Announcer: Coming up, trauma will happen in this life, but today we discuss how to triumph after it.

Her loss and her death was such an injustice that I couldn't sleep at night without getting her life justice.

Announcer: The Whitney Reynolds Show is made possible by O'Connor Law Firm.

When it comes to your injuries, we take it personally.

Sciton because results matter.

Theraderm clinical skin care.

Committed to developing skincare products designed to restore skin health and promote natural beauty.

Happy to Meat You: Prime.

Fresh.

Fast.

Leigh Marcus: Stop looking, start finding.

Children's Learning Place.

Ballroom Baths & Home Design.

Pedalheads.

UFC Gym Wrigleyville.

My Buddy's Chicago.

Brendon Studzinkski with State Farm.

Goldfish Swim School.

Ella's Bubbles.

The Kid's Table.

Hi-Five Sports Chicago.

The Metropolitan Chicago.

Fresh Dental.

Kevin Kelly with Jameson Sotheby's International Realty.

Mitchell Black.

Jewelry & Coin Mart of Schaumburg.

CI Med Spa.

Love Your Melon.

Deluxe Cleaning Services.

STI Moving & Storage.

Tutu School Chicago and by other sponsors.

[music] Trauma to triumph.

We are looking resilience and strength in the face today and hearing stories that remind us that we can prevail even when the road gets tough.

[music] Whitney: Leslie Waltke has never told her full story and why she founded an academy that is changing the lives of cancer patients.

We learned about her practice and the impact they were having.

However, it was a call with our show's research team that opened up a much bigger story.

One that she's never told before that was formed out of trauma and became her mission.

Dr. Waltke, we are so glad you are here.

You transformed a whole academy based on a cancer experience.

Tell us about that.

Well, like many people I have a moment in time in my life where you start to see things in before and after.

And for me, that was October 12th of 1993.

My life partner was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer on that day at the age of 24.

What was it like for you to get that call that she has that type of cancer?

It's shocking.

I mean, as a cancer survivor, you know this can happen.

But it just doesn't...it certainly doesn't contextualize into the life of somebody who's in their early 20s.

Right.

You know, life was just beginning, we were planning on moving in together.

It was a wonderful love story.

And to get that blow at that point in time was just-- shocking, I guess, is not the most eloquent word to use, but it's just-- it's stunning.

What was it like going through cancer with your life partner?

[deep sigh] I will always say that cancer is a family disease.

If somebody in the household has it, it intercalates into the DNA of everybody that lives there or cares for that person.

Because Andrea was so young and so healthy, it was a unique situation for the medical team saying, okay, this is typically a terminal situation, but let's just throw everything we can at this disease.

So walking through surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, they even did a stem cell transplant for her.

Which they don't do anymore because we found out that they don't really add value.

But it's an experience to travel, you know, there was chemotherapy in my refrigerator.

It affects the bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom.

Everything.

And watching somebody fight so hard to live when it's just not possible.

You know, cancers are so different from each other.

And I don't like the win/lose analogy or the battle analogy.

Because it's not how hard you fight that determines whether you live.

It often is, how ugly is your cancer?

And Andrea's cancer was a monster.

And you saw the ugly firsthand.

What were some of the side effects that actually transformed the company you were going to create?

Well, I think seeing it from the inside, you get a lot of street credibility.

So I understand the fear, the sleep deprivation, the change in body image; to watch her be a beautiful woman just slowly turning green from the chemotherapy, losing her hair.

The weight loss, the weight gain.

The inability to get out of the bathtub without struggling.

I mean, those were just devastating small pieces that you see in the house but once you step outside, you present to the world, or you present to your physician saying, "Okay, let's do the next step."

So you get a behind the scenes peek that you really truly understand what cancer can do to a human life and a human body.

So what was that moment of losing her and then sitting in that realizing that now you found your future through the loss of your life partner.

Grief it awful.

And, again, it was--even though you know it's coming, you don't know that it's coming.

The night that she died, everybody was still kind of in shock.

And the nurses tell me that I sat there and just said, "What am I supposed to do now?"

Over and over and over again.

Because everything was so planned out.

You knew what you had to do.

You knew what was next.

And then I was just left with grief.

I mean, she was such a dynamic and large life in the life of her friends and her family and certainly in mine, that it was just empty.

The only presence was absence.

So it took a while to intercalate that into life and into my career.

Quite honestly, many people, other cancer survivors, just started coming to me and saying, "You know what?

"You're a PT, this hurts, that hurts, I'm tired, I'm weak."

And slowly over time that began to turn into a line of people waiting outside the door.

And I said, you know, what?

I think this is what I'm supposed to do now.

Our viewers, they may not quite understand that you formed this whole academy for cancer patients, but they don't really know the back story.

