What if healing didn't start at a therapist office?
What if it started on a dance floor or on a bike
built for two? Moving forward, even when they're
not sure how to go, today's conversation is about
grief, second chances, and choosing joy after
loss. The Blank Journal is a heartfelt travel
memoir that follows Bobby and Tommy. Cranston,
two people who lost their first spouses to cancer,
who found each other later in life and decided
to bike through all 50 states, which I'm anxious
to hear about, but I also read it. And they were
on a tandem bike, but this isn't really about
the book or about biking. It's about what happens
when life breaks you open and you still decide
to live fully. Welcome Bob and Tammy Cranston.
Thank you. Thank you for having us. Okay, so
tell us a little bit about you. Let's start there.
Go ahead. Well, we met at a hospice sponsored
grief support group after losing our spouses
to cancer just one month apart from each other.
And, you know, I remember meeting him and thinking,
well, somebody is going to be really blessed
to be with him someday. It's not going to be
me, because I'm not looking. But there was just
something special that I noticed about him. So
we went through this grief support group for
eight weeks. And I noticed that we both were
healing very healthy. We both were using our
faith. We both had done a lot of healing before
we even got there. There is such a thing as anticipatory
grief. you know, I started grieving the day that
my former husband got his diagnosis and was told
that he had less than a year to live. Same here.
You know, you can't prepare for the loss, but
there are ways that you start preparing. That's
very important to say. Yeah, that's good. And
so, yes, we both really, out of everyone that
was in the group, we were in a different spot.
which was very unusual. And the leaders knew
that and often would allow us to talk more than
others to try to inspire some of the others.
And so I did notice that Bob seemed to start
taking interest in me. And, you know, I pretty
much just told him that I wasn't interested.
I don't feel like I have it in me to. love and
lose again. But we were good friends. But on
our last meeting, we had to make up a new list
of what's your new normal going to look like?
What are the things that you've put off that
now you can do? And they recommend having some
fun things on there. Maybe there might be some
educational ambitions. So I always wanted to
write a children's story, and I had it on my
list. I grew up in a dance studio as a kid. I
was there four days a week, but I never did ballroom
dancing. I did jazz, tap, LA, toe, all of those
things. And since ballroom dancing seems to be
so popular right now with Dancing with the Stars,
I thought, I wanna do something where I'm moving
again. I wanna feel alive again. And so I was
sharing with the class, I signed up for ballroom
dancing, and then Bob approached me. Yeah. Well,
what I said to her was my wife, my deceased wife
and I had always said, well, someday it would
be fun to learn how to do ballroom dancing. And
so I asked her, I said, would you mind if I joined
you in the class? I was a little intimidated
because she had grown up dancing and I did not.
I was not a dancer. She said, no, I'll be gentle
with you. It's great, you know, we're gonna go
as friends. And so we got to know each other
in the group and we're both, you know, working
through our morning together. And we, our group
would meet on Tuesday evenings. We went straight
from grief support group to ballroom dancing.
Same time, same day, just a different place.
Now we got out the leather sole shoes. And you
know, I'm so glad that we did it together because
my emotions and yours too were all over the place.
And I thought, who else can understand? And I
wrote about this in the first chapter of the
book. And I remember that first time I smiled
and laughed when we bumped into each other, stepped
on each other's toes and laughed. I stopped and
then I had tears and started crying. And I thought,
should I be laughing? Does that feel right? And
then I had to tell myself, I had to give myself
permission. Yes, this is what Larry would want.
He wants me to find joy again. And so we continued
to take the dance lessons. And then it was like,
well, let's go out to eat after dance class,
still meeting his friends. But then eventually
the phone call came and he asked to meet me for
dinner. And I said, like, hmm, let me just be
frank. Are you asking me out on a date? Are we
just going to meet for dinner as friends? This
is a date and I told him, I really need to think
and pray about this. That changes things for
me. Right, right, right. So, but. So, we got
out on a fairly simple restaurant but the food
was pretty good. Anyway, she kept throwing up
roadblocks. All go our separate ways. And none
of them seem very convincing to me. So. Yeah,
I was trying to push him away and he wasn't having
it. And really, what was the deal breaker for
me was that we went to see a Christian counselor
together and we wanted to make sure that we were
in a healthy place. I was really wore out. And
I wanted to make sure that we both were in a
healthy place. He said yes, he absolutely believed
that we were. Then I thought, this is going to
be what's finally going to tell him he needs
to look somewhere else. I said, I don't think
we're compatible enough. And so we had us take
a compatibility test. And then we came back the
following week. We did this in our own homes.
