A Mother and Daughter Torn Apart by Cancer, yet Bonded Together by a Book

Welcome to the Lowdown with Heaven Low, the podcast of shining light on the inspiring stories of ordinary people wanting to look out anything but ordinary life.

All in hope that you will be inspired to look at your battlefield.

Because this life is meant to be good.

And this podcast is meant to inspire you to do it.

My name, of course, is Kevin Lowe, the host here on The Lowdown with Kevin Lowe.

And you're joining me today for episode 86.

Today, we are talking to a lady named Emily Johnson.

I was introduced to Emily because of a book that she has written.

It's called Bird of Paradise.

Now, Emily's story is one that really caught my attention because to be quite honest, I thought I was reading the latest synopsis to a lifetime movie, something on the Hallmark channel, something that you've seen the commercials for and you can't wait to watch.

But at the same point, you're kind of leery because you know you're probably gonna cry.

And yes, even for myself, a big guy like me, I'm a big crybaby when it comes to movies, to sad movies.

It's the reason why people like my mom and sister take great pleasure in torturing me by putting on movies like the notebook, because they sit over there like stone cold Steve Austin, while me, I'm a total rat.

And well, it was because of this emotional self- that had me a little bit worried about today's interview.

Because when I heard this story, I already couldn't help but think, wow, how incredible, but how sad at the same time.

But it wouldn't be until I met Emily when we recorded this interview that I realized the beauty in this story.

And well, I'm so excited that I get to share it with you today as I introduce you to a girl who grew up with a mom who had cancer, who was dying.

But that girl is now a woman, and that woman is now a published author, having done something that I think is more beautiful than I could have ever imagined before.

And that is completing her mother's work of art, this book that her mother started to write.

Emily Johnson had the gift of finishing that story and putting it out there to the world for them to read.

And well, I hope that you take something away from today's interview, today's conversation with Emily that can really leave an impact on your life.

Before I get to that interview, I do want to let you know that I would love for you to check out the episode's show notes today, because I've left a link to something I think pretty special that I've created.

I created an audio visualization exercise that is designed to help you if you're suffering with any worries or fears in your life.

Or maybe kind of wondering which path in life you should take.

I created a guided self-visation exercise that's going to have you closing your eyes and being taken away to a different place.

And the hope is at the end you come out with a renewed sense of where you're going and what road you're going to take to get there.

Again, check out the show notes where I'll leave a link to that visualization exercise.

Until then, I hope you enjoy a beautiful conversation with an absolutely beautiful guest on today's episode.

Here is my interview with Emily Johnson.

SPEAKER_03: Well, I was 13, and it was only a few months after we moved to North Carolina that she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which was obviously a shock to our family, very unexpected.

I still remember the exact moment that they told me I know what I was wearing and where I was and what I had done that day.

Kind of the first question I asked was, Are you gonna die?

You know, that's that's the obvious question to ask, particularly when you're a child.

And you know, she uh went in for surgery for the breast cancer, and fortunately it never came back.

But several years later, I was I would have been in high school, I'm just not exactly sure what year I was.

She was diagnosed with advanced stage ovarian cancer.

And ovarian cancer is very hard to detect early on.

So she was told, you know, there's we'll we'll do everything we can, but the statistics on this are pretty grim, and you need to start getting your affairs in order.

You know, it was shocking again to hear that.

But my mom just said she said, No, I'm not gonna be a statistic.

I am not going anywhere until I am darn well and ready to go somewhere.

And she told her doctors, you better make sure that I see my daughter walk down the aisle.

So she went through I don't even know how many reoccurrences of variant cancer.

Every time we thought it had gone away and she was in remission, it would come roaring back.

And you know, there was a lot of times where she seemed to be in in surgery right around my final exams in college.

And we kind of became a famous pair because shortly after she got out of the operating room, she would be there quizzing me on my work for my final exams as I paced back and forth in her hospital bed.

So she was, you know, she was really amazing in that she she always put her family first.

She wanted to make sure that her cancer never interrupted anything in our lives, which is pretty amazing given what she was going through.

You hear about me talk about her in the past tense.

