Father’s Day 2023 – being a DAD is the GREATEST HONOR for me! In Episode 31 of the Shining Brightly Podcast Show (links in the comments), I produce a solo show called my “Father’s Day Tribute – Our Miracle Girl” The story begins with lessons from my great grandmother Bubby Bertha Budish, Grandfather Papa Leo Brown, my dad, Marshall (Happy Father’s Day Pop) and mom, Nancy and wife Lisa. The family memories and values I carry forward about compassion, care, kindness and giving all matter! Facing a stage IV cancer diagnosis at age 23, having children was not on my mind but Dr Eric Rubin spoke to me about fertility treatments and scheduled an appointment to the cryogenic center before chemotherapy started. You will have to tune in to see how my fatherhood story plays out. Come listen, download, share and this amazing story of my life and the birth of our frozen kidcycle Emily Lauren Brown  blessed our family.

Mentioned Resources

Website – www.shiningbrightly.com

Amazon – https://tinyurl.com/BuyShiningBrightly

Podcast - https://shining-brightly.captivate.fm/

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/howard.brown.36

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/howardsbrown/

About the guest –

Howard Brown is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, award-winning international speaker, inspirational podcaster, best-selling author of his memoir “Shining Brightly” and a two-time stage IV cancer patient, survivor, advocate and healthcare consultant. He shares the keys to leading a resilient life with hope that drives successful community leaders, business innovators and patient advocates. Be prepared to be inspired!

About the Host:

Howard Brown is a best-selling author, award-winning international speaker, Silicon Valley entrepreneur, interfaith peacemaker, and a two-time stage IV cancer survivor. He is also a sought-after speaker and consultant for corporate businesses, nonprofits, congregations, and community groups. Howard has co-founded two social networks that were the first to connect religious communities around the world. He is a nationally known patient advocate and “cancer whisperer” to many families. Howard, his wife Lisa, and daughter Emily currently reside in Michigan, and his happy place is on the basketball court.

Website: Http://www.shiningbrightly.com

Social Media

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/howard.brown.36

LinkedIn - https://wwwlinkedin.com/in/howardsbrown

Instagram - @howard.brown.36

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#fathersday #fathersday2023 #dads #family #daughters #sons #memories #miracle #invitrofertilization #celebrate #blessings #grateful #motivation #education #inspiration #book #speaker #podcast #download #share #reveiw #shiningbrightly

Hello, it's Howard Brown. Welcome to the Shining

Brightly Show. You got me today, it's a solo episode in honour of

Father's Day 2023. Let me first by giving a huge shout out to

all the dads out there. Listen, it's an honour to actually be a

dad. It's a privilege to be a dad, there's work involved. But

listen, there's no better feeling than actually being a

dad and growing a family. So we're going to talk about that.

And we're gonna talk about my journey today. So this is a

Father's Day tribute. And I'll start kind of some where values

and influences started for me, and I was five years old, and my

twin sister, CJ brown Jiang, Marissa and I were walking down

the sidewalk with Barbie Bertha Buddhists who came over from

Lithuania. What an amazing story for her to come over Orthodox

Jewish, great grandmother, or Bobby. And she taught us some

lessons. And those lessons were how to actually live a good

life. And the word she taught us was has said, and has it in

Hebrew means kindness. And she said, you can always be kind,

living a life of kindness, it's a choice, and choose kindness.

Really wise words there. The second word she chose was to

live a life of giving. And in Hebrew, the word is sadaqa. And

it's the justice of giving. And she said that you have to be

able to give to others, there's less fortunate people out there.

And giving is part of of a great life. And then lastly, she

talked about healing yourself and then healing others and

healing the world. And that word is called Hakuna Olam. And that

is repairing and healing a broken world. And that is

godlike. So those three lessons that we took from an early age

of living a life of kindness, of giving, and then healing

ourselves in healing others to repair a broken world is a good

life. So I am just grateful for Bobby Bertha Buddha's to give us

those lessons, those values to be able to take forth and try to

apply on a daily basis. Next, there was Papa Leo Brown, my

dad's dad, and he was graduated high school, but got drafted

into World War Two and he served as a private first class in

Italy. And what I observed from Papa Leo was that family first

family was everything to him. They grew up in the Great

Depression, we used to go shopping. And the big thing with

Papa Leo is that if can with cans of corn were on sale. Okay.