We mailed them in. They went to him. We came
back the following week to get our scores. And
he said, I've been a Christian counselor for
over 30 years and I've never seen scores like
this. And I'm on the edge of my seat, you know,
wondering what is he going to say? And he said,
your scores were off the charts. He said 60 is
a good score for couples who have been married
and have known each other for a long time. He
said, are you ready for your scores? And we said,
absolutely. We had three 100s, two 90s and a
70 in a category of raising children, which we
had done together. So I said, I think God is
opening a door for me and I am not. being willing
to walk into it. And so that was the eye -opener
for me. That's cool. So let's talk about the
grief, because I know you brought that up, the
grief and the permission to heal. In the book,
grief isn't something you get over. It's something
you learn to live alongside. Exactly. Why do
you think the society struggles so much with
allowing people to grieve without putting a timeline
on it? Well, I think that's a good question.
I think the answer is complicated. But one big
thing, I think, is that a lot of them don't know
how to deal with it themselves. And they don't
know how to help you deal with it. And they would
rather just let it be silent and pretend like
it wasn't there. Yes. And we do not give people
permission to grieve. People are given a very
short time period off work. and then you're supposed
to come back and be okay. We both recently got
certified in grief companioning and just in going
through that and then I became a trained bereavement
volunteer, of course Bob's a physician, so we
both have some background in this now but something
that really was important for me to learn was
the difference between grief and mourning because
grief is all those feelings you feel inside,
that deep pain, the sadness. The mourning is
getting it outside of yourself. And you know
what happens is we show up at the funeral for
people and then we let those people be on their
own. We need to set up times to meet with them
for coffee, lunch or something. People still
need to talk about. their loved ones and what
they went through, their experience. And we need
to give people the time and space to do that.
So our society is just not allowing people to
grieve in a healthy way. I like how you took
apart grief and mourning because they are two
different things. And we talk about it. but we
don't talk about what steps there are involved
in. We give like the numbers, you know, like
one to 12 steps or whatever the steps are for
grieving, but we really don't get into it. And
then we completely take out mourning. Mourning
is not even a thing. It's not even talked about.
And that's really a good point that you brought
to light, that it's not even talked about mourning.
It's a different thing. So there's an unspoken
tension people feel after loss, the guilt, like
you did with the laughing. You started laughing,
then you started feeling guilty, scared to love
again, and even living again. How did you model
a healthier way to move forward? Because I want
to see how you did that. Well, we always give
each other permission to talk about our past.
So Barb and Larry can come up in any conversation.
And that's very, very healthy. Just because you
lost someone doesn't mean they're not going to
be a part of your life the rest of your life.
You carry them forward with you. So I know Barb
is a part of him and he knows that Larry's a
part of me. And he literally said something,
he's going to thank Larry. He has things that
he wants to thank him for. And he said that I
should be happy that Barb worked out the rough
ideas with him. Some of them, some of them. So,
you know, that is one thing I think that's very
healthy in starting over to give the other person
permission to talk at any time about your past,
because it's not something that you bury. It's
always with you. I think one thing that made
it a little easier for me was Barb and I had
been married for 33 years. When we found out
about her terminal diagnosis, and we were sitting
at the kitchen table just kind of talking, she
said, you know you'll need to get remarried.
And I said, why do you say that? She said, because
that's how you interpret the world. You think
out loud with another person and you... you're
going to need that. So in a way, it gave me permission
to think. And then as Tammy mentioned, anticipatory
grief and preparatory grief. It's like both sides
of us are preparing for, as it turns out, about
a year and a half for the inevitable. So it kind
of, I mean, it's bittersweet, but it did kind
of give us permission to move forward. Right?
With Larry and I, he was told he had less than
a year to live. And he literally made up his
bucket list. And that was my first book. It's
called Why Not Me? It was so inspiring because
here he is, you know, with stage four cancer,
hiking mountains, swimming with dolphins. And
he just had this amazing faith and and spirit.
I mean, he's so full of joy. Yet he's dying.
I thought, wow, he's living life. You know, we
all should be living like we're dying. He literally
was doing that. And it inspired me so much. And
then with patients, I learned with them that
they all have something in common and that's
regrets. So in moving forward, that's one thing
that we wanted to do is set those goals. My motto
is every day, what can I do to minimize my regrets?
Yeah, that's good. That's good. I don't want
to have those regrets on my deathbed. Yeah. So
that was something that we, I don't know if that
totally answered your question. No, it did. It
did. It did. With moving forward. Yeah, that's
good. That's good. So I want to go back to your
ballroom dancing. Yeah. And I know it wasn't
therapy. It probably was. Maybe it was in a way.
But it was a surprising doorway to your new adventure
and to your life. What does this story teach
us about being open to healing in unexpected
forms? Well, I would like to share with you one
thing that changed me. Sometimes it can be something
somebody says, something you read. And he was
reading so many books. I signed up for these
devotionals through griefshare .org. And one
in particular got me off the couch. And it said,
it was from Dr. Ray Pritchard, he said, you can't
go back. You can't stay here. You must move forward.