She passed away in 2012 on Christmas.

It was very sudden, it went very quick.

You know, one day she was fine, and the next day she was in the hospital, you know, dealing with the effects of years and years of chemotherapy.

Your body just can only take so much.

And before we knew it, she was on life support.

You know, when she passed, it was it was really difficult.

And shortly thereafter I found a letter from her that left a copy of this book she had started writing 17 years prior when she was first diagnosed.

It was kind of her way to get away from everything that was happening.

And the book was unfinished when she passed away, and so in her letter, she left one request, and that was that I finished the book for her.

SPEAKER_01: Wow.

SPEAKER_03: It took me eight years.

You know, in that period, I had a baby and I switched careers, so there was some times that took me away from the book.

But it was published on March 29th, 2021, which would have been her 71st birthday.

SPEAKER_00: Wow, wow, wow, wow.

So, okay, so I have to ask, so your mom, after the diagnosis, when basically the doctors said there's nothing, you know, really we can do, she still lived a long time.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.

She lived 17 years, which is, you know, 15 years past when they said she was going to.

She was there for my wedding.

She saw me walk down the aisle, and two of her main doctors were actually there as wedding guests as well, which was really special.

SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's really amazing.

It sounds like in kind of every sense of the word, your mom was a fighter.

SPEAKER_03: She was.

I mean, she was an inspiration to me and my hero.

You know, it's unfortunately, so many people just when they get a diagnosis like she did, saying they're giving up is not the right way to say it because I don't think anyone really truly gives up, but it's kind of you become resigned to the fact that this is what's gonna happen.

And, you know, you can't blame people for doing that.

My mom just she just was a very stubborn woman.

She went and did research.

She probably knew just as much as the doctors knew at one point, and she just refused to accept it.

And, you know, she went out on her own terms.

You know, when she was on life support, it got to that point where my dad and I realized that it was time to, you know, take her off of it.

And that was a very hard decision that neither my dad or I wanted to make.

Neither of us wanted our signature on that piece of paper.

And so my mom just I truly believe she took it into her own hands because she passed on her own before we ever had to make that decision.

SPEAKER_00: Wow.

Wow, wow, wow.

So now you said that you found this letter that your mom had left to you about finishing this book.

Had you known that she was writing a book?

SPEAKER_03: I did.

She spent hours writing it, a lot of time on the phone with her sister, because although this book is a work of fiction, there's a lot of her in it.

It starts out in 1967 when the main character is 17, living in San Francisco, and that's when my mom was living in San Francisco as a 17-year-old.

And so there's a lot of history, a lot of detail that is true to that time period and true to her childhood.

So I knew she had been on the phone for hours with her sister, but she had never let anybody read it.

She kept it very much to herself.

I think she always had a dream of having it published.

I never intended to publish it partly because I didn't even think it would be possible.

It didn't cross my mind.

I finished it for her because that was her request, and it also served as a kind of therapy for me immediately, you know, after losing her.

SPEAKER_00: Of course.

So I have to wonder though I mean, we when you read the letter that she left to you, which I have to say that I just think that's beautiful in of itself, that you literally had a written letter from your mom.

But I mean, were were you kind of like, oh my seriously, mom?

Like you you want me to finish this book?

SPEAKER_03: You know, I I have to say, I mean, part of me was very surprised.

I mean, finding the letter was hard in and of itself, but I I was surprised, but then after I read the manuscript, I wasn't.

I don't think she ever fully intended to finish it.

And so I kind of think, you know, she always made this assumption that I would be the one to finish.

And the letter itself is actually the uh inscription in the book.

SPEAKER_01: Oh wow.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah.

You know, it was one of those things that I didn't know if I really wanted to share with people, but it meant so much to me.

And I thought it was so indicative of who she was that I ended up printing it right then and there.

And I had a lot of people reach out to me saying they couldn't make it past that part without crying.

SPEAKER_00: Wow, wow, wow, wow.

So now I'm curious, was this the first book that your mom had ever written?

SPEAKER_03: It was the first work of fiction that she'd ever written.

She was actually an educator by profession.

She taught elementary school.

