[A note before listening: This conversation includes frank discussion of cancer, a life-limiting prognosis, grief, serious illness and some of the physical realities of hospital treatment.]
What happens when life becomes almost unbearable? When the future you thought you were heading towards disappears? When there’s no neat resolution, no obvious lesson and no way of simply getting “back to normal”?
My guest this week is Richard Tyler, soul therapist, author, poet, former West End performer and co-founder of the Willow Tree Foundation.
Rich was given a cancer diagnosis that came with a prognosis of just four or five months. In this deeply open conversation, he talks about what happened when illness ambushed the story he thought he was living, and why his response wasn’t to fight cancer as an enemy, but to try to understand his relationship with it.
We talk about grief in its widest sense. The lives we imagined but may never live. The identities and roles we create to survive. The parts of ourselves we leave behind. And the very human desire to find resolution when sometimes there simply isn’t any.
Rich also introduces an idea that has stayed with me: perhaps we don’t always have to let go. Perhaps sometimes we simply need to loosen our grip.
There’s tenderness here too. We explore what it means to “crouch down next to” another human being with our full attention, and the much harder question of whether we can learn to offer that same presence to ourselves.
In this episode, we explore:
- How we bear what feels unbearable
- Living with the light and the shadow at the same time
- The many forms grief can take
- Loosening our grip on the stories we thought life would follow
- Nature, healing and learning to belong to the world rather than stand apart from it
- What it might mean to crouch down next to ourselves
To connect with Richard:
Website: https://richardtylertherapy.com
Website: https://thewillowtreefoundation.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardtylerbtfi/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/richardbtfi/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/richard.tylerlake
For more information about my new programme - Celebrate YOU!
https://bookme.name/MissionUnstoppable/lite/celebrate-you-tell-me-more
Connect with Sue:
Website: https://www.suerevell.com
Social Media Links
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lifelovelegacy/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/suerevell_lifelovelegacy/
Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/suerevell.bsky.social
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/suerevell
About your host
Sue Revell is a personal leadership coach, independent celebrant and the founder of Life, Love & Legacy. She helps people navigate defining moments, express what matters most and create lives and ceremonies that feel unmistakably their own.
Through meaningful conversations, personally crafted ceremonies and her I Gotta Be Me coaching work, Sue explores identity, belonging, purpose and the legacy we create while we’re still living.
