of that and in the middle of that and continue to be. A companion and a leader. And in that I'm very grateful in a selfish way. Um, I know it. There's a reason you're doing it that is for you too. I like having you around. Thank you for jumping in that and our kids like having you around, but I do worry it's hard on you too and taking that responsibility, but I am

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

very grateful. But part of what I hear you both saying, and Lynn, you're a professor. This isn't about theory, but it is about theory. Right. And Jay, in your earliest days you were a community activist and this, it's an activist project that is for your own wellness, but hopefully for the wellness of others. But you said so many wise things that I want to do my best to mirror back because I don't want our listeners to miss all this wisdom. We started with fear. We move to anger what you said you have learned in real life. Jay activism often starts out of anger, this is not correct. This shouldn't be this way. What you have learned is anger isn't life giving. I can flip the fear into anger, or I could hold and dance with the fear. You find out that when I dance with it, I actually end up finding gratitude. Lynn, I think you're saying the same thing. You're dancing. With the fear, but for you, it makes you an advocate that advocacy has really been a dance of knowledge, and the knowledge leads you to places that keep having these connections and these aha moments, these epiphanies that make all of this tolerable, even life-giving and sustainable because you're really doing all this Inner work while you're very busy. I. Doing lots of outer work. You're using your whole selves and you're using your whole relationship with each other. Jay, I really am humbled by your ability to let go and to let Lynn lead and to not shush a woman who can't be shushed anyways, you know that. I know you can't. Mm-hmm. But I think that so much of a diagnosis like this is, can we accept our humble place in it? And humility isn't being false. Humility. Humility is I have gifts and how do I lean into them for the benefit of all, and that's a beautiful dance when we use our gifts for the benefit of all.

Jay Caponigro:

There's so much in there that you just shared. In summary, thank you for reflecting that back with us. A couple of reactions. I spent 10 years as a community organizer, as you said, organizing in the way that I learned it and practiced it and continue to use it in my work is. Understanding that anger is a very important motivator and driver, but hot anger leads to rage and flames out. Cold anger is a durable and longer term source to help you reach your self-interest. In some ways, that's how I'm practicing being angry on this personal journey. My work in organizing is in the public world of J Cab Negro. It's not in my private world. Two, the principles don't match. They don't often translate over. Sometimes they do. But cold anger a much healthier way to live.'cause you recognize that there are things that we should be angry about. But if you are stuck in the anger part of it, you flame out. I've had wiser people than me express it. Part of what we're dealing with in this much more private situation. The letting go piece is really tricky. Talking at the same two levels of life on the public side. There's some things I have to let go of too, and that's really hard because I've built my life around my work and my work is built around relationships in the community and in the wider Notre Dame community. I find that I have to, part of what's great about my. Diagnosis and this past year has been my employer's been able to find a way for me to continue to work. That has been really meaningful to me, to be able to tie up loose ends, to be able to make transitions, to build some redundancy in my role. I guess the question I have is whether I still have. Some room or energy to grow something or build something. I've built a lot. I'm a builder more than I am a maintainer. That's just what I've come to know about myself. My boss in particular has really given me some space to continue to be me in that role, even though I have to take time out to travel or take time out for certain treatments. But letting go of some of the bigger things I've built when I know it's time I've got to let those go to somebody else, uh, has been another humbling. Part of this, but it's necessary and I realize it, and the same in the private space of knowing that there's certain things that I need to do differently with my family now, or I physically can't do the same way I did before. So I need to be in a different role. Finding the new role, finding the new way that I can be productive and contribute. That's been trickier. That sometimes gets me in a funk, but I think that. I've been pulled along in some nice ways by my family, especially the kids, like you talked about, Len Workwise. There've just been some caring relationships that have helped me as well. Those are why. It just comes back to that sense of gratitude around our community in so many different, at so many different levels.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

Can you talk a little bit about how you decided as a couple to really integrate your children into this?