She was actually my teacher in second and third grade, which is an interesting story.

SPEAKER_02: Yeah.

SPEAKER_03: But after she retired from teaching, she actually went on to work on curriculum and did a lot of conventions and keynote speeches.

So she did some publications with articles about that, but nothing on the level of a fictional novel.

SPEAKER_00: Okay.

Okay.

Wow, wow, wow.

So now, what about yourself?

Had you grown up writing fictional stories and stuff like that?

SPEAKER_03: Not really, no.

I mean, there was a few that I wrote as a child, you know, more like just playing around.

I've always loved to write, but by profession, I'm in marketing and advertising.

So writing for that is very different than writing a fictional novel.

With press releases, you need to say what you need to say, get the facts out there, and it shouldn't be more than a page.

So it was, you know, while the groundwork and the structure was there for writing, this was very different than anything I've ever done before.

And I had a blast doing it.

SPEAKER_00: Aw, that's so awesome.

So now when you sat down, when you finally came to this point and you're like, okay, I'm gonna look at actually doing this.

Had she left you an outline directions?

I mean, because I mean, I it's one thing to write a book, but it's another thing to like finish a story that somebody else has already created.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, she left nothing.

Really?

Yeah, there was nothing.

I had she had created all the characters in the book except for one, and I had the name.

That's all I knew about that one particular character.

I had the name, and I knew what part that character was supposed to play in the story, but I had no earthly idea where she wanted to take this.

And again, I kind of almost, you know, going back to the my kind of feeling that she never intended to finish it, I think she didn't want to leave an outline because she wanted me to take the story where I wanted to take it.

But I I hope, I like to think that she would have liked where I took it.

SPEAKER_00: Wow, wow, wow.

That is so, so awesome.

What kind of like book is it for for somebody who who's super interested in the in there hearing us talk about it?

I mean, what what is the genre?

What is kind of you know the type of person who would be interested in this book?

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, that's so hard to say because this book really fits in multiple genres.

It's a coming of age because it follows, you know, this this 10-year journey of a girl who was 17 at the beginning.

So it's kind of her trying to find her place in the world as she enters into the world of womanhood from being a teenager, but it's also a family saga because it follows this family very closely and the family relationship and the dynamic of the mother and father and the siblings, but then it also is a romance and it's a it's a big romance.

So I I don't know, I like to say it's a coming-of-age family saga romance.

unknown: Okay.

SPEAKER_03: And you know, I mean, so yeah, that's that's quite the you know, specific answer to you.

But it is, you know, it's if for somebody that likes to read a very descriptive book and really get into the story, this is certainly the book for them.

My mom loved Rosamond Pilcher and Maeve Binchy, so it's kind of in that kind of flow and rhythm, it's incredibly descriptive.

And a lot of the reviews that I've received have talked about like it's a movie playing in your mind.

And that was my mom's style of writing.

She liked going into you know this descriptive world and really creating something that someone could immerse themselves into.

And because she wrote this book as a way of escaping from what she was facing on a daily basis, I think that's part of how this book came about to be that descriptive.

She could really just lose herself in it.

And that was hard for me because that's not my writing style.

SPEAKER_01: Yes.

SPEAKER_03: You know, and so I had to, I was very determined to make sure this fit her style because this was her book.

And I was not going to go back in there and change it.

So I wanted to meld my style in there.

There's that black and white line where obviously she stopped and I started, but I didn't want anybody to know where that was.

Not even my publisher knows.

SPEAKER_01: Wow.

SPEAKER_03: That's been wonderful.

That's I achieved my goal on that.

You know, and to write it and to create the theme through the story and make the logical ending of where the story goes.

I had to go back to things that she had written and add in conversations and events and tweak things here and there.

But it's it's really, you know, it's in her her story, her characters, and I tried to carry that on for her.

You know, she originally this book was going to be titled Letters to My Daughter.

And it was, you know, and all of this is kind of just what I think she was thinking, but it was there's so much in here that is, you know, the life lessons and experiences that you want to pass on to your children.

Because as a parent, that's kind of your job.

And so there's things, while this is fictional, there's a lot of real life occurrences.

