Welcome to the Lightkeepers podcast. I'm Clayton Vandiver, your lightkeeper with the show dedicated to everyone who wants to get the most quality out of life that they can.
We don't talk about the end of life. We focus on the quality of each and every remaining day.
My co-host, as always, is Charlene, our very own TAME licensed clinical social worker certified in the state of Florida.
We invite you to join the conversation this week about Clayton and Charlene.
And so much more on this edition of the Lightkeepers podcast.
And before we start, I'd like to invite you to please leave your questions or comments below.
We always love to hear from our listeners and viewers. Questions this week will be answered during our next show that appears online every Wednesday evening at 7 p.m. Eastern.
The Lightkeepers podcast is an exclusive production of A Guiding Light, Inc.
We'll tell you more about A Guiding Light at the end of the podcast. But we don't have much time, so let's get right into this week's conversation.
Now last week, Charlene, we were talking about professional versus amateur support.
Just who that person is and what qualifies them to be a professional versus a witch doctor.
And that led us to questions we've been receiving about our own backgrounds and who we both are.
So let's start off with the most common question. Everyone seems to be curious about whether we are a couple.
Well, what are we a couple of? Crazy. Yes, that too.
That too. Well, regardless of how young we appear, despite the gray hair on my face, we've been a couple for 30 years this year.
Very happily married, lots of kids, grandchild, all the standard stuff. Cats. And cats. Yes, yes.
And the cat, one particular cat, is featured on many of our broadcasts because it seems to be feeding time just about the time we finish up every episode.
So we are a couple. We've been married 30 years this year. Would you like to tell everyone a little bit about what qualifies a licensed clinical social worker to counsel people and tell them about things that would help them?
Absolutely. Why I'm a medical professional instead of the witch doctor. There you go.
So I have a bachelor's in psychology. So I have that psychology foundation.
I then went on to obtain a master's degree in clinical social work with a focus in clinical counseling.
And what that means is I spent a lot of time in school being taught how people think, why they think the way they do, things that can interfere with that thinking process, and how to fix it, how to make it so that someone is functional.
On top of that, as if that degree wasn't enough, after I obtained my master's in social work, I did go on to be licensed in the state of Florida, which means I had to sit for a very rigorous three-hour exam, kind of like the bar exam for attorneys.
It's the licensure exam for social workers. So I am licensed in the state of Florida through the Department of Health.
On top of that. Never to be mistaken for an overachiever. No, no. Well, never stop learning. Never stop learning. And I highly endorse that.
And I wasn't ready to stop learning, so I went back to school and got a second master's, this one in palliative care.
And what that does is it trains me to be able to provide that clinical, therapeutic support to patients who have a life-limiting diagnosis, a terminal diagnosis, and support their families as they go through that difficult time.
So, master's in social work, master's in palliative care. I also, on top of all that, have extensive training and certificates in, specifically, hospice care.
That's a very special calling. Not everyone in your field. In fact, I remember when you were going through to get your master's in social work,
most of your cohort, most of your colleagues were sort of shaking their heads going, you're focusing on hospice? Nobody does that.
And you were thinking all the while, great, not much competition. I was the only one in my entire class that was going specifically for a hospice track.
Some people were doing medical. Medical social workers are kind of a breed apart. But even the medical social workers don't really want to work with hospice.
So, I'm an odd bird there. But that goes back to why I got into all that in the first place, which is the extensive personal experience.
You know, last show we talked about how amateurs get into it because they have that personal experience. And I cautioned, you know, if this is something you want to do full-time, go back to school.
Well, that's what I did. I have had extensive medical illnesses throughout my family. I started losing close family members when I was only in my early 20s.
And it's just progressed from there. And so, I found out, actually, I want to give credit to my mother's hospice nurse, Claydee, if you're out there.
This is all thanks to you. And when I was helping to take care of my mom, one of her hospice nurses, after my mom had passed, pulled me off to the side.
And she said, sweetie, I don't know what you're doing with your life, but if it isn't nursing or social work, you're wasting your time.
Wow. That's a great endorsement. And like you've been told before, it is a calling. It's something that only a few people are really good at, really specialized,
that can take the pressure, the stress, the, you know, you're dealing with people at extremely emotional times in their lives.