This is the first time you're actually speaking about how you formed this and because of the wounds that you faced with Andrea, that's how this was all formed.

Yes.

Why has it taken you this long to kind of own and step into the making of your business?

[deep sigh] I think-- I was young, you know, I was very young.

I was 29 when she died.

So I needed to learn a lot about life myself.

I needed to learn more about my profession.

But there are sometimes things that you see that you can't unsee.

And her loss and her death was such an injustice that I couldn't sleep at night without getting her life justice.

And again, it's not, you know, I don't want to approach the world in a vindictive way, but I feel like I got to get back at cancer somehow.

So every time a person with cancer feels stronger, is less afraid, can walk farther, can exercise, then I-- that smile, we win, and I feel like I'm getting justice for an injustice.

Do you feel like you have a hand up with your academy because you've walked in all of their shoes?

I think it certainly helps.

People--whether you're a medical oncologist, a surgeon, or radiation oncologist, or a physical therapist, I think patients know right away not only how smart you are, what you can do for them, but how much you care.

And how much you get it.

I think that is the key that people who work in oncology, who've lost someone, and many of us have, that they know when you get it.

They know when they can sit and let their guard down that you listen and that maybe you can add a little bit of advice like, "Oh, if that happens, try this," and I think that some people are better at that than others.

Why is there really not a cancer physical therapy wing out there?

Because if you think about it, if we get injured-- Yes.

--there is a physical therapy wing for that.

Why are there very few physical therapy practices that actually focus on cancer?

For the first literally 20-50 years of cancer, we were literally solely focused on getting people to stay alive.

And now over the years, our incidents is getting better, screening's getting better, treatments are getting better, people are living longer, that now, all of a sudden, we have a burgeoning huge group of cancer survivors.

There's almost 17 million of them just in the United States.

And they are saying, "I'm glad to be alive but I'm weak, "I am not who I am.

I can't live the life that I deserve to live."

So that's bringing forth the need for physical therapy.

Yes.

The studies are clear that cancer patients who exercise during treatment actually live longer, do better than those who don't.

So it's kind of a dichotomy of the only evidence-based treatment for fatigue is exercise.

So, the research is now there.

Physicians are beginning to know this.

So we're gradually beginning to intercalate it into cancer care.

Now that you've opened up about your why, how do you think that's going to transform your business going forward?

I would hope that it allows me to be less guarded, to be more open than I already am.

And that people will continue to spread the good word, either in my name or in hers because it's a love story that deserves to be told.

Thank you so much for coming on.

My pleasure, thank you.

[music] Leslie's story is a reminder that we can all go at our own speed to share our journeys.

However, the impact might already be happening.

Our next guest has also dealt with the trauma of death.

However, it was his own.

It was a day he will never forget.

James Durham was riding his motorcycle when a car turned and crashed into him.

When we made impact, I flew and, luckily, there was a light pole.

That's what caught me.

If it didn't hit that I would gone off the bridge into oncoming traffic.

My helmet flew off and went 200 yards away and then I woke up, and I was laying in the arms of my grandfather.

And he passed away when I was very young.

So my grandfather took me up to heaven, and it was an amazing experience.

It was such a bright environment and I got to spend time and communicate with absent loved ones from childhood.

Whitney: James didn't know it, but his heart had stopped beating for a short moment.

And this is when his battle to triumph began.

In a coma and now, a severe brain injury.

The left side of my brain is extremely damaged.

So it doesn't work right.

My right has to correspond.

I am completely blind in the left eye, slightly deaf in the left ear.

I have no sense of smell or tastebuds; I also do not have the feeling of understanding certain touches throughout my body.

Whitney: His injuries led him to have multiple brain scans, one of which led him to an unexpected revelation.

And that's when we saw the actual heart inside my brain.

And I remember looking at my mom and saying, "We can see love was on my mind a little bit, don't you think?"

And she laughed and she said, "You know we should do something with that."

And that's when I started my organization TBI One Love.

TBI one love is an organization spreading a positive form of hope, inspiration, and education to those that have been affected by a brain injury.

The kind of hope we give survivors is give them not only recommendations for the best type of therapy, after therapy, doctors, neurologists, neuropsychologists, anything that really is going to help them, again, in all levels of wellness.

We also assist families and caregivers not only in hope but also in letting them understand that it's not their fault but they're also not alone and not someone that has to go through this journey short or longterm with or without the survivor.

In 2017, I met the individual that was driving not only to let them know, "Hey, I am okay," but to thank them for positively changing my life.

Everything, of course, happens for a reason.

One of my childhood battles is, I always had a learning disability.