I know now what she thought of my high school boyfriend, and she clearly did not like him.

You know, and so so this is also teachable as well.

And I think that's one of the things there's so much that a reader could relate to in this, because we've all been in some of these situations.

We've all faced those days in high school where you just think everything is ending and you never want to go to school again, and then you go to school and nobody remembers what happened, and you're you can look back on it years later and understand, well, that just really didn't matter in the scheme of things.

And that was kind of her purpose in this book, and so I wanted to continue that on.

And so there is a lot of me in the book as well.

A lot of little things that if you knew me, you knew our family, you'd get a little chuckle out of.

So that was fun for me to do.

But getting to that level of description was very difficult.

And this book took place in a decade before I was born.

So not only did I have to get that description in there, I had to get the description for your years and clothes and locations and events that I didn't experience myself.

SPEAKER_00: Oh, very interesting.

Very, very interesting.

That's pretty cool.

SPEAKER_03: It was fun.

I enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was gonna say, but I mean, as I'm sitting thinking, like neat, but I also thinking, wow, though, like making the task even more difficult.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, it I mean, kind of the, you know, my process for writing it, you know, obviously I read through what she had written several times so that I could become familiar with the characters and who they are and their traits and everything.

And then I ended up, I knew exactly where I wanted to end it, so I wrote the end before I wrote anything else.

And then it was a matter of backtracking my way, almost deductive reasoning, to get from point B to point A instead of A to B.

And so I just let it flow out of me.

I just sat there, put on my music, and just let whatever come come out.

And then I went back over and over again, almost like I was layering paint on top of paint and some sort of, you know, famous artistic, you know, picture, although, you know, trying to compare myself to a famous artist might be a little overdoing it.

But, you know, it was just adding layer and layer and layer until I got to that level of description.

And then, you know, it was I couldn't put it down.

And I think that's one of the things that writers probably face the hardest is that when do you stop?

I could still be working on this.

The first version of this is so different from what came out.

You know, and I and part of that I credit to my father.

My my dad was the only one that read it before it was published.

And oh wow, he had suggestions on things, different things that maybe I should and shouldn't put in.

There were several scenes that I think is my father, he was a little iffy about reading something his daughter wrote.

That might have been an eye-opening experience for him, but I am so glad that happened because I took back from that.

That is, you know, if somebody is expecting more something in the vein of, you know, what they refer to as erotica, this isn't it.

There is certainly some very deep romance, some uh there are scenes in it, but I scaled them back because I wanted this to also be something that somebody that was the age of the main character could read.

And because she's 17 at the time, you know, you have to be careful about what you do and do not include.

SPEAKER_01: Of course.

SPEAKER_03: You know, and I certainly I don't think my mom would have gone to the level of what you see in some books today, which is is great.

I admit I've re I read them.

Um I'm not gonna say they're bad, but you know, I'm not sure my mother would have gone there.

And so I'm really glad my dad kind of pulled me back from going in that direction.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, is Emily a little too descriptive?

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.

I think his only comment on it was wow.

That wasn't a wow, this is incredible.

That was a wow, you are my dog.

And you know, I may be in my 30s, but I'm still gonna be that little girl that he, you know, raised.

SPEAKER_00: Yes.

Oh my goodness.

So now through the process of you finishing it, did you though at that point really think and know that you would have it published and it would be a book?

SPEAKER_03: You know, I didn't.

I think my mom always dreamed of having it published.

And that is one reason why she made that request for me to finish it.

But for me, it is such a conversation.

And through her book and her story and her writing, I can hear her voice.

So for me, it was really taking it.

I picked it up probably a week after she passed away.

I read it for the first time, and it was therapy for me.

It was a way of me continuing a conversation with my mother.

And so I decided to write it, never thinking that I would publish it.

That was the furthest thing from my mind.

And then I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

You know, I I somebody read it and got it to, you know, the proper people.

And all of a sudden I I had a published novel.

And I couldn't be more thankful to my publisher.

I mean, she really made sure that this, you know, took off.

She made sure that you know that she went above and beyond for me to make this happen.

And I will forever be grateful to Right Way Publishing for that.

SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, absolutely.

And you kind of referenced it there a minute ago.

And I was thinking to myself, this had to be a an unexpected way of healing with the passing of your mom.

SPEAKER_03: It was.

A, it took my mind off of what was happening.

You know, one of the anybody that's gone through, you know, the loss of a loved one will know that, you know, the first couple weeks or whatever, there's so much business to take care of, you know, between finances and everything you have to do and the people you have to tell, and everyone's coming over with casseroles and things like that.

But then after a while, everybody goes back to their normal lives.

And you're left there all of a sudden, you know, with that thought, oh my gosh, you know, I'll never see this person again.

I'll never talk to them.

And so, you know, when you hit that point, at least for me, that is where things became very real.

And I'm an only child.

So I was kind of on my own from a child perspective trying to navigate this new world.

And my mom, you know, I'll admit, she was my best friend.

You know, she she was the one that, you know, taught me off the cliff when I was dealing with stress, and she was the one that was always there whenever I needed her for anything.

She knew everything about me, and to lose that person, you know, left this void in my life, which I was able to work my way through by writing this book.

There is a lot of my emotion in this book, and anybody that reads it will probably understand exactly why I can say that.

So, you know, it's just I think she put in a lot of emotion because she was dealing with, you know, her own mortality.

And then I got to put in a lot of emotion because I dealt with it on the other side.

SPEAKER_01: Yes.

SPEAKER_03: You know, and so this is a very it's very special to me.

I mean, I think any author can say that, but this is this will forever bind my my words with my mother's, and I'll never get that chance in public or you know, in in person again.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no doubt.

And and Emily, I mean, I I'll be honest with you.

When I first read about your story, and then in talking to you today, I can't help but sit there and think to myself that this this is a beautiful story in of itself.

Just this whole thing, your life story, and including this book, I'm like, it's just it literally is like you're we're talking about the plot to a movie.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah, well, yeah.

I mean, oh gosh, I would love to see this put into a movie.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I mean, it it's that kind of magical, the kind of stuff that you literally see in movies, and you think, oh wow, that would be so cool, you know, if that really happened.

And and I look at you and I just think, wow, how awesome the fact that it did happen.

And the fact of just this amazing, just I I don't know.

I guess I guess I look at it and I think like when somebody passes away and stuff, what amazing way to remember and keep their life, you know, they lived still alive through publishing a book that they wrote, you know?

SPEAKER_03: It is such a gift for me.

I mean, it's her legacy, and you know, the book has been very well received.

You know, and I set out once I decided to publish it, I thought, well, if I can just sell one book to someone that's not related to me, I've you know, achieved my goal.

And it's gone above and beyond that, you know, just my wildest expectations.

But the thing that's been most amazing for me is the people that I don't know who have reached out to me on social media with similar stories of what I went through.

And people that are, you know, dealing with it right now and just saying, you know, this has kind of been an inspiration, you know, more just getting a chance to talk about it and knowing that you're not alone in it has really been uh something that's probably the most special effect of publishing that.

And I I think that's a real testament to who my mother was.

SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, absolutely.

So now one thing I'm curious about when somebody picks up the book, do you have both of you listed as the author?

SPEAKER_03: We do, yes.

And that was very important to me.

She is listed first on everything.

SPEAKER_02: Um her uh it's funny.

SPEAKER_03: Trying to find kind of a a picture of her for the back cover proved to be a lot more difficult than I thought because trying to get one that was more contemporary with the writing of this book, she didn't want a lot of pictures taken of her once she got sick.

She didn't want to be that cancer patient, and she didn't want to leave those images for me and my dad.

So I did finally dig one up for my wedding, which, you know, is kind of actually very special because that was her goal was to be there for my wedding.

And she died a year and a half later.

SPEAKER_01: Wow.

SPEAKER_03: And she was actually, we found out later, very sick at my wedding, but she didn't want to ruin that memory for us.

So she didn't tell anybody, not even my father.

She didn't say a thing.

We never knew.

So, but making sure that this was her book and not my book first was, you know, the number one thing that I have, you know, really worked hard to ensure happens.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, that's that's just awesome.

