Can you ever imagine living beyond limits? When you transform hardship into purpose, it’s possible, as Deb Krier discovered. Find out how she turned a devastating cancer diagnosis into a powerful platform of hope and encouragement.
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Show Notes | Transcript“We absolutely have to be grateful, even for the most horrible, awful… There’s got to be something in it. For one thing, we’re still alive and kicking.” – Deb Krier
Deb shares her remarkable journey from working at the American Cancer Society to facing her own battle with stage four triple-positive metastatic breast cancer. We explore how she transformed her struggle into “Trying Not to Die dot Live,” a platform that provides support, resources, and community to those dealing with cancer.
Discover how Deb:
- Embraced gratitude even in the darkest moments of her health journey
- Created a unique support system through her “Bear Hug” care packages
- Developed the L.I.V.E. acronym to empower others facing similar challenges
Key insights include:
- The importance of honest communication during difficult times
- How to build and nurture your support tribe, both in business and in your personal life
- Why being in charge of your own health journey is crucial
Deb also shares valuable advice on asking for help, a skill many women entrepreneurs struggle with. She emphasizes the power of vulnerability and how it can lead to stronger connections and support systems.
Whether you’re facing a health challenge, building a business, or simply looking to live life more fully, this conversation offers practical wisdom and heartfelt inspiration. Get ready to learn how to lead your tribe, invigorate your soul, voice your feelings, and elevate your mindset – no matter what life throws your way!
Resources:
Join the Soulful Women’s Network
Connect with Deb Krier:
Website: tryingnottodie.LIVE
Connect with Live Love Engage:
Send Gloria Grace a message
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LinkedIn: Gloria Grace Rand
Facebook: Gloria Grace Rand
YouTube: Gloria Grace Rand
TRANSCRIPT
Gloria Grace Rand
Namaste. Imagine spending years working for the American Cancer Society, only later to have your doctor diagnose you with the disease. Well, that irony was not lost on today’s guest. But as you’ll learn from her shortly, she transformed her struggle into a powerful platform of hope and empowerment for others. But first, I want to welcome you to live, love, engage, especially if you are new to the podcast. I am Gloria Grace, and I help female entrepreneurs attract clients by going beyond traditional search engine optimization to embrace my definition of SEO, spiritually engaging others. And joining us today is Deb Krier. She is a seasoned entrepreneur, podcaster, a cancer advocate, and founder of trying not to die dot live, a platform that provides support, resources, and community to those dealing with cancer. And without further ado, I’m going to bring her up here and welcome you officially to live, love, engage.
Deb Krier
Hello. Hello. Oh, my gosh. We’re going to have so much fun catching up because we have known each other for quite a while, and you know, worlds kind of went different directions, and so this is going to be fantastic.
Gloria Grace Rand
I know. Absolutely. Yes, yes. I was very privileged to be a guest on Deb’s podcast many,
Deb Krier
Twice!
Gloria Grace Rand
That’s right, that’s right. Yes, yes. Many years ago. And finally, I get the chance to have you on the show and be able to showcase your brilliance to my audience. So I would love to start off by having you kind of dive in and tell us a little bit more about, you know, the trying not to die dot live platform. I love that you have that URL, and we’ll get more into that, especially later. But why did you? And obviously, it has to do with your own journey as well. But tell us a little bit about the focus of the organization and why you started it.
