When Lacey Horta and Jenni Haggie of the Canadian Cancer Society joined us, the conversation transformed into an immersive exploration of digital storytelling's role in humanizing healthcare. Our guests, with their rich backgrounds in community management, social work, and cancer strategy, shared how stories can turn the most corporate of meetings into a space filled with compassion and understanding.
The emotional resonance of sharing one's journey with cancer is undeniable—whether it's through the eyes of someone like Janice, who found strength in her childhood memories during treatment, or the participants who find solace in expressing their choices and affirming their community. These workshops aren't merely about storytelling; they're about creating a space for empathy, connection, and mutual support.
We wrapped up our conversation on a note of reflection and anticipation. Hearing stories of resilience and support, such as the poignant exchange between individuals at different stages of their cancer journeys, underscores the importance of shared experiences. For those inspired to craft their own digital story, Lacey and Jenni provided insights into getting involved with the Canadian Cancer Society's storytelling initiatives—a call to action for anyone seeking comfort or wishing to offer it through their own narrative.
Other Links Mentioned
About Our Guests
Jenni Haggie is a Senior Specialist of Strategic Development and Level 2 Digital Storytelling Facilitator with the Canadian Cancer Society. She is passionate about how digital stories can help people from underserved communities tell their stories, in their own words, to inspire change.
Lacey Horta is a Social Service Worker, Online Community Manager, and Level 2 Digital Storytelling Facilitator with the Canadian Cancer Society. Lacey’s digital storytelling experience includes working with people with cancer, advanced illness, and people experiencing grief.
Contact Lacey & Jenni here cancerconnection@cancer.ca
About Leading Through Stories
Everyone has a story to tell—and what we do with that story can create lasting impact. Every episode, Leading Through Stories, helps unravel the how and why of digital storytelling with host Kristy Wolfe.
Life is made up of meaningful moments—which ones do you want to share?
This podcast is presented by Common Language DST, digital storytelling facilitation training for health and wellness changemakers.
Don't miss an episode from Leading Through Stories!
Sign up for the Leading Through Stories newsletter, follow us on Instagram @LeadingThroughStories and subscribe on your favourite podcast platform.
When Lacey Horta and Jenni Haggie of the Canadian Cancer Society joined us, the conversation transformed into an immersive exploration of digital storytelling's role in humanizing healthcare. Our guests, with their rich backgrounds in community management, social work, and cancer strategy, shared how stories can turn the most corporate of meetings into a space filled with compassion and understanding.
The emotional resonance of sharing one's journey with cancer is undeniable—whether it's through the eyes of someone like Janice, who found strength in her childhood memories during treatment, or the participants who find solace in expressing their choices and affirming their community. These workshops aren't merely about storytelling; they're about creating a space for empathy, connection, and mutual support.
We wrapped up our conversation on a note of reflection and anticipation. Hearing stories of resilience and support, such as the poignant exchange between individuals at different stages of their cancer journeys, underscores the importance of shared experiences. For those inspired to craft their own digital story, Lacey and Jenni provided insights into getting involved with the Canadian Cancer Society's storytelling initiatives—a call to action for anyone seeking comfort or wishing to offer it through their own narrative.
Other Links Mentioned
About Our Guests
Jenni Haggie is a Senior Specialist of Strategic Development and Level 2 Digital Storytelling Facilitator with the Canadian Cancer Society. She is passionate about how digital stories can help people from underserved communities tell their stories, in their own words, to inspire change.
Lacey Horta is a Social Service Worker, Online Community Manager, and Level 2 Digital Storytelling Facilitator with the Canadian Cancer Society. Lacey’s digital storytelling experience includes working with people with cancer, advanced illness, and people experiencing grief.
Contact Lacey & Jenni here cancerconnection@cancer.ca
About Leading Through Stories
Everyone has a story to tell—and what we do with that story can create lasting impact. Every episode, Leading Through Stories, helps unravel the how and why of digital storytelling with host Kristy Wolfe.
Life is made up of meaningful moments—which ones do you want to share?
This podcast is presented by Common Language DST, digital storytelling facilitation training for health and wellness changemakers.
Don't miss an episode from Leading Through Stories!
Sign up for the Leading Through Stories newsletter, follow us on Instagram @LeadingThroughStories and subscribe on your favourite podcast platform.
We use it a lot to really kick off meetings that we have with external people, to ground it in the patient voice and it changes the whole tone for a meeting. When you do that, when you start it with a digital story and people are sitting and resonating with that, it has a different feel to it. It's not so corporate anymore. It's really saying this is why we're here. We're here to make it better for the people that need it the most.