So now, last question for you that I'm curious about, and I had written down to ask you about the name of the book, Bird of Paradise.

But I'm even more intrigued to ask you about the title because you said earlier that that wasn't the original title for the book.

SPEAKER_03: Yeah.

So yeah, as I said, the original title was Letters to My Daughter, and I just happened to know that because I saw a handwritten note on the manuscript she left.

But yeah, Bird of Paradise, I mean, I will never fully know the real reason why she picked that.

But my guess is one thing, she loved the Bird of Paradise flower.

She had one in the same room that she wrote with, and I so it was her favorite.

She loved to garden, you know, and had an amazingly beautiful, very intricate garden at the house I grew up in.

And this book takes place in several different areas, but one of them in the main one is the island.

And the island is almost a character in and of itself.

And the bird of paradise is a tropical island.

I don't know what she based it off of, but I am guessing somewhere in the vein of Bali or Tahiti or something like that.

It's the only non-existent place that this takes this story goes to.

And so I know that there was Bird of Paradise on the island, but there was a theme of the Bird of Paradise, because I knew it was so special to her, that I wanted to carry through.

And that was really one of the chunks that I had to go back into what she wrote and get it in there so that it made sense at the end of the story.

And so when someone reads it, they're gonna pro they're gonna understand that.

Bird of paradise becomes not just the flower, it's much more symbolic.

And you know, I I think I kind of think, in a sense, my mom was a bird of paradise.

I mean, she was this just beautiful flower that was larger than life, that kind of stood out among everything.

And so that's uh for me personally, kind of how I think about it.

And the cover of the book, I mean, I I couldn't be happier with the cover of the book, the artist that created it.

I just gave him the prologue to the book and I said, This is what I want to see.

And my only you know, request is that it's at sunset.

And he just did a beautiful job of capturing it.

SPEAKER_01: Oh wow.

SPEAKER_03: I saw it and I just burst into tears.

SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow.

Wow, wow, wow.

Well, where where can we find your book at?

SPEAKER_03: Bird of Paradise is available on Amazon.

And it's under the authors of Marilyn Ann Hughes and Emily Hughes Johnson.

You wouldn't believe how many Emily Johnsons are out there.

So yes.

Um, and it's available in Kindle um paperback and on Kindle Unlimited.

SPEAKER_00: Okay, wonderful, wonderful.

Well, I will be sure that there is a link to the books page there on Amazon in the episode uh show notes.

But Emily, I want to sincerely thank you for taking the time out of your day to to share your just amazing story with me.

And and for those listening today, uh as I said earlier, you uh your story, your life story, it truly is it's captivating, uh it's riveting, it's it's something that that I feel like anybody listening can come away with this sense of just, as I said, it's it's this just this beautiful story of like I said, a beautiful story of a mother and daughter torn apart from cancer but bonded back together by a book.

SPEAKER_03: Oh well, oh gosh, that is such a sweet way to describe it.

I'm gonna have to quote that one.

But um, no, I mean, I just it feels so good to know that it speaks to other people and that other people see uniqueness of it as well because you, you know, it's so personal that you never know what people are gonna think about it.

You know, and this is it's so I mean, it's my life, and I I'm so glad that people, you know, can listen to it and I can share my story and and maybe you know touch other people's lives and those that are going through it.

So I really appreciate you having me on as a guest.

SPEAKER_00: Absolutely, absolutely.

Well, well, Emily, in in the most heartfelt way possible, thank you.

Thank you so much for being here today.

And uh for you listening who is tuned into another episode here on the podcast, I want to sincerely thank you.

This podcast is is about providing amazing content for you, and I can only imagine that you're thinking the same thing I am, is that Emily is just an absolutely amazing person with this beautiful story, and I feel as though anyone's life can be made a little bit better just by hearing this little bit of her life story.

So for you today, as always, I hope today's podcast has made your life a little bit better in some way, shape, or form.

And that's the lowdown with Teba Delow.

I hope today's episode inspired you, motivated you, and excited you to get out and enjoy life, no matter what obstacles that may be standing in the way.