Deb Krier
Well, I am so honored to be a guest on your podcast. We’re going to have such a great discussion. As you mentioned, it is based on my own journey. Many years ago, I worked for an oncologist, and then I worked for the American Cancer Society. So I tell people I know just enough to be dangerous, right? And back in 2015, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Initially they said stage zero. Let’s not worry too much about this. Then through the course of several different tests and all sorts of things, they changed their mind and it went to a much more serious diagnosis. My technical diagnosis is stage four triple positive metastatic breast cancer, which is a big mouthful to say. Bleh, right? Not a lot of fun. And it was, stage four cancers, in many cases, are considered not curable. They can go away and hide, can hide for many, many years. I’m at year nine. This has actually been good. I have had two other cancer diagnoses. I had a basal cell carcinoma on my arm, which is a real fancy name for a little skin cancer. They zapped it, no big deal. In fact, it didn’t even take stitches. But obviously, now I get to go to the dermatologist and what I call fondly, the strip and spin every six months to make sure there’s nothing else. And then I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer last year. Totally new, totally different cancer. So I’m on number three. But as part of all of this, I had decided to have very traditional treatment. I was going to do chemo, then I was going to do surgery, then I was going to do radiation. My first chemo was extremely aggressive, and it darn near killed me. I ended up with septic shock in the hospital. Was told that I was not going to make it. In fact, they were saying I wouldn’t make it through the day. And I remember thinking, wait a minute, I get a vote in this. Obviously, I voted and said, no, no, that’s not going to happen. But it was a challenge. I’ve had multiple, multiple surgeries since then, primarily due to the septic shock, because it just nails your body and shuts down your organs. That is what happens. And, all sorts of fun things since then. But as part of this, I just kept going. Right? You know, you do. You just keep going. And so I kept functioning in my business. I have a company called wise women communications. And as part of that, I was participating in a group, a women’s success accelerator, and was doing it. And several years ago, the woman who lead that, the fabulous Kathleen Caldwell, she told me, she said, you know, this is all well and good, but you didn’t go through everything you went through without using it to help others. And I said, yeah, but I don’t want to be cancer girl. You know, I didn’t want to put that cape on, you know, all that that stuff. But I realized she was right. You know, I had gone through so much, and, you know, if I could help others, whether they had cancer themselves or are people supporting those who have cancer, if I can do that and use what I went through to help them, then it really was something that I needed to be doing. And so that was when we thought, okay, let’s do trying not to die dot live, because we do get so caught up when we’re very ill, whether it’s cancer or something else, in the fact that we’re trying to not die, that we forget that what we really need to be doing is living our lives.
Gloria Grace Rand
Oh, well, I gotta tell you, I mean, number one, it’s no wonder that you’re already, you know, nine years past, you know.
Deb Krier
Tough old bird.
Gloria Grace Rand
Well, not only that, you’ve got this positive attitude. You are a ray of sunshine, and I believe that that is a big component of why you’re still, you know, alive and kicking here. And you know, and that talking about that, trying not to die, I think that. Yeah, I mean, sometimes when you’re, you know, given this diagnosis, you tend to give up, or at least. No, I’m not gonna make generalizations. I will just say that I know, just from experiencing it, watching my sister’s journey, that I think she did kind of give up for a while until it got closer to the end, and then she realized she didn’t want to give up. But unfortunately, by then, she had gone through, like, chemo, too, which really did a number on her as well. And she finally just said, I can’t. I need some quality of life, because this is especially when it stopped really doing much to the tumor anymore. It’s like, okay, well, why am I putting myself through it? Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about what your organization specifically does, because I was looking at it, and I love the one thing, so I’m not going to spoil it. I want you to maybe talk about how you help people.
Deb Krier
Right. So the trying not to die part came about because of my mother. You know, as I said, I was very, very ill on death’s door, and I’m an only child, and so, of course, my husband called her, and she immediately came out and stayed for four and a half months to take care of me. That’s good and bad. Right. But it was actually very much a blessing that she was able to be here. And I remember one of the times where, you know, one of my medical people came in my hospital room, and I was in the hospital for quite a long time, and they did whatever they were doing, and they left. And I got the disapproving mother face, and I went, what? And she said, you did not say thank you. And I said, oh, for God’s sakes, I’m trying to not die here. But, you know, it really did much later. It was one of the things that I thought about was we absolutely have to be grateful, even for the most horrible, awful. There’s got to be something in. For one thing, we’re still alive and kicking. Right? I tell people how you doing today? Well, I’m not looking at 6 feet of dirt, so I’m doing pretty good. And so, yeah, it was just how are we going to live our lives? And maybe it’s 5 hours, maybe it’s five days, maybe it’s 50 years. And you know, how can we do that? It’s really funny, I was just on vacation and was driving back and we were very close to Plains, Georgia. And so yesterday, as many of you might know, was Jimmy Carter’s 100th birthday. And I said, we have to go by, I mean, we just have to go to Plains, Georgia. We didn’t see him, but he is so incredibly grateful for everything. And I think that’s just kind of one of those things is how can we be grateful? How can we make sure that we are living life to the fullest, whatever it is that we are capable of doing.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, that is so important for everything. It really is. Like I’m constantly preaching about the importance of gratitude and I know sometimes it’s hard to find things to be grateful for when you are, you know, I can imagine right now as we’re recording this, we’re just, you know, in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, which has just devastated so many people and I’m across several states in the United States and it’s, you know, so I’m sure a lot of them are thinking, you know, probably about the only things that they possibly could be thinking that they’re grateful for is if they’re still alive and that they have, they have survived, even though they may not have a livelihood or they may not have a roof over their head right now, but at least you’re still here and you can start again. So I did want to, well, I didn’t get to what I was hoping you were going to get to the.