Mike Lang:Welcome to Leading Through Stories, a podcast that explores the how and why of digital storytelling. My name is Dr Mike Lang and I'm the founder and lead instructor of Common Language Digital Storytelling. In each episode, our Level 3 facilitator, Kristy Wolfe, connects with storytellers or common language trained facilitators to learn more about the health and wellness stories that they are creating and sharing.
Kristy Wolfe:With us today are Lacey Horta and Jenni Haggie, and they are with the Canadian Cancer Society. Ladies, will you take a minute to introduce yourselves to the audience?
Lacey Horta:Absolutely. Thank you so much for having us, Kristy. We're from the Canadian Cancer Society. We fund world-class research, lead change in cancer policy prevention efforts and we also provide world-class information and support programs to people who are experiencing cancer in their lives. I myself am Lacey Horta. I'm the online community manager for the online community cancerconnectionca. I am located in Ontario. I've been with CCS for about 10 years and have a social work background and I've been doing some digital storytelling work for maybe the past five-ish years. I want to say so so excited to be here with you today.
Jenni Haggie:Thanks, Lacey. All right, Jenni, tell us about you. Hi, thanks as well for having me. So I'm Jenni Haggie e. I am the senior specialist of cancer strategy at the Canadian Cancer Society, so really working on making strategies for communities that are underserved in the context of cancer care. I've worked at CCS for about six years and am also a level two digital storytelling facilitator, and located in Ontario as well with Lacey.
Kristy Wolfe:Although we get to see each other on our mentorship meetings so Common Language Digital Storytelling has a collective of facilitators and we meet regularly we don't get to have an in-depth conversation as much. So I'm really looking forward to this episode to learn more about the work that you've been doing. So how did you both get involved with?
Jenni Haggie:Common Language originally. So originally I'm not even sure if it was called Common Language. We were working with Mike, so the Canadian Cancer Society had contracted Mike to do some digital storytelling workshops and this was around probably over six years ago now, and Lacey and I were lucky enough to be out of support in those workshops in a different ways, you know whether it was getting participants or sitting in and getting coffee food scanning pictures.
Jenni Haggie:Yep, and then Mike developed a training program for level one facilitator training. So we were very lucky that our work gave us the opportunity to be able to take that training and be able to make digital stories kind of one-on-one. And it was really something we both wanted to do because when Lacey and I really sat in on the workshops and saw kind of the magic happen, we really wanted to see how we could get more involved.
Kristy Wolfe:This is great, because I did not know that. I didn't realize that part. It does make sense when I think about the work that Mike did before Common Language started. So this is really helpful to hear the background. And I also think that so often when we have a workshop or when somebody creates a digital story, they're drawn to it Like not everybody, but the people that are drawn to it are like, yes, this is something that I want to do. So you mentioned that you're both level two facilitators, so you for a long time have been co-creating stories and now you're doing workshops as well.
Jenni Haggie:Yeah, we're kind of like this dynamic duo. We always really have been, even since we got our level one, and you kind of do that individual one-on-one. We always kind of did it together because we both have like a different set of skills that we bring to the table that really balance each other out.
Lacey Horta:Jenni is the tech lead and I tend to be a little bit stronger at just drawing things out of people and just trying to help them kind of find that story. Not to say that Jenni is not great at that too. She, you know, always has images in mind and is great at helping people find titles and things like that. But certainly when I need a transition to be smoother or I have a technical challenge, I know who to call. Yeah, absolutely. So I'll talk a bit more in the beginning if it means I have her help at the end.
Jenni Haggie:So we've always kind of balanced it out and I'm happy. I'm happy to work that way. I'm better with the creative side and making things blend and flow and getting creative, and then Lacey can kind of swoop in with the feels you have both built your skills around that getting to watch the other person and not just facilitating in a bubble by yourself.
Kristy Wolfe:It's helpful to get to see how other people do it, so that would be incredible to be able to work on things like that together. Tell me about a favorite digital story. So you've done quite a few. You've worked on. I don't even know how many digital stories would you say you've worked on with people.
Jenni Haggie:We have over 30 right now at CCS and that's been kind of different levels of engagement. Some we've created together, some Mike has done and we've supported, but we have over 30.
Kristy Wolfe:Do you have favorites? Do you have ones that are public, that you can share, that you could talk about?