Now, at that time, they might have been a quarter a can and

they were on sale for a few pennies last, he would stock up

with cases, he didn't actually want to go short. So you can

think about during COVID, those runs of toilet paper. He always

wanted to have enough to provide for his family and not run out

since he grew up fairly poorly. And he also was a hard worker.

And I noticed that he used to actually sing a song to us that

if you want to be the top banana, you got to start at the

bottom of the bunch. So think about the memories from your

grandparents that that actually were bestowed upon you and that

you can remember today and then moving on to my dad, Marshall,

Brown. Boy, listen, he was young man got my mom was 19. He was I

think 22 years old, and they had twins. So my dad who had been

the first person in our family to graduate college, the

University of Bridgeport, I think in around 1964 and got

married right away and had to go to work because we were born in

St. Louis. He was there in a training programme. And then

they moved us back to the Boston suburbs of Framingham, about 20

minutes from Boston. And what I noticed growing up was that he

was working to support his family. So he's a shoe salesman,

on the road. And then on the weekends, you He was working in

a shoe store, Al Bundy, right. And at nights he was working at

the hostess, bakery shop, and obviously the plant, and he's

making hostess cupcakes and Twinkies. And so my mom was

taking care of twins, and he's working three jobs to make ends

meet. And to give us a good life. And so that hasn't changed

very much. My dad at 80 years old is still working. I don't

think he's ever going to retire. But that's okay. But that value

of work stuck with me. And he got to take us out on some road

trips, and he valued that ability to be able to provide

for his family. Now. I will tell you as we got older, even though

he was working and on the road and away a lot when he was home,

he was an active dad. So I will tell you that we sat out in the

front yard in the driveway shooting baskets, and he would

rebound with me for hours. I don't think I think he might

have missed one game of my basketball career. In high

school or in college. He made it his schedule around seeing me

play and seeing my sister who did sports a little bit

gymnastics, but very much a presence. Whether it was

throwing the football around, or swimming in the pool, going to

the gym playing tennis, jogging, we used to do a trail called

Rudy the rabbit in our reservoir, narrow house, great

memories of my dad. And so, quick story. My mom went to play

mahjong with her girlfriends. And that's with tiles. It's I

think it's a Japanese Chinese game. And my dad let us stay up

late. So we got to stay up late. And my mom found out not too

happy. So we gave him the best father award. It was like a

little trophy we've made. And for years and years, we've

always given them the best father award. So Dad, you get

the best father award every year that that were around. So cool,

cool stuff. Now, I want to talk about family tradition. Because

oh my goodness, my grandparents, Lillian and Mike Shapiro, have

blessed memory, started a tradition where they would pick

us up on a Friday or maybe even a Thursday night. And we would

drive to Long Island to Queens, and we would pick up my cousins.

And they were, Michelle was one year younger, Doug was, I think

four years younger, Michelle, and Douglas and CJ and I, and we

would all be in a car together. These are like, bucket seats.