Deb Krier
Second part of the name.
Gloria Grace Rand
I know, I know. Yeah. And that’s good. But I wanted to do talk quickly about one of the things you offer on the website that people can do, they can actually purchase. So tell us a little bit about that.
Deb Krier
So we have this adorable bear and his, her name is warrior, has the logo and I mean, this is the most cute little thing you can ever see, but the concept is that you can send a bear hug to someone, you know, who is on their journey with cancer or, you know, whatever it is that they, they might need an extra hit, a little bit of a hug. We’ve sent them to Germany. We’ve sent them, you know, numerous places. When I was so ill, I had several friends who sent me little stuffed animals. And those little stuffed animals stayed with me everywhere I went in the hospital, unless it was surgery, you know, and. What the importance was, was I was always thinking and knowing that I was not alone on my journey, you know? And that’s one of the things that I hear the most from people who are on their journey with cancer is they do feel alone. They feel that they’re, you know, they’re just kind of going through it all by themselves and they’re not. But part of it is that we put ourselves in that position. You know, somebody might say, how you doing? Oh, I’m fine. I’m fine. You know, we don’t want to whine, we don’t want to complain, you know? And. Or more importantly, sometimes people don’t ask because they don’t know what to say. They don’t know what to do. And so, you know, even though it’s that big elephant that is in the room, they just gloss over it. And so having this little bear is a way to show that you’re not alone, you know? And it’s just this simple little thing. And there’s some other things that come in the bear hug care package. But it really is one of those ways that you can just show somebody, whether you’re their next door neighbor or they’re across the globe from you, that they’re not alone.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah. And that’s so important because you’re. You’re right. Because, I mean, even when you’re just sick with whatever, sometimes, you know, you just feel like, Oh, you know, nobody. Nobody knows what I, what I’m feeling right now.
Deb Krier
And they don’t want to hear it.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You know, and I think especially. I think this is also, though, uniquely a female thing, is that we really don’t want to be.
Deb Krier
Right!
Gloria Grace Rand
a burden. And we’re so used to being the caregivers for everybody, and so we hate to impose upon someone else. Whereas I know others who are like, of the other persuasion, who are like, “I’m sick, take care of me.” And I do remember this was something that a lesson, I remember my sister saying specifically. She’s like, really? God, did you have to give me cancer to have me ask for help?
Deb Krier
Right? We just don’t ask for help.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah. And it’s so important. Well, I tell you what, we’re going to take a quick break and then we’re going to dive in because I want to explore… There’s a significance not only about the importance of living, but that dot live that you have on your URL for your organization actually means something. So we’re going to talk about that in 1 second, right after a quick break. So I, just like Deb, I believe in community as well, and I, I know how important it is to be able to connect with other people who are going through the same thing you’re going through. In my case, it’s more about connecting with a group of women who are wanting to support each other in business and in life. And that’s why I have started the Soulful Women’s Network. And it’s just a group of fun, creative, powerful women of all ages. Most of them are entrepreneurs, because I am, and that’s who my friends are and that’s who have joined the group. But if you’re not an entrepreneur, you’re welcome to join as well, because again, life happens and we need to be able to have a place where we can go and get some encouragement, get some support. We have meetings, virtual meetings, twice a quarter. And we also meet in person. And so we are going to be having our virtual meeting in another week or so, as I’m recording this. So I encourage you, if you would like to join us, you can first join our free group. It’s on Facebook. And you can go there by going to Bit.ly/soulnetwork, which is all lowercase. I will have it in the show notes as well. But yeah, I’d love to have you participate and be with a good group of people who are going to, you know, be a, come, be a community, be that community for you. So now we’re going to go back and I’m going to bring Deb back up here because I want to know from her to have her. Whoops. Wait a minute. Where did I go? There we go.