But the way my brain was reformatted, I actually was able to not only do better in school but also live my childhood dream of going to the same college my parents went to.

If I didn't go there, I would have not met my wife, I would have not started my organization, and I would not be able to continue to meet more people and spread that power of positivity, hope, education, and inspiration to everyone both nationally and internationally.

When it comes to today's topic, you must meet two brothers who run towards trauma for work.

And on their spare time, help people triumph with life.

Say hello to two heroes who happen to be twins, television stars, and rehab experts.

They're fire fighters, renovators, and television stars.

The Downing brothers, Anton and Anthony, have come a long way since growing up on the south side of Chicago.

They help people triumph every day in their personal and working lives.

Fire fighter and helping people find homes.

Why is it that you run towards trauma?

[deep sigh] Man.

You know, growing up watching our father, you know, he'd put on his uniform.

He was a Chicago police officer and he'd go out and come in, it just seemed like something that we should be doing too.

Anthony signed me, our older brother, our younger brother, and our cousin.

He signed us all up.

He went to my mother and said, "Hey, can I get the social security numbers out of your box?"

You know how moms keep everybody's birth certificate and social security?

Whitney: Yeah.

And he signed us up his self.

Whenever I see a great opportunity, I want all of my brothers to get that opportunity, not just me.

Because that's how it always has been.

If we find out that there's a way for us to get some candy, you know you want everybody to get the candy.

And that's how I felt about the opportunity to join the Fire Department.

Like, we should all try to do it.

Whitney: You know, the saying that you just said is interesting because that's how you live your life.

If you get the candy, you want everyone to have the candy.

But that is kind of what you've been doing even when it comes to construction and helping other people achieve housing.

Tell us about that.

So, I did a 203K renovation loan, and that was my first renovation, and then I couldn't be there every day because I go to the fire house and I'm there for 24 hours.

So I asked my brother, could you go and check up and see what's going on with the contractors and make sure everything is going right when I'm not there?

And then we kind of-- it just clicked.

Hey, we can do this, we can manage contractors One of us is always available.

People don't know the difference sometimes, you know?

And then we do everything as a team our whole lives, so it's like, okay, let's start to attack this as a team.

And then we went out and looked for properties and put the money down and did what we need to do, go out.

And now we have an entire team of contractors, real estate attorney, realtors, financing, all of the different things that you need in order to make this happen.

And then we thought to ourselves, well, if we can-- now that we've figured this out, most people have no understanding of how to buy and renovate, so let's share this.

We were approached by the Cook County Land Bank authority.

They wanted us to do the renovation on a home they were giving away for free.

And we said yeah, we'll definitely do that.

And we put it on our social media, made sure that something like 15,000 people signed up for it.

And when we saw the woman that eventually won this raffle, I was like [deep sigh] oh, man, she's going to be so relieved.

She's never owned a house.

She's like 54, it was probably like a year before last.

And it was incredible.

It was an incredible feeling because we made sure the kitchens, the bedrooms, we made sure everything was going to be right.

Oh, man.

Whitney: Why do you have a heart, though, for helping others do this?

Anthony: My parents, my grandparents, they've always been homeowners, but when you get to elementary school, you get to high school, you start to hear from your peers that they've never lived in a house before much less have parents that own houses.

We've been tremendously blessed.

When we were growing up, we had both of our parents.

We had a lot of mentors, the other parents of the other kids, we went to a great school.

And so, I saw that just the next neighborhood over or right across the tracks it wasn't, you know, it's a lot more difficult for other people.

And I would always ask myself why?

Why were we given so much and others not?

So I feel like I just want to share blessings because I think everyone should have the opportunities and then get a choice to do what they want to do with their lives.

And so now we have Podcast, "Homecoming with the Downing Brothers," to educate people.

We wrote a book, A Visual Guide to Real Estate, which we made family friendly because it's in a cartoon version.

And then people see us on national TV shows because we have "Backyard Bar Wars" on TruTV.

We go out into the world and we want to educate.

We want to provide access and awareness of everything that we've been given.

Whitney: This platform that you've grown-- Anthony: Yes.

Whitney: I mean, you're two Chicago guys.

That's the crazy part going to Hollywood and then coming right back here to get to the fire house.

Like even this morning, I had a call at like 6:00 a.m., a three-car accident on the Sibley overpass going over the Bishop Ford expressway.

And, you know, I'm forcing the door with the tools, with the jaws of life.

And now I'm sitting here with you.

Whitney: I love it.

I love it.

So what is your goal with the platform?

My goal is to make sure everyone knows that they can do everything we're doing.

Whether it's owning apartment buildings or the single-family homes or if they actually want to go into business renovating properties, making sure they know exactly how to do it just like us.

I want the Downing Brothers legacy to be one that people see that we put on for our city.