Lyn Caponigro:

MJ. Part of it was the timing of it all. We were preparing for our oldest son's wedding two weeks after we got the Diagno. Well, two weeks before the very first scan, we didn't even have a diagnosis yet. Jay was just going to the doctor'cause he had a little extra gas. We knew we were getting ready for this big wedding out of town. We were all going to Texas to go celebrate a wedding. So we knew we had to do something. We knew we had to address it. We knew we were going to be at the wedding if we could, if in any possible way we could. And very quickly we decided that we needed to have the kids be a part of it. We very quickly decided we needed to invite them into and invite the parents of our daughter-in-law into this conversation. We were about to have this huge party together. There was no way we were gonna hold back. There was no way we were gonna keep back from anybody this was going on. They knew that he was going to the doctor. Very quickly we got them involved and started with our sons in-laws was the very first people that we told. They were very supportive. They said, yes, our daughter would want to know, and we just, we made it this big party.

Jay Caponigro:

We were concerned that we would go to this big event and there'd be the. Son and mom dance and there'd be dad on the sideline bawling his eyes out and people would look and go, well, that seems a little over sentimental. Why is he crying so hard? Or that mom would have a similar experience at some other level of the ceremony. That would be the best case scenario. The worst case would be that we'd be withdrawn or distant or not connecting with them in this most amazing. Moment of their lives. I

Lyn Caponigro:

think you talked to that priest, the very first person you called and you said, I need to figure out what I'm gonna do. How do we address this with our children? And I think the response was invite

Jay Caponigro:

them. He, he had an experience and he felt badly. He wasn't in the moment with, he had a particular. Event and

Lyn Caponigro:

at a wedding. I believe he was at a wedding too.

Jay Caponigro:

Yeah. We, we wanted to be in the moment, not for selfish reasons. We really wanted to have that honesty, which we've practiced with them. Fortunately, we had a couple weeks so that they could digest it, at least be able to take a deep breath and know that we really wanted them to celebrate hard. Might have been a little hard, a little too hard for a couple of them, but we did. We just wanted them also to know if we had a few more tears. It wasn't'cause we were unhappy, they were getting married in a lot of ways.

Lyn Caponigro:

It was really a gift to have that right at that moment. It was such a celebration. We were surrounded by so many wonderfully supportive people. It was Jay's birthday and the rehearsal dinner night even that we had this birthday celebration together. That was just a beautiful. A beautiful celebration. It was us all coming together. Everyone there knew. There was no one who didn't know. We didn't want it to be the talk of the evening, but everyone knew so that everyone could be aware, could be sensitive, could not be offended if anyone had to walk away, those kind of things. So

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

that just felt very supported. It really goes to what you said earlier, Lynn, that capacity to carry multiple intense, difficult emotions all at the same time. And be joyful. I think that's a beautiful example and something, when you use the word invite, that's so soft, it's so different than tell we're going to invite our children into this experience. You have four children. I know them. They're awesome, and they're really different from each other. So when you invite them, they get to step in. In their own way, in their own time and figure out how they dance with this. And you're also saying to them, we can do really hard things. We can have the best moment of your life at a wedding and we can hold this very scary uncertainty. I love the definition of courage, where it isn't avoiding fear, it's holding fear and doing it anyways. And that was really courageous. Really courageous to say, as a family, we can all step into this in our own way. It's beautiful. That's a great definition. Thanks. And the metaphor that everyone needed a good party. Yeah. Everyone needed to dance.

Lyn Caponigro:

Yeah, we did. We did. We danced.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

How joyful. Yep. What do you know about life now that you didn't know 18 months ago?

Lyn Caponigro:

I think one of the big things that I've learned over these past 18 months is the trust in the dance and the trust in the community, and how much I can count on that, and how resourceful and resilient. Giving people are, it's just amazing to me how there's these open offers of help from people. No one is ever offended if I say no. People are often very encouraging me say Yes, but I've really learned to trust in that more than I ever did before. Trust in the joy that comes out of all of it, and in the goodness that comes out of all of it.