Deb Krier
Where’d you go? There you are.
Gloria Grace Rand
Well, there we go. There we go. All right, we’re just. I’m going to figure this out eventually. There we go. Okay. Hitting the wrong button. We’ll just try every button on Streamyard that there is to work.All right, so live for you, like, love for me is an acronym, so I would love for you to share that.
Deb Krier
And I fell into it, you know, it was one of those things where I am a marketing person, and so my URL was going to be tryingnottodie.com. That’s what we’re taught, right? Well, somebody had it, right. How rude! I tried to buy it from them and they wanted a lot more money than I was going to pay for something that was just in my brain. And I was working with the wonderful Josh Zephys. He was helping me with all of the branding and the messaging for trying not to die. And he said, why not dot live? And it was available. So I of course. And then it made perfect sense, right? Trying not to die dot live. So we did make it an acronym. And so it is about leading your tribe, from your family to your physicians. You must lead your coalition. Then it’s, invigorate your soul. Put yourself first, because it is your life that is on the line. Voice your feelings across a bridge of honesty, for only the truth is actionable. We talked about the fact that people ask and you say, oh, I’m fine. Well, you’re not fine. No, you have to be honest. So voice your feelings and then elevate your mindset with the belief that you will indeed be fine no matter what the actual results are. And so that’s where we came up with the acronym of trying not to die live. And that is the URL website.
Gloria Grace Rand
I think that’s so great. And those are all wonderful concepts to apply to whatever circumstance you’re in. It doesn’t necessarily have to be that you’re facing an illness, because all of these things are so important. So I wonder if you can maybe see, talk about that a little bit. How can we apply some of these concepts as women entrepreneurs or even as a member of a family or something like that? So maybe start off with lead, that first one. Yeah.
Deb Krier
We have to be in charge. We selected warrior as kind of our emblem for everything. And that came from. Someone sent me this. It says, fate whispers to the warrior, you cannot withstand the storm. And the warrior responds, I am the storm. So we are in charge. We are in charge of our business, our life, our health, whatever it is. But. And it’s exactly what you were saying. We cannot do this alone. We absolutely have to have our tribe, our supporters, you know, whoever it is that is with us on this journey, we have to have them. It is very much about building those communities, and women supporting other women are the most powerful that there can be. And so we absolutely, positively have to do that.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, exactly. And so applies to all aspects of our lives. We just. We really need to stand up for ourselves. And first off, it’s like you really got to lead yourself and decide what it is that you want and then find others who can come along for the ride or can support you as you support them. Yeah, it’s so important. Let’s see what was. Well, I’d like. I’m going to skip the I for a second, and because I love the V, because that one is a real big one to me? Yeah. Talk about like, you know, voicing our feelings.
Deb Krier
You know, we. You mentioned that women, we’re just so used to, you know, not telling people we need help. We don’t ask for help. You know, I love the analogy of when we fly, right? You know, and they’re telling you the oxygen masks are going to drop down. Put yours on first before you help someone else. And that is so true. We absolutely have to put ourselves first. But it is about voicing those feelings and saying, hey, I need help. Or, you know what? I can be in charge now, whatever it is, you know, and we have to be honest. One of the things that I really talk a lot about is the fact that people will ask us, how are you doing? And we will say, I’m fine. I’m fine. And to me, fine is a four letter word. You know, it is something that we should never say. Yeah, maybe we’re going to say it to the person in the elevator or, you know, at the Starbucks drive thru. How you doing today? Fine. Right? But fine covers everything. It covers, I’m about to keel over to, I’m going to go run a marathon. And the thing is, people cannot be part of our community. They cannot help us. They cannot support us if we’re not honest in saying, I’m not fine, here’s what I need today, or, you know, here’s how I can help you today. But nobody’s a mind reader, so we have to be honest before people can support us and before we can support others.