Absolutely.
And to be able to not only counsel those people, but their family members who are going through their own extremely emotional moments.
And there are dynamics that come up during that time.
Or lacks of emotional moments. There's a huge variety of dynamics that you've talked about over the years.
Exactly. And when you're dealing with the loss of a family member, not everyone in the family is going to grieve the same way.
They're not going to react the same way. And that's where your dynamics come in.
And that's really where a trained professional comes in, where an amateur might not be able to cope.
But dealing with all of that on a personal level and her statement really got me thinking.
And I thought, you know, this is something I do want to do. And so I went back to school and that's why I'm here.
There you go. Well, and that qualifies you to not only counsel people, not only know the resources to bring to this program
and to our viewers and listeners and help them find resources and know when the professionals are either professionals or witch doctors.
And that put me in the professional world where for over a decade now I've been helping people,
everything from hospice to palliative care to the ICU to the trauma department. That's my experience.
That's where I've been for over a decade now.
That's a lot of people going through a lot of things and being guided along the way through your good guidance and good support.
And there are a lot of little anecdotes that I'm sure will bring to this program as time evolves.
And the other side of the coin is, of course, that I'm not qualified to tell people any of those things. Absolutely not.
If you if you think of this show as sort of like tool time or or what it was Bob Villa's show, this old house on PBS.
So if you look at this show a little bit like that, I'm kind of like Tim Allen. I'm kind of like Bob Villa.
I'm the guy who knows how to present, knows how to ask the man on the street questions that you might ask and doesn't know anything about actually doing the work.
Well, Bob Villa does. But if you think about Tim Allen in tool time, he knew how to say, you know, hey, hey, Al Borland, tell me we're going to be painting this now.
What kind of paint would you use? And that's exactly who I am.
I started my career 45 years ago. Yes, that always makes me feel really old.
But I started my career 45 years ago and broadcast radio and television in Los Angeles, attending California State University.
Now, that's where Steven Spielberg and Steve Martin got their starts.
And like Spielberg, I then began directing and producing productions, mostly with much smaller budgets than he did.
And like Martin, I occasionally tell jokes and play the banjo.
But after 10 years on the West Coast, I returned to my hometown of Jacksonville, Florida to help take care of my parents.
So I've had a tiny bit of very unprofessional experience in caring for those who were going through their own life changes.
And I wanted to make a career in broadcasting where I could be more involved in every aspect of the productions.
In Los Angeles, you get sort of pigeonholed. If you start out as one thing, that's pretty much what you're going to do the rest of your career.
But after working on the side with our region's leading television newsroom, I built a production company and produced thousands of television commercials,
hundreds of corporate and industrial videos, television shows that aired on BET, INSP, TVN, and Home and Garden Television, HGTV,
where I was the voice of American horticulture. Some of you may have heard that, I don't know, back in the 90s.
Along the way, I began teaching college classes in media and film, completed my master's in education, my master's in business.
And my learning continues, probably to my last breath, because even now I'm finishing a PhD in communication.
So, you know, my education will continue, possibly even beyond my last breath.
But let me tell you some staggering numbers. 20,000 hours of broadcast radio, 50,000 hours of broadcast television I've been involved in the production of.
And that makes me feel very old, but very excited for the next possible step in this great adventure that I'm in.
And that's why I love sharing all of the information that you have to bring to our viewers and to our listeners each and every week, just like this.
So I've introduced Charlene as a licensed clinical social worker, myself as a professional broadcaster.
And she has a lot more letters after her name, because of all the qualifications she has. What does that mean for our audience?
So what that means for our audience is, I know how to give them the guidance and support that they need to get through difficult situations,
if they have a loved one who has a life-limiting illness or a terminal diagnosis.
But I may not know the best ways to get it out there in front of them.
You know the best ways to get it out there in front of them, but you can't really provide that guidance and support, at least not ethically or legally.
That's correct. But I do know how to get you in front of the camera so that you can get it out there.
So together, there you go. Together.
Just like Tim Allen and Al Borland.
I don't think so, Tim. Tim the Toolman.
Well, so you've been a lifelong and very dedicated patient advocate in all of your roles. Where all of you worked?