Jay Caponigro:

Boy, that's an interesting question. My mind goes straight to all of these little things that I've learned that are more about, oh, what I've learned about cancer. Oh, what I've learned about people's health or what I've learned about my own body. I like how you responded more broadly. A couple things come to mind. One is that I don't know where this cancer came from. It's true that I probably drank too much Mountain Dew growing up, but I don't think that's the cause of my cancer. As you said at the opening, healthy. And exercising regularly and playing hockey and playing racquetball and playing baseball, and I was doing things to take care of my body, which also brought me joy, and I had lots of little aches and pains that I chuckle about now, but you know, I was healthy. Those parts of my body that aren't affected by cancer are still pine for that. In broader terms, it's good to take care of yourself and to pay attention. And to be healthy physically, because that's helping me do things now, to get through medications and treatments, to give doctors confidence that I could try new things and, and that will last for a little while anyway, but that's still something that I'm bringing from what, how I lived my life. I would say. The other thing is, and I don't mean this to be instrumental, but. We've invested a lot in relationships over time, and I didn't even realize how much that was happening all of our time here in this community. My work was relationships. I don't wanna say take it for granted, but there's a lot of blending of personal and work. There was being on the kids soccer field on the sidelines, and there was somebody you worked with on the sidelines too, so it's. Mixing that way where it is personal and public and a lot more personal than I realized until this came to be. I think that's probably the most important thing I've learned about life is investing in relationships and being kind. There's real value in that. It's not just that you're gonna get repaid in some way if you get cancer, it's more Wow, this. Feels really good. When you hear from somebody, it's motivating and it's sustaining and it's affirming. I hope that in some way my children also feel that and learn that, and I hope that with the time that I have, I am more intentional about authentic relationships, even though I feel like that's been something important to me forever. I just feel like, wow, there's another knot I can aim for, maybe a little higher or something.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

I would say that caper Negros are relationally affluent humans.

Lyn Caponigro:

There's another piece of this that becomes a burden that we have realized that all of those people that love and care for us so much are hurting through this too.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

Yeah.

Lyn Caponigro:

That's really, it's hard to, it's hard to share that information when we know that it's hurting someone.

Jay Caponigro:

Yeah. It was great to post that note saying. Mechanist is really doing this great number on Jay's tumors. Stuff's shrinking and I feel great. And then a month and a half later, it's all going the opposite direction, which we knew it would. The doctor said it's gonna last maybe two months, maybe it's gonna last six months. We have no idea. We jumped at it. Anyway, the first post was great and everyone's sending us messages and they're very happy. And on the second post we're about to send, we're going, oh, we can't do this to people. We really raised the question for me of hope. What is hope about? Do we dare. This is where you can get all philosophical, theological, and all of my academic stuff could come out, which I don't want to do, but it's, yeah, do I dare to hope in the midst of all of this because I could be hurt? We just raised the level of hope for so many other people. That's the responsibility of burden. We knew we were doing it, but we felt, nope, they've asked to be on this journey. We're gonna dive in because without hope, why would we do any of this? We have a greater hope that is beyond cancer, that moves us as a family and as a couple, which has always been at the center of our lives. So we're gonna be hopeful and yep, we're gonna write that second post when we have to. And we, it was hard. It's

Lyn Caponigro:

hard, but yet there's still so much support around it. Like you said, we've invited people into the journey. We have invited people to know and to have the information. We're not requiring it. We're not demanding it from anyone. They are going themselves and they are seeking out this information. Yeah. Would they love to see more happy posts? Of course they would, because we know we would too, but yet they are still there.

Jay Caponigro:

It's a great post of someone who said, we're an Easter people with living in a good Friday world. And that just nailed it. That was great because yes, we're living with the Easter Hope. Yeah. I can't say it better and they would like to see it better news'cause they love us and we so appreciate that they would be disappointed.

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

This is a hard question to ask, but how has the last year changed how you think about death, how you think about Good Friday?

Jay Caponigro:

It's never been lost on me that we're all going to die. The fear is how we're going to die. How much of it is on our own terms to the degree that we can play any role in it, I'm at some level very fortunate to be able to have some time to think about my death and prepare for it. The way that Lynn talked about thinking about where do we want to be buried, we're building and earned, or things that are meaningful to me about death, it. Certainly punctuates the preciousness of life and has me thinking more about how do I want to spend this next weekend? What's the balance between personal and work? What's the balance between financial and other pressures or other desires? Yeah. I lost my train of thought thought on that one.