I'm sorry, they were like bench seats. And so three in the back

three in the front. And we would drive from New York City up to

the Catskill Mountains. I think we started doing this gotta be

like eight years old. And we did it to 18. And we go up to the

Catskill Mountains, and they have all these hotels grows and

grows, I'm not sure they're in business anymore. The Concord,

the Homer whack. It was it was amazing. And we were there just

with our grandparents, we had adjoining rooms that were

connected, and we would get to go, my grandfather taught us to

play golf. We were going swimming, and huge dining halls

or rooms of meals. And we saw shows at night. And I think some

of the time we'd cut out of the shows because it was a weird

time to go to bed, keeping, you know, keeping us up late at

night. But I think about all those special memories of the

food and the fun that we had. And we sang songs together in

the car to pass the time. My grandfather's favourite was You

Are My Sunshine. And we sang John jingle John Jacob

Jingleheimer. Schmidt,

I mean, oh, my God, we have so many different types of songs,

the wheels on the bus. And we're a little kids at the time. But I

don't I think that the appreciation we got was that we

actually had a family tradition that we would look forward to

all year long. And, you know, meeting up with my remote

cousins in New York, and then heading up to the Catskills, and

we just didn't want it to end was so fantastic. And I want you

to think about, you know, some family memories and traditions

that you have for your families, too. And the great thing is, is

that when my sister and I had kids, we're gonna get into that

in a second. My parents started a tradition of taking everyone

to their happy place called Ogunquit Beach, Maine. And so

imagine flying everybody and we were in California some of the

Time and then all in Michigan, flying to Boston, going to bobby

Nancy's house and Papa Marsh's pool for the first night. And

that was like a Thursday night and then Friday morning, we were

up early. And we're all headed in the caravan like three cars,

all the way up to Ogunquit Beach, Maine. And we would

actually stay at the Aspen quit hotel, a bridge, walk from the

beach, and then close enough to downtown Algonquin, where all

the restaurants and the ice cream and all the shops were and

we did this, oh my God, my parents were going up there for

40 some odd years. We did this since our kids were born. And we

missed a few because of COVID. And then we lived in California

for a little bit but we got to go up there and the kids would

go on the trolleys that we would walk to Perkins Cove, after

dinner every night they got to my mom would take them to the

candy store. Every morning my dad would go on to Dunkin Donuts

run for everybody. So every morning it's Dunkin Donuts and a

doughnut or a croissant and coffee and juice and all that.

And then we would head down to the beach for the day. And

living in the water freezing cold playing games, walking to

different parts of the beach and then coming back after hopefully

not being sunburned to swim in the pool and go to early dinner.

My dad was like the kids got to eat at 530 was like clockwork.

But another just family tradition and I'm just teasing

you with the highlights. You can buy my book and you can you can

read all the deets, but it was truly, really incredible. And I

want to just call out some fatherly advice. So I had gotten

to Connecticut College. It wasn't really the right fit for

me. And my dad said you're taking summer classes, you're

going to play basketball work and take summer classes at

Babson College. And I did. And I found my place there at Babson

the number one school for entrepreneurship, and it changed

the trajectory of my life. So thanks, Dad, for really making

sure that I was actually on the right track when I got off the

track. So that's what dads do, right? And then after graduating

Babson I started my career. And for those that know me, they

know the story. But for those that don't. At age 23, and a

half, I was diagnosed with stage four T cell non Hodgkins

lymphoma. Now, during the headlights, yes, no internet, no

cell phones, no real computer use. Dad, dad got a book on

cancer. And we had to learn what was all about. But things were

dark for me. And my mom and dad, I moved home. And we didn't get

any good news. I was failing the therapies and things look really

dark. And the only good news is my twin sister ended up being an

exact bone marrow match stem cell transplant and roll the

clock forward to May 24 of 1990. I had a bone marrow transplant a

week before I had Rockem sockem chemo and full body radiation

twice a day. And I was in an isolation room think boy in the

bubble. And we were hoping to see if her bone marrow would

work and not kill me right away. And we were hoping it did and it

was infused in me. And her immune system became my immune

system. Miracle number one. I mean, that's a one in 25,000

chance of being a match. Incredible. I still can't fathom

it. I mean, how blessed grateful and lucky was I and I went

through a clinical trial and I got my life back. And I got to

move to California and start to rebuild my mental toughness, my

physical fitness, my confidence, working again, hitting the

basketball court out and Marina del Rey with the ocean breeze

right off the beach there. Oh, that was kind of cool. And then

by adding community service into my life, I met my wife at the

Jewish Federation of Los Angeles in 1993. And she, she said, You

know what, we were actually at it like a college fair looking

to volunteer in the community in the Jewish community. And she

said you'd be a great Jewish Big Brother. And I signed up they

did all the background checks and the fingerprinting and I got

matched with a young man who was 10 young boy, Ian Ellis met his

mom, Susan who's passed away a blessing memory and I became a

big brother. And I learned a lot about being a big brother but

really it translated into being My dad, because I was stepping

in kind of for his dad that was in prison, and now passed away.