Oh my goodness. Well, as I mentioned, I have worked in hospice, which I feel is my true calling, my true support.
That's where I feel most at home, oddly enough.
I worked in hospice for over five years where I helped support probably the better part of 10,000 to 15,000 individuals as they came to the end of their life
and supported their families as they went through that process.
I worked in the crisis care unit for hospice patients, which is basically where patients come when their care can no longer be managed at home or in a home setting.
So there I was able to provide support. I have seen people die, thousands of people, which as a social worker, as a medical social worker, to me that's normal.
I have seen that so many times that it doesn't phase me anymore.
And it was really interesting because when I went to work in the hospital, in the ICU, and in the trauma department,
the first time one of my fellow social workers actually saw someone die, they didn't know what to do.
And it surprised me. I have taken for granted all this time.
That was their first experience?
Yes. And so I took for granted how little experience people have with that.
And that really got me thinking, you know, if another social worker who has the training that I do can be caught off guard with that,
then how earth-shattering must that be for a family member or a loved one who is watching someone go through that?
And who it's happening for them for the very first time. And it's someone they actually truly have an investment in.
It really gave me a change in perspective.
And working in the ICU, I got to see firsthand, especially partnering with the trauma department,
how when someone is faced with that reality, suddenly, you know, there wasn't the long illness and the long decline.
This is someone who had a catastrophic event. And they're now dealing with this in a very limited amount of time.
So that brings about a completely different set of stressors. So it was a good and valuable experience.
Of course. Well, and again, it's very exciting for me to be able to bring this level of experience to listeners and viewers,
because especially on a topic that you don't find people talking about every day, especially one that's considered almost taboo,
because, you know, we talk about things that sort of lead toward oftentimes the end of days.
We don't focus on the end of days. We focus on the quality of life that you can still get leading to that point.
In society, there are really only two ends of the spectrum. And that's what society focuses on.
You have the one end of the spectrum where it's taboo. You don't want to talk about it.
If you talk about it, you run the risk of bringing it to fruition, best swept under the rug and ignored.
And on the other end of the spectrum, you have the commercial industry that deals with death,
where they almost romanticize it to the point where I feel like it takes away its sting.
Death is painful, and it should be, because that places the value on life and relationships.
And if you don't have that pain that comes with the loss, then that life and that relationship had no value.
So what I want to do with this show and with a guiding light is to help people find that in between
where they're educated about it and they know enough about it to take some of the fear away from it, but to help maintain that value.
Absolutely. And I love bringing this information to the public through you,
because it's so important to open this conversation and make it a little bit less taboo, I believe.
Absolutely.
And that's sort of my mission in creating this show and in roping you into being a part of it.
No, it was a cooperative effort.
You know, the thing is, and this is what a lot of people ignore, death is a part of life.
None of us are going to get out of life alive.
This is true.
So, you know, kind of like Dame Maggie Smith said in Harry Potter, I love this line,
when someone refers to Voldemort as he who must not be named, and she says,
his name is Voldemort, he's going to try to kill you, you may as well say his name.
It's true. It's not going to make a bit of difference.
No, death is going to happen.
It's still going to happen. We don't want it to happen soon.
But not talking about it does nothing but get us to that point unprepared.
Oh, and that's the whole point of this conversation and the whole point of people joining us for this conversation
and weighing in with comments down below, which we will definitely address and help you with
to the best of our abilities, because this is a person who has the resources to do so.
And I certainly have the resources to help her put this message out to everyone each and every week.
Now, a thought to end the show with, why I'm called the Light Keeper, is very simple.
The light has been used for thousands of years.
The word light, through many cultures, many civilizations, and by many very learned people,
to refer to the concept of knowledge, of education, of experience.
To gain more light is to be introduced to new ideas and new thoughts and new information
that is meaningful to your life.
So I take the role of Light Keeper very seriously for that reason.
I'm a trained educator and broadcaster. I know how to find information, process that information,
and how to share it with an audience.
The light from a lighthouse can tell you where the dangerous rocks are to avoid
and where the harbor is to find your safety and comfort.
A guiding light is the organization, and each and every week, I'm the Light Keeper.
We'll see you here.