Lyn Caponigro:

I think there's really been a sense of the preciousness of life that has really been renewed. We had the experience of my father passing away recently. That has been a death experience amidst this other experience that we're having. He was already not himself. He was suffering through dementia. You know, there was a long goodbye, right? He's, we've been saying goodbye for years. There's a piece in his passing. He wasn't happy any longer. So I'm wondering what part of that will we go through as cancer progresses? So there's a little bit of fear there, but yet there's still, uh, many people around us that I know that will help us through that. So I have that trust that there will people be people to help us through that. There are moments where it does feel like it's just not time yet.

Jay Caponigro:

Yeah, I think we felt that a lot at the beginning, not knowing what this diagnosis meant, specifically knowing it was very dire, but looking at each other and saying, oh, we just bought the camper. Oh wait, no, that's not right. We've just got two kids married off. And what about grandkids? Now that sense that we were getting ready for a new phase in our relationship or we, we were evolving into that new phase already. We were practicing it, we were putting it out and trying it out, and there was a lot of excitement about that. And so death feels too soon in that way. But from the perspective of. The world around us. I, I am hit with the gratitude again of, wow, how did we get this far and have so much in our lives already that we can be looking back on and reflective of and grateful for. And I don't want it to end, but I don't want be suffering in a way that it's affecting all the quality of life of those around me if I can't really be with them. I think it's contrasted in an interesting way with the fact that our. Daughter and son-in-law are pregnant and wait any week now to have our first grandchild. So all of what they're experiencing as new parents to be is just so fun. I think about the excitement of a new child coming into our family. God willing, it hits hard on the point of the preciousness of life and how we have to live it fully and. Until I can't, we found ourselves at one point, maybe three or four months into this diagnosis and Lynn was driving more carefully. She admitted to saying it. I was thinking it and she's, yeah.'cause we can't have both of us going at the same time for the kids' sake or, and then I was thinking, no, you can't go first'cause I need you. There are so many different things. So yes, please drive more carefully. Not that she wasn't a careful driver, but the full stop at the stop sign. You're doing a lot more driving. At that point, it was a little bit of a reminder, yes, maybe we don't take things so for granted. Let's be just a little more cautious. I appreciate the moments. I think I've been a lot more pictures taken of me that bothers the heck out of me from a old Jay perspective, but I also know it's really important to people. It's important to me now, actually, it's become more important to me that I be in those photos. When I think about the grandchild especially, I don't know that I focus so much on death. The real question that you asked is just more about the real appreciation and understanding of how much of a gift our life has been and how much of a gift life can be, and we really need to hold that, enhance it, and not just respect it, but enhance it in all its forms, because that's the way we've tried to live our lives and that's how I wanna go out.

Lyn Caponigro:

Yeah. One of the precious gifts that we've been given of this time is the opportunity for people to share stories of interaction with our family interaction just with Jay, or to share their own personal stories. And there's one in particular that's studying standing out to me right now that is a friend who shared a story that her favorite grandparent. Was the grandparent that was never there because she heard the stories of this grandparent. What a gift. I feel to even have that little piece of that they could know their grandparent just from the stories that have been shared. And boy, we've been really collecting the stories now. So another gift that we've had of this past year

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

is just having those stories. Yeah, this has been so powerful. I knew it would be powerful, but this is 10 times more than. What I knew, which was a really high expectation. Is there anything, just in closing, you feel I'd like to say that

Jay Caponigro:

No, I think we've covered a lot of ground. Thank you for the opportunity to share.