Gloria Grace Rand
What would you advise someone, or how, I should say, how would you advise someone to first take that step, to start to ask? Because sometimes it can, especially if you’re not used to doing it. It can seem very overwhelming. And I’ll share what someone taught me how to do after. But I would love to know, especially as someone who’s been in the art of communications for so long, what would you recommend someone? What’s that first step to help?
Deb Krier
I think we’re afraid that they’re gonna turn us down. And you know what? That’s okay. That’s perfectly fine. There goes that word again. Right? But it is okay if we ask for help when somebody says they can’t do it. It doesn’t mean anything other than they can’t do it. And so we need to get used to the fact that we can say, here’s what’s going on in my life. It is a challenge because, as we mentioned, we don’t want to be a burden. We’re used to being the caregivers. We don’t want to ask for help. We don’t want to ask for support. But it’s funny in business, we wouldn’t hesitate to say, hey, Gloria, I see on LinkedIn that you’re connected with so and so, and I would love to have an introduction to them. That’s perfectly fine. Right? That’s, that’s where fine is, is really a good word. But, you know, we, we have to get over the fact that, you know, it’s, it’s not gonna be anything that is wrong or bad. And I think maybe that’s the other thing, is we think it means that we’re less if we’re asking for help. No, it means we’re human.
Gloria Grace Rand
Right. Absolutely. Well, I’ll share with you. This was, I had a coach several years back who taught me how to do this because this was something that I had trouble doing, how, asking for help. So what he recommended was to get the cooperation of someone, like, in your family and say, on this day I am going to ask for things, and I just want you to give them to me. So basically what I did is, I did this, and I would sit down and say, oh, can you give me a glass of water, please? And then let them go and get me a glass of water. And just to know that I was going to be doing this all day. And I loved that because it was just a good way of empowering. Right. Yeah. Using, using my voice, asking for what I wanted and not just, you know, jumping up and going to get it myself as we are so want to do. So. Take that, everyone out there, if you have trouble doing that, get some support from someone.
Deb Krier
I love that!
Gloria Grace Rand
Baby, baby steps. You know, just. That’s all you need to do.
Deb Krier
Right.
Gloria Grace Rand
I would love to find out from you where, where would you like to see your organization in the next few years? How do you want, do you have a plan for growth and what would you like it to look like?
Deb Krier
It’s… You know. Thank you, you know. It’s very interesting because I do want it to grow. And we do have a private Facebook group. You can find the link to it on the website. I keep it private simply so we can kind of filter out the people who are going to cure us. We’ve had those, right? They’ve got some products, some whatever that’s going to cure us. Now, I love having people who have non-traditional approaches, other suggestions, things like that, because when we’re going through this, we have to pick what works best for us. And for some people, like I mentioned, I picked the very traditional route of chemo, surgery, radiation, for others, that’s not going to be what they’re going to do. And we need to honor them and help them along that journey with whatever it is that they need. But I don’t know that I want this to be the giant American Cancer Society size thing. And actually, I should say I don’t. I do not want that because part of what I like is the smaller intimacy of knowing here’s what’s going on with everybody in the group. Maybe I need to reach out to somebody because I know that they’re, you know, needing a little extra TLC or they had a doctor’s appointment or, you know, things like that. So it is something where, you know, I want it to stay a nice and manageable amount now, you know, who knows? That might change in the future because we might have other people who join who are kind of leaders along with me. But right now, it’s, you know, we just want to help as many people as we can help and do it in a very positive way.
Gloria Grace Rand
I like that. Yeah, that makes sense. And I could also see perhaps where down the road again. It could be maybe a little sort of spinoff, you know, organ, you know, clubs or organizations or whatever, and people helping in local communities specifically like that. So that’s cool. I love asking this question of my guests because sometimes it’s a curveball for them. So I would love to know, what are you curious about right now?