And I learned so much about Ian and about his family and I had

never had a little brother. And we got to experience life and

wrap ourselves around each other. And what an amazing

experience from playing chess on the beach to take him to his

first concert, to flying out to San Francisco to spend weekends

with us. And then as he progressed and went to college,

at UC Santa Cruz and his master's at Florida State, and

then he ended up going to Hastings Law School and got to

stand up for ENN his wedding. He's now married to Sarah has a

son noble, and in between that he stayed with us during his

clerkship. And as he was came to Michigan and live with us for

four months, and he got to play and meet Emily and play soccer

with her. And she calls him uncle Ian, and he's a big part

of our lives. And Ian's are no will our family with us. And so

the lessons learned about some discipline, when and, you know,

getting me in, on the right track was passed on from, as I

said, from grandparents, to parents to me, and I was able to

apply many of those lessons of my upbringing and values to Ian.

And it's really special to watch him grow his family. Now, I will

tell you that. So mentorship is leadership. And being the mentor

being the mentee, the world is, he's a lot more of that, I will

actually tell you that. And so next I met Lisa, and we had a

Hollywood romance and a Hollywood wedding and shutters

at the beach. And I one of the toughest conversations I had was

had to tell her that I was infertile. And I had gone

through a major cancer experience. And that could have

easily, you know, pushed her away. But it didn't. I think she

she embraced that. And she loved me more for that. When I

disclosed that to her while we were dating, and we got married,

and my career is booming. And the work in that community is

doing going great. And we moved up to San Francisco Bay Area,

Silicon Valley, as I'm a tech entrepreneur. And a couple of

things that I forgot about, that you so easily do when you get

sucked into the vortex is that my work life balance, I was a

workaholic and I wasn't making enough time for me and and

enough time for Lisa was fitting in the community service. But

it's really easy to get get into that and get into that breezy

pace. You know, I always say Silicon Valley two plus two

equals 200 In the late 90s. And it was a fast pace. Every look

left everyone's sprinting look right everyone sprinting. It

doesn't make it right, but was sprinting. And I was able to be

part of some public offerings and some, some good things in

technology. And it was great. And I came home one night, and

late, at least gave me an article that families that eat

together and spend time together are more successful, at least

and I work got married a little later in life. And we're, I

think together probably seven years. And she said maybe it's

time we we call for that sperm that donated back before I did

any chemotherapy. And I want to definitely just divert to that

for a second. So when I'm 23 years old, and you're told that

you have stage four

T cell non Hodgkins lymphoma, blood of your cancer of your

whole lymphatic system, haven't haven't chosen wasn't on the

mind. It was really in the front lines of am I going to live or

die. And so I go through a lot of tests. And I come in for my

first chemotherapy treatment. And in an amazing way. My liver

function tests was too high. It was unsafe for me to do chemo. I

was kind of knocked down from that because it was didn't sleep

at all that night. I had no idea and if my liver function was

good, I would have done chemotherapy but instead it

wasn't. So either. Or quick thinking by Dr. Eric Rubin at

Dana Farber Cancer Institute, my Harvard fellow or training or

good doctoring or whatever you want to call it, God talking to

all my who knows He told me to go to the cryogenic centre and I

said cryo what is a sperm bank? And he said, You're not going to

do chemo today. What do you got to lose? It might actually feel

good, right? But um, so I went and I actually delivered a sperm

sample. And I kind of forgot about it because I was fighting

for my life. And you get a bill once a year, and you pay it. And

so Lisa, and I called for that, that sperm. By the way, thank

you, Dr. Rubin. Thank God, my God, you gave us a family. I'm

more grateful and lucky for your wisdom. So we call for the

sperm. And this is, you know, 1989. So we're now in 2000. It's

11 years later. So we go to the fertility physicians in Northern

California. And we meet and they take us through the process.