Lacey Horta:I have a favorite that I could talk about. It really stands out in my mind because it was the first in-person session that we did after the pandemic. So we started doing everything virtually and so it was our first time being in person with participants. So Jenni and I were really excited about that, and although I think it can be done really successfully virtually, it's still a great experience. We've heard it from our participants. They love it, it still works. Sitting across the table with someone working on the story, having lunch with them, like just spending those few days together, was just a reminder of how powerful it is to be in person. Again, I think I've experienced that in other areas of life too. We're making it work on virtual. It's good, it's still working, but then you're in person. You're like oh, this is great, this is really great. So it stands out to me because of that. And it also stands out to me because it was a workshop that we were doing for Breast Reconstruction Awareness Day, and so we were working with a variety of participants who all kind of had made different choices about their breast reconstruction path. So some participants chose to remain flat and not have reconstruction. Others chose to have reconstruction Even though they had made different choices. There is this level of understanding and support in the room. That, I think, was just wonderful. You don't have to go through exactly the same thing and make exactly the same choices to build bonds and to have a successful workshop. And then the second piece, I think, was we went through this whole process.
Lacey Horta:Janice shared her story called Our Strength, My Choice, and she had had the story all developed. We thought we knew her moments and everything. But she just casually mentioned this random story while she was working on it and she said you know, I think she said when I was a kid, you know my grandma, she had a breast removed and she never got breast reconstruction. She always wore a prosthetic and I can remember just cuddling up on her lap, just the same right, I didn't know the difference. I felt so snuggled up and together with her. And so all of a sudden we're all kind of looking at her and she said, huh, maybe that's also why it was okay with me to be flat. I didn't have to do reconstruction, I could still be me, like I got that validation at a really young age, you know, and she didn't even realize it. And then she kind of named her story. After that, you know Our Strength, my Choice. She felt like those early memories with her grandma impacted her choice today. So that was pretty powerful.
Lacey Horta:And then she gave us a third amazing moment where at the end of the whole weekend, you know, we did our screening to watch her story and we looked over at her and she was in tears and she said I've been going through this for years, Like her cancer treatment. And she said I didn't cry at all throughout the whole thing and she said but I just watched that video and I went through a lot. I went through a lot. And we were like, yes, you did, you did go through a lot, and so the tears were just this kind of like. It was this moment where she just it all came together and she said to us I just didn't realize like how much I went through, but it was so positive for her, you know, to see that and to really acknowledge for herself like, oh God, you did it, like you did all this. You're amazing. Went to be there in person with her and to kind of see that and be able to kind of go have those chats at the end was pretty special, can I?
Kristy Wolfe:ask do we have permission to share that particular video? Yes, we do, again, for people who have listened to this podcast before. We often talk about storyteller well-being and also that the storyteller is the owner of the story. So, although Jenni and Lacey are coming at this from an organizational perspective, we recognize that those stories are the storyteller's own story and that they have the choice at the end what ends up happening with them. But I was also wondering, lacey, if you could speak a little bit to what the process looks like from the Canadian Cancer Society, like when you are planning okay, we would like the stories about breast reconstruction for this particular day that we want to use it for. What does that look like? Creating that workshop front to back?
Lacey Horta:So generally we would go on to CancerConnectionca, read through some of the stories that have already been shared there to see if there is anyone that we can go out and approach about this upcoming breast reconstruction awareness day Did they want to share their story day of? And if they want to create a digital story, and from there we usually meet with them. We do that kind of first screening call to see about their readiness. You talked about the storyteller well-being that's so important to us. We want to kind of see their point of readiness, see if they would like to participate in a workshop, and then we kind of just plan it out from there, finding your moments, doing our story circle For some of these events.
Lacey Horta:You know the story circle. You kind of wonder how it's going to go when you have a lot of varied experiences. But I think this was proof to us that you know you can have people who've made different choices and they can come together and they can support each other in a really cool way. I think they actually got more out of it from being there with other people who made different choices than they might have if they were there with people who made the same choices. And we go through the whole weekend of creating the story. We do the screening. You know, the day of the event Person usually likes to attend and kind of see what happens there. So it's kind of like another bigger screening that gets to happen. And you know, for a lot of these events many people will come back and say the digital stories were the best part. That's usually what the evaluations say, that they love the digital stories.
Kristy Wolfe:I totally agree with that. Now, I was just wondering when you do your weekend workshop, are you doing your screen screening immediately after, or do you have some time before you do your screening just with the participants?
Lacey Horta:We usually do it at the end of the weekend, like acknowledging that there might be a few polishing pieces that they want done at the end. But we usually will do a screening right then at the end of the weekend. I think it's really nice to leave on that note right.
Lacey Horta:And then we'll follow up, or Jenny will follow up with doing some fine tuning to their video. After my talking part is done, I think Jenny's technical time to come in and make things nice and smooth and take notes of what they want our help with, to follow up with after that kind of thing.
Kristy Wolfe:And I also had a question about when you do the more public screening. Is there conversation after that, like, how do you set up your more public screenings when you're doing it more for an event?