Lyn Caponigro:

I think I just wanna iterate, reiterate that I just feel like this has all been coming to us as part of this journey. I'm so grateful that we have been able to take advantage of and to really engage in all of these different pieces that have been so life-giving to us. Yet supportive of this whole community that is surrounding

MJ Murray Vachon LCSW:

us. I really wanna thank you for the role models you've always been. This is not a new role for the two of you, but I think we as a culture really struggle when things don't go our way, whether it's illness, whether it's an election, whether it's not getting into grad school or Notre Dame. And we need role models for people who opt to dance. And find that, oh my God, I didn't know I could hold such terror and such joy all at one wedding reception to move through a year where you really are practicing what you always preached. It's just a different type of dance floor. I'm really wanna thank you and I know that I'm not alone in that. I read the Caring Bridge posts. Thank you so much. Thank you for being part of that team. Of course this could all fall apart tomorrow. What a beautiful conversation. I doubt any of us listening to, Jay and Lynn missed the paradox that they really didn't talk to us much about dying or cancer, but really about living. So here are my Inner Challenge insights, thanks to their wisdom. Insight number one, I loved Jay's line when he first heard about his diagnosis. I need to call my friend and practice saying I have cancer. From the beginning, he took a humble stance. I don't know how to do this, so I will learn. How do I learn? I practice insight number two in the caep Negros words. Here we go. We don't have to solve this. We have different fears. We are always learning to be in relationship with each other. These, my listeners are dancing words. We can fight cancer or we can dance with cancer. For those who choose to dance, I imagine that their heart is much more open to their partner. After all, who wants to dance alone? Insight number three. My favorite line from Jay was this from, I'm not afraid of being angry. I just don't find much value in it. Insight number four. A terminal illness confronts us once again with the question, who am I? It's not easy to let go of work, especially when it's meaningful and connects to so many in the community. My hat's off to the University of Notre Dame, who once again has been so supportive to one of its employees and to Jay's boss for being flexible, adaptive, and coherent. As Jane moves through this process of answering the question, who am I now that I'm sick? This gives him energy and stability as he and his family navigate these challenging months for one to stay mentally well during an illness. The role the employer takes on is huge. In my clinical practice. I have seen the difference and has nothing to do with the luck of the Irish, but a real commitment to its employees. Insight number five. In my career, I've had many conversations with clients that begin with this question, how should I tell my kids? From now on, I will encourage inviting, not telling insight. Number six. This is my last insight and it's a bit long, but please bear with me because I think what we learned from Jay and Lynn has a profound message for mental wellness. So. Number six. What if our culture's number one value was relational affluence, where our main ambition was not money importance or winning, but rather a high RAS score. You know, relational affluence score. We would look at people like Jay and Lynn, like we do star athletes, people to admire for their relational affluence. People we are glad to have on our team, you know, team Earth. If relational affluence was the number one goal of an earthling, we would coup with babies and hope they'd grow up to be kind and honest and real contributors to the wellbeing of others, even at times putting their own wants and needs. Second, as parents, we'd lose sleep if our child was being selfish or was prone to fits of anger because we would wisely know such behavior might bring down their RAS score if they carry it into adulthood. We'd cheer for the neighbor kid who got the last spot on the team, or maybe the lead in the play. Even though we knew our child was disappointed because we understood that a victory for our neighbor was really a victory for our own child. The Cabe Negroes, the whole family are relationally affluent. This did not start because of a cancer diagnosis, but cancer made it clear to them that all the love and effort they had poured into their family. Their work, their, their community, their school, their church has come back in spades this past year. Endless meals, pumpkins painted purple, palms left on the picnic table, walks with friends and doctors who really, really care. While not expecting this, they could look back and see how it happened. This type of support does not always happen because it must be nurtured. It is what we as humans need. We are not wired for large bank accounts or championship trophies. These are nice, but what we're wired for is human connection and support. Jay and Lynn are wise in the middle of all this to hope that their children all in their twenties are taking notice of this inheritance. I hope the same for my children. I hope the same for yours. In a world where we have unintentionally over-focused on competition, starting as early as age three, and given our children phones that have replaced much of the face-to-face time, previous generations have spent with friends, I worry that all of our children are being robbed of their rightful inheritance, relational affluence. Many say we have a mental health crisis in this country. I of all people am not disagreeing, but often I think it's a friendship crisis, so let's put the phones away and play a board game after dinner. Invite our kids to come out of their rooms and have their friends over and bring back the potluck. We need each other. It has nothing to do with cancer. Thanks for listening to this most special episode. I'll be back tomorrow with my regular episodes of creating Midlife Calm.