Deb Krier
I’m curious about, you know, I’ll be honest. What the heck are the next three months going to bring? You know, we’ve got, obviously, you mentioned, you know, Helene, the, the storm, the devastation, all of those things. Got that little thing called an election coming up. What are the changes that that’s going to bring about? So I’m curious as to what’s going to be happening with the future of everything. Now, I am positive that no matter what, we will be fine. You know, um, there, there might be some challenges. Well, there’s definitely going to be challenges, but you know, what are the, you know, and then what is next year going to bring? I think that’s just, you know, it’s always fun just to be curious and say, you know, what’s next?
Gloria Grace Rand
Absolutely. Yeah. And I do think that we are seeing that, you know, people do rise to the challenge. I mean, there’s a lot of people that are reaching out and are helping in the areas that have been, you know, hurt so much.
Deb Krier
Stories of, you know, how people have been helping have been just absolutely incredible. And, and what that does is it gives you faith in humans again, right?
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Because there’s been so much discord going on, you know, just for years now. But. But it does sometimes, unfortunately, take things like this to bring us together. And so maybe it’s a good lesson somehow.
Deb Krier
We saw that September 11, right?
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Is there anything else that I should have asked you about that I didn’t or any last words of wisdom you’d like to share?
Deb Krier
One of the things that I always want to tell people is, you are in charge. You have to be in charge of your own health. Take the steps that you need to. I was talking with somebody just yesterday, and I said, I hate to ask this because she was talking to me about her mother, and I said, do you know what her end of life wishes are? Those are things that we don’t always want to talk about, but it’s very important that we have thought it through. It obviously can change as things go on. But have you taken those steps? Do you have a will? All of those things. But we are in charge. Not our doctors, not our family, not anybody. And you need to pick what you feel most comfortable with and then go forward again. That might change, but we are the people in charge. But again, we have to surround ourselves with our tribe. Who are the people we need to be around us, who are going to help us through these times, whether it’s your business, whether it’s your health, whether it’s raising your family, whatever it is, who are your tribe members? And they need to be the right tribe members. And sometimes we need to wish some people adieu and send them on their way. Doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong. It just means that for right now, they’re not a good fit.
Gloria Grace Rand
Absolutely. And sometimes that can even be family members.
Deb Krier
Yeah.
Gloria Grace Rand
Let’s face it. Yeah. But what is it? The lovely line is that the friends are the family we get to choose, and so choose wisely and keep them in mind if some of the family members don’t work out. So, yeah, I love that advice. So good. I know we’ve mentioned it a bunch of times, but. But we’ll just reinforce it again if someone wants to go learn more about, you know, the platform, whether it’s to participate or to, or to help out someone else. Where do people go?
Deb Krier
So it’s www dot trying not to die dot live. We actually do have dot com now, so. But it will re-route to the site. We’ve got a lot of good resources on there. I’m always looking for other resources. So if you know of something that would be good for us to add, that would be great. Also always looking for people to be guest bloggers and tell us about their journey or ways where they think that they could help. That’s always a great thing for people to do. I think telling their stories, we don’t always remember that sometimes that’s the most important thing is for someone to tell us what they’ve been through.
Gloria Grace Rand
Well, I’m going to have to connect you because we just had a wonderful guest on our program a couple weeks ago, and you may even already know her. But I need to connect you with Andrea Wilson Woods because
Deb Krier
That’d be lovely.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yes, because you two are both on a, not exactly similar, well, similar journey, but, you know, in different, different ways. But you’re both trying to support folks, so I’ll definitely have to do that.
Deb Krier
Thank you.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yes. Well, I want to thank you for taking time to be with us today and to share all the wonderful stuff that you’re up to in the world. And I’m so glad that we were able to have you on my show finally.
Deb Krier
And as I said, I am very honored to be a guest.
Gloria Grace Rand
Well, I appreciate it. And I also want to thank all of you for watching and for listening today. And I really value every one of you. And I also want to thank those of you who did vote for us on the women in podcasting awards. We will find out in a couple weeks if that was successful or not. And until then, I do hope that you are subscribed to the podcast. You’re subscribed on our YouTube channel. And with that, I encourage you to go out and live fully, love deeply and engage authentically.