Oh, that's good. In the end, you wish you could
always go back, but that's not how life works.
That's good. And so I kept thinking about that
quote. and it got me up off the couch. It's like
I can't just live the rest of my life laying
here on the couch. That is dying. I need to focus
on living. That is what Larry would want. He
would want me to focus on living. So I was 49
years old and I still have hopefully a long,
you know, many years yet to live. So I was very
focused on living life fully. Yeah, that's good.
Well, I'm sorry. I was going to say I had a full
-time job as a neurologist. And my particular
job, I dealt with a lot of people who were dying.
I worked in the area of palliative medicine and
some of the muscular dystrophies. And so one
thing that helped me was some days when I was
feeling under pressure and feeling sad, I'd say,
hey, You have so much to be grateful for. There
are all these people whose lives are being torn
apart, and at least you know your wife loved
you, she cared about you, and you didn't go out
angry. It's sad, but it's time to move on. We
find that we do some presentations for different
groups, but we find there's a lot of people stuck.
They just They feel like it's disrespectful to
move forward. And we don't feel that at all.
It's not disrespectful. We really feel like it's
what they would want. Yeah, that's good. Your
story challenges the idea that big dreams don't
belong to just the young. What message does the
blank journal send to people in their 50s, 60s,
and beyond who feel it might be too late? There's
always something interesting, challenging, inspiring,
godly to move forward with. Even at the very
end of life, there are ways you can touch people's
lives. And we found that setting goals that were
fun and inspirational was a big part of our healing.
Yeah. And we are people of faith. And we have
realized that it's not our story. It's not our
story. And it's his story. And he's the one that
knew that we would be a good match. And he's
the one that brought us together. And so we're
living his story. It's his story played out in
our lives. And we really like being active, and
we really enjoy inspiring other people. That's
really good. I love that. I hear faith from when
we first started to the very end, right? So faith
is present even in your book when I read it.
But it's grief. It's quiet and it's lived. It's
quiet. I mean, you guys live it like constantly.
Everything you did throughout the book, I was
like, wow, this is faith. This is like faith
here. Like this is nothing but faith. And now
you're talking about it. So I'm getting the distinct
with this wisdom from you that faith isn't just
talking, it's formative. That's right. Absolutely.
Okay. Why do you think that that approach that
you're bringing to us today resonates and should
resonate with people so deeply? Because I feel
like everyone's going to go through difficult
times and changes really hard for people. But
I know for me it was. I was, you know, avoided
any costs. But now I've been through it multiple
times and I've come to rest in the hope and promises
that I have that I'm going to be taken care of.
And I don't have to worry about tomorrow because
I know that he's the one that is the God of new
beginnings. And I can rebuild my life, however
many times it takes, I can rebuild my life. Right.
That's good. I think of Philippians 4 where he
says, be anxious for nothing but in everything,
prayer and supplication and thanksgiving. Let
your requests be known to God and the peace of
God shall keep you in that situation. I think
you guys are talking about trusting provision.
Even though we may not even feel like it sometimes,
you know? Like we're grieving or we're upset
or some things are not going right. It's trust
and provision. I think you guys came into my
life because I actually am on that journey of
trust and provision, which is like amazing. You
know, it gives you like, almost like wings. It
does. It's like, it gives you those wings. Like
it feels so light that you don't have to worry
as you say. Worry about tomorrow. Even the next
second, you trust in provision. And then it's
such a, you know, gratitude is such an important
part of our life because when you do trust and
you see that he's opened these new doors and
you've decided to walk through them, it's like,
how can you not be grateful that he's continuing
to work in your life? He's healing you. He's
opening new doors. He's giving you a beautiful
new life. I mean, he's with you every step of
the way. and through it all, carrying you through
the hard times and yet leading you into new valleys
that you're not even aware of. Our lives are
a beautiful story. Even the chance to meet with
you, a woman of faith who is sharing and encouraging
other people, that's such an encouragement to
us. to know that you're out there encouraging
souls in their grief. Yeah, inspiring others.
Yeah, it's important. It's really, really important.
I know that it's a difficult thing to get through,
and we do not want to come across as thinking
to people that, you know, it's an easy thing.
I lost my son two years ago, my oldest son. That's
difficult grief. I'm still really going through
the mourning. And I feel like I will be my entire
life with this loss. It's different than any
others. So we definitely understand grief, but
I will say we also understand life is for the
living. And we're here for such a short time.
Yeah, that's good. Yeah, we are here for a short
time. If there's something that you could tell
anyone that's hurting right now and that's hearing
this or watching this, what would you tell them?