That we put on for Chicago in a way that we instilled a philosophy in everyone that you need to achieve, and then you need to make everyone else have access to what you've achieved.

I just want people to know that you get your blessings from blessing other people.

Whitney: The Downing Brothers are a reminder that trauma and triumph can co-exist and that people may actually be the key to getting through both.

Before we go, we have a success story that's more than her thriving company.

One that involved acknowledging trauma, and now she's throwing the same lifelines that saved her out to complete strangers.

For years, she hid behind her toys.

Melissa Bernstein, co-founder of Melissa & Doug, opens us with us about her lifelong journey with anxiety and depression.

From my earliest recollection, I truly think I might have been two and a half or three, I always pondered this deep question of why?

Why are we here as people if we're all bound to die?

What am I doing here?

And what is my purpose when I'm here?

And unfortunately, because these questions were so deep and so dark, that I couldn't even necessarily voice them versus have someone give me the meaning to them, I remained in continual despair and continually questioning the same things.

And would you say that kind of fueled starting a company?

32 years ago, we started our company Melissa and Doug really in a garage, in Doug's parents'’ garage.

It's a true story.

And kind of as we moved, the business moved with us to our homes, until we could really afford to get an office, which wasn't much of an office.

And I think we've been so fortunate.

We've always followed our hearts and created products that we feel will truly resonate with children and to ignite a child's imagination.

Our company is now close to $500 million.

We are ranked, I think, one of the top ten in the country.

And when it's come so purely from your being, that it just feels-- we're so grateful.

It just feels so wonderful.

Whitney: This toy maker, mother, and survivor, decided to self trail blaze a path to understanding herself.

One that had her choosing to find light in the darkness.

And that fueled her creativity.

It was because before then, I had truly felt powerless.

I felt that I perhaps had a creative spark in me, but when it could only channel into darkness and not ever touch anyone else, it's stayed in darkness and left me isolated and alone and feeling depressed.

But when I realized that actually I had a choice, I could choose to keep darkness as darkness, but I could also choose to channel that darkness just as easily into light and make these toys no less, that could truly make a child laugh and sing and dance and play.

So that became my salvation for 30 years.

And was really well and good.

And to be honest with you, everything I'm talking about now was incredibly, effectively repressed, denied, and disassociated from.

So I never knew that any of this was going on.

I was the quintessential achiever, high achiever, and put on this facade that like everything was perfect.

And people who knew me, even my closest friends, thought everything was perfect.

And I thought everything was perfect because that's the story I told myself.

But as I grew older, that cry of my own soul to be authentically seen became louder and louder because all that joy that I created through toys was truly channeled from deep, dark anguish.

Whitney: The goal of her new website and book is to create a community that supports those looking for mindfulness and purpose.

The verses became my lifelines to live wholly and fully as well.

And probably my simplest but most powerful lifeline for myself, which I still say every day, which became my battle cry, was step on out of the head, moving into the heart, free to channel all dread into jubilant art.

Whitney: Melissa's story is a reminder that the struggle may find us.

But as she said, acceptance and self-awareness became her guiding light on a path towards triumph.

[music] In life, we're probably going to experience trauma.

But the only way to triumph is if you keep going.

Remember, your story matters.

[music] Announcer: The Whitney Reynolds Show is made possible by O'Connor Law Firm.

When it comes to your injuries, we take it personally.

Sciton because results matter.

Theraderm clinical skin care.

Committed to developing skincare products designed to restore skin health and promote natural beauty.

Happy to Meat You: Prime.

Fresh.

Fast.

Leigh Marcus: Stop looking, start finding.

Children's Learning Place.

Ballroom Baths & Home Design.

Pedalheads.

UFC Gym Wrigleyville.

My Buddy's Chicago.

Brendon Studzinkski with State Farm.

Goldfish Swim School.

Ella's Bubbles.

The Kid's Table.

Hi-Five Sports Chicago.

The Metropolitan Chicago.

Fresh Dental.

Kevin Kelly with Jameson Sotheby's International Realty.

Mitchell Black.

Jewelry & Coin Mart of Schaumburg.

CI Med Spa.

Love Your Melon.

Delux Cleaning Services.

STI Moving & Storage.

Tutu School Chicago and by other sponsors.

Go beyond the interview with Whitney Reynolds and her 52-week guide of inspiration.

The book goes deeper into the topics you see on the Whitney Reynolds show.

To get your copy for 12.95 plus shipping and handling, go to whitneyreynolds.com/store and use code PBS.

For more information on today's program, visit whitneyreynolds.com or follow us on social media on Twitter @whitneyreynolds and on Instagram @whitneyó_reynolds.

Kids: Our mommy.