It's an expensive process, it still might be today. And we had

the sperm flown out to San Jose, California. Lisa, in the

meantime, grew eight eggs. And the harvest when they took the

eggs out of her, they looked and kept the best for and they

defrosted sperm. This is a medical miracle number two here

for me. And they took injected the best swimmer in those four

eggs and then actually implanted them back and Lisa, and for the

time being, we thought we're actually going to have twins,

but it's truly amazing. On August 20 of 2001. At Stanford

University Hospital,

Emily Lauren Brown was born and made us parents made me a dad

made Lisa a mom.

Try not to tear up. Because that was an incredible, incredible

day. She stayed in the NICU for a few days, and that was the

healthiest baby there and got moved to a floor. My in laws

bobbin Anita Naphtali happened to be there. And we're in the

live birth. And we took Emily home was a dad. Think about

that. It just could have been dead. And because of frozen

sperm medical technology, I was able to become a dad. It was

incredible. It was humbling. It was amazing. It was God blessed

all of the above. So we took home Emily, and I was home for

dinner a lot more. I kind of got off the bus of Silicon Valley,

the pendulum swung the other way from the.com to the.com. And I

started working at a nonprofit that I helped found and move

forward called Planet jewish.com. which no longer in

business, but it allowed me to be home for dinner and control

my own schedule. Thanks Steve Kaufman, for that my partner in

able to move that from an idea to reality to help help list

Jewish events and get more people to involved in the Jewish

communities that we brought it out and I think 30 communities

the lesson for 17 years. So becoming a dad and Lisa was a

stay at home mom. We got to do so much together by going to the

park together and singing songs and watching Emily grow up and

start to go to nursery schools and we move the whole band back

to Michigan. And my sister called me said I'm moving to

Michigan with her family and she had three children. She had

Marley who's was age six, and Luke and Danny twins girl boy

twins, that were age four. And at that time, Beth and Larry had

my sister in law and that's half sister, Lisa's half sister Beth

had two boys, Ben at age four exact age six. And they got to

grow up together my in laws, Bob and Anita lived here in

Michigan. My parents were in Boston that were closer, my mom

was able to come out a lot more frequently and see the

grandchildren. And it was amazing. And again, we're doing

these trips to Ogunquit mostly around every July 4 every year.