I think I would tell them that you can't get
through this by yourself. You need God and you
need other people and you need time and you need
to actively work on the whole thing. Yes. It
doesn't just drop into your lap. Right. I would
also add that something that we learned in our
training is that from Dr. Alan Wolfelt, he's
an expert and has so many books on Greek. He
said, divide the people up in your life in thirds.
There's going to be one third that are going
to be very helpful, friends that are going to
be listening to you. And then you're going to
have the one third that are just neutral. don't
really show up at all. And then you're going
to have the third that are not helpful, that
say the wrong things, that say they're in a better
place or things that you don't want to hear that
are not helpful to you, telling you, yes, you
do need to move forward and you shouldn't be
grieving. It's been so long. No, forget about
all those other two thirds and cling to that
one third of people that will be with you through
this journey. Hold on to them dearly. Yeah that
people that sincerely ask you how you're doing
and say I Really would love to share with you
how I'm doing Yeah, don't just say okay as you're
passing by say I would really like to set up
a time to talk with you Yeah, really care. Yeah
That's beautiful. Well, I want to tell you, this
is the part of audience, this is the part that
I tell you all about what I learned out of the
book. Because I do read every book. So you're
ready for this? So what stayed with me the most
is healing doesn't mean erasing the past. And
I think that's number one for me, because I always
thought that you had to forget them because you
always start crying. You start showing emotions.
your book reflected that it doesn't erase it,
doesn't erase who they are. It means something
different right now. So that really helped me.
It means carrying it with tenderness while choosing
joy anyway. Anyway. That's tough. Anyway. And
this book reminded me that joy doesn't dishonor
grief. It doesn't. That's a great point. It doesn't,
it doesn't. Love doesn't replace what was lost,
which you just said. Yeah, you just said that,
yeah. Yeah, thank you for noticing those things
in the book. They are so true. Yeah, it doesn't.
And starting over doesn't mean starting from
scratch. Yes. It was so refreshing to hear, you
know, just to get that. It doesn't mean, because,
you know, when you say starting over, You think
of erasing everything. I just, no, starting from
that point, which is great for me, you can bring
all the joy from where you are and who you are.
Whether you lost a spouse, a dream, a season
of life, or even your sense of direction, this
story gently whispers, you're allowed to live
again. And that's what is the most important
in this whole book. We did not walk away from
the families of our former spouses. In fact,
when we got married, we had them give us away.
They stood up to give us away. That is beautiful.
Yeah, it really was. And we had a great party
afterwards. Just being together, eating and dancing
and having fun. Yeah, they knew what we had been
through. We talked to all of them. We had their
blessings and they were happy for us. Oh, that's
beautiful. So you let me ask you a question.
The sidebar. Do you do like relationship coaching?
So we know. No, we don't, but Tammy especially
has been more public speaking. OK, OK. Women's
groups. I talked a little bit to some groups
about. Medical aspects have done OK. So yes,
I like to do like women's retreats. And I just
feel really comfortable, you know, talking with
the women. And when it's just women, they're
just, they tend to be more open. We can share
each other's stories. And you know, they find
my story very inspiring. And, you know, I was
one who always felt like my talent was writing.
That's why I wanted to write the book. Bob and
I, in fact, were just keeping Shutterfly books,
are you familiar with Shutterfly? We were keeping
records just ourselves, you know, these beautiful
Shutterfly books. And I said, this is a story
we really should share. I really think it could
inspire others. So that's when we decided about
halfway through the biking, we decided to start
writing. But I was not even planning on doing
public speaking until someone read the book.
my first book, Why Not Me? Why Not Me by Tammy
Cranston was my first book, my journey with Larry.
And after someone read that book, they asked
me, would you be willing to come and speak at
this women's retreat? And then once I did and
I found that I was inspiring these other women
and I got feedback from them, I thought, I'll
do whatever it takes. If I can help someone that
feels stuck in life to move forward and find
joy again, if I can be an instrument in whatever
way it takes, unwilling. That's great. That's
beautiful. Well, audience, this has been really
great. This is a heartwarming session, and I
really love what you've been saying, Bob and
Tammy. It's been great with you. And you will
please get their book, The Blank Journal. It's
now blank. Blank Journal, writing in all 50 states
and so much more. Yes, it's so much more. It's
so much more about biking. Yes, yes. So if this
episode stirred something in you, if it made
you think of someone you love, someone you lost,
a dream you've been putting on hold, I invite
you to sit with that feeling for a moment. And
if you believe someone else needs this message,
please share it with them. And I really enjoyed
this conversation. I hope you did. Oh, absolutely.
Thank you so much for having us. And we really
appreciate you. And thanks, audience, for hanging
in there with us. And we're going to bid you
adieu. Bye for now. Thank you so much. OK, bye
bye. Bye bye now.