And the kids grew up together. And they went to lots of

different events and got to see each other a lot and I thought

that was really important. The old adage from Family First that

that Papa Leo and my mom always said we are able to do that and

and grow up together. And it was really, really a joy. And so we

watched Emily go to school and then around age he started to

get into soccer. And so being that my dad Add was at all my

basketball games. I wasn't going to Miss Emily soccer games and

was cheering her from the sidelines as she evolved and she

got really good. And she started doing travel soccer. And if

anyone doesn't know what travel soccer is on a national level,

every weekend, from the start of soccer season in August, to the

end of soccer season, if you're playing at the national level in

July, it's all year round. And you're staying at a Holiday Inn

Express, eating the same pancake batter and getting a juice and

you're travelling with the other team parents, so you get to know

them quite well. But Emily was all in on soccer. And she was a

five foot four goalie she was really fearless and really good

and training is four times a week, goalie training is another

two times a week and then goalies play games and they

rotate goalies a call it go need a goalie and you're playing

games all the time. And so that dominated about 10 years of our

life. And there was a recruiting process and all that. And I

actually was the team manager for I can't remember two

different instances for I think two or three years each. So

that's the club, the soccer club liaison to the parents and to

the players. So I got to do that. Unfortunately, at age 50,

in 2016, I had a colonoscopy. This is my timeout period during

the podcast to say, Go get screened for your mammography,

your prostate, your colonoscopy or at at home test your cardio

for your stress tests, go to the dentist, everyone's skip their

appointments during COVID Go get screened. It is so much better

than getting diagnosed with cancer or any other disease and

going through chemo and surgeries and side effects and

No, no reason to do that. Go keep your health up. Go Go get

screened, please. So at age 50, I got diagnosed after

colonoscopy a stage three with an eight and a half centimetre

tumour in my cecum colon resection surgeries, chemo port,

full chemotherapy cycles, more surgery, failed clinical trial

metastatic stage four in July of 17. And again, lightning struck

again. cancer stage four cancer for a second time. This time I'm

you know a husband, a dad. And it's the digital age. So I'm

looking for digital resources of support. But when you go

metastatic and it spreads to your liver or your your stomach

linings call your peritoneum and omentum and your bowel, your

prognosis is in very good. You can Dr google it, it's 4% chance

to live in like six to 12 months. And things were dark.

And all I could think of was Am I gonna see Emily graduate high

school, she was a freshman at the time. And I did not know. I

had no idea. And in the stage for cancer world, we live with

death. It's not that people give up it's their cancer burden

comes to great and God calls them to have an only God knows

your number. And I was still trying to be active, you know,

in Emily's life. But there were times where I was bedridden. I

was sick, I'm raging on steroids, puking my guts out

going to the bathroom a lot. And there was there was lots of

stuff that she watched her dad, you know, suffer, be in pain,

and not be able to, you know, perform like I wanted to not

working on disability. And she had to witness all that at a

young age. And people would always ask her, you know how

among Dillon, and it didn't ask her how she was doing. I feel

bad about that. But we were on the firing lines. Again, Lisa

stepped in as my caregiver and Superwoman and had to do

everything, including arrays, Emily, and I participated where

I could, especially on the soccer side, trying to get to as

many games as I could. And as the team manager, I had other

team dads Ross Leonard and others drag me and Dr. Emily to

games that were all over the place. And you try to do the

best you can and just get out of bed each day and get through the

treatments get through the side effects. And this time I was a

Marine on a mission. And I wanted to see Emily graduate you

had to put that goal out there. And I did and although I allowed

myself some time to be depressed, be angry. I never

lost the four letter word that you need to take with you called

Hope. Hope was that fuel that allowed me to keep going. And so

via miracle number three I did a surgery called cytoreduction

high pack, hyper intrapreneurial chemotherapy, so they cut me

open, and they poured hot chemotherapy me in March of 18

and 30. and a half hours later, I woke up in the ICU and pressed

the morphine drip button and then began the healing process

to see if they got all the cancer and that he did chemo had

got the actual cancer, they couldn't see the microscopic

cancer. And I am here to tell you today I'm almost four years

no evidence of disease, getting towards the fifth year and

hopefully remission. And I got to see MIT graduate high school,

one of the proudest days of my life didn't even wasn't

guaranteed, life's not guaranteed. And then I got to

see her graduate college this December, she graduated summa

cum laude from the University of Michigan. She started her career

as a reporter in Montana. And it's just been an amazing,

amazing thing. You have to play the cards that you're dealt, and

I'm building Humpty Dumpty version two Oh, again, and got

to see our little girl grow up. She climbs mountains, she snow

shoes, she ice climbs, and she's so good on camera. We watch her

on on the app every night. She's on air, but she's a good person.

She knows her values. She's also a tough kid. So watch her dad go

through this and have such a loving and smart mom to give her

a little softer side of things.

So boy I know I've given you the speed version here but I think

it's important to pay tribute to the dads out there. Be a good

dad be the best dad you can be. It's okay to be not perfect. You

know, I don't know that dad joke talking guy. But, boy. I'm a

hugger. And hugs me and everything. And I wish I could

hug you right now. I'm really miss you. But I am grateful.

lucky and blessed to be a dad. Thanks for listening. You can

find me at shining brightly.com and go have a great Father's

Day. And as we say in the cancer world, keep effing going kfg

love your Emily from mom and I you are our world. Happy

Father's Day 2023 to everybody. Thanks for for watching and