Lacey Horta:Yeah, our preference is usually to have the person there so we can ask them a few questions about their experience and definitely open it up to the audience right To see if they have any questions or to chat about what resonated for them. So a bit like a kitchen table night. Yeah, very similar.
Kristy Wolfe:All right, Jenni to you. I got really deep into that. I wanted to know exactly how your workshops work, because we all do things slightly differently. It's my favorite part of the collective just learning how other people are doing the work that they're doing. So, jenny, what is a story that comes to mind when we talk about digital storytelling?
Jenni Haggie:For me. I'm going to have to say it was a hard decision, but there's always one that sticks out and that would have to be Diane's story. So a couple years ago I was project manager of a Rural Remote project that was kind of focused in Newfoundland and Labrador and we were looking to engage with different people and really kind of better understand the challenges that they were experiencing. So out of that I met Diane and a couple of reasons of why it's my favorite. So I actually grew up in Newfoundland, so I do have a personal connection, so I'm a little biased there. And Diane had advanced cancer and this woman was a firecracker when everyone else was retiring at age 60, she was skydiving. I just loved her. I'd asked her if she'd wanted to do a digital story. She wasn't very tech savvy but she was willing and it was probably one of the longest digital stories that's ever taken me to create, one-on-one, because we had every tech challenge that you could imagine. But really it was a legacy piece for her. You know it was so meaningful because, even as she's telling the story, at first it was a story that was kind of really focused on one incident that she'd kind of had and it evolved to her making sense of her story and sharing that hope with others. Really she spoke about, kind of you know, she felt that a door had closed for her. It was her meaningful moment. The doctors came in and said to her you should get your affairs in order and she said nope, nope, it's not my time. And so she advocated and pushed back to go on a treatment that had worked for her in the past. And with that it worked. It gave her back her quality of life and she was able to continue to kind of show up and be in her grandson's life and it just looked differently. You know, she might not have been skydiving anymore or whitewater rafting but she got to watch, kind of she says, from the sidelines. And she really found a new purpose.
Jenni Haggie:As her background was a nurse. She found supports in places that even as a nurse she didn't know. She didn't know that they existed. She didn't know what we did at the Canadian Cancer Society and how we could help her or her patients that she used to have. So it always stuck with me and in it she talked about bringing her grandson to Disneyland. And you know that might not be happening anymore but she would get to kind of be there. But after she finished the digital she actually did get to take her grandson to Disneyland and I was so happy when I had heard that. Unfortunately, diane has passed away since making the story, but she gave us permission to share it and it's just such a legacy piece for those people that have advanced cancer right and making sense of their story and looking for hope in places that would resonate with other people. So I would have to say that's probably one of my favorite ones.
Kristy Wolfe:Jenny, you mentioned that you co-created that one, so that's one on one with Diane. Now, how did that one get screened? Did it get screened? What do you do when you co-create within the Canadian Cancer Society?
Jenni Haggie:So usually when we do kind of one-on-one, obviously we ask the person when it's done how would you like us to share this? This is kind of some options of how we use it. If you give kind of an overall consent or do you have any restrictions, depending on what they do? Obviously we honor those wishes and make sure that storyteller well-being is top of mind. But for this one actually, we worked with our Cancer Information team and got it on our website, cancerca, so we're able to, you know, share it with the general public. We use it a lot to really kick off meetings that we have with external people, to ground it in the patient voice, and it changes the whole tone for a meeting. When you do that, when you start it with a digital story and people are sitting and resonating with that, it has a different feel to it. It's not so corporatey anymore. It's really saying this is why we're here. We're here to make it better for the people that need it the most.
Kristy Wolfe:That absolutely resonates with me. I often work with medical families and caregivers from from a different side not necessarily cancer, but when we talk about how their story can be used and how they could use it themselves, even if it's connected to an organization. I often talk about showing their digital story at the beginning of their speaking engagement to kind of draw people in so they can see, with images, with the story, just a quick glimpse into that person's life. But it also gives an incredible amount of information that definitely sets up, as you said, like not the corporate feel to the meeting. So I 100% get that. I will put that story link as well into the show notes so people are able to watch it, because I love that we get to really dive into one of the stories that you've worked on. Do you want to talk about what else is on the website, because you mentioned that Diane was a nurse and didn't know about the access to the supports that are there, so maybe people might want to go and take a look as well.
Jenni Haggie:One of the things with Diane's story specifically was, you know, it didn't just show where the gaps and challenges are to give us a better understanding, it also showed what had helped her and she was a big advocate for palliative care and really demystifying it to what it is and what it isn't. And I will never forget she had said to me you know, palliative care means comfort. She's like it's not saying you're giving up, it's not saying that there's no other treatment, it means quality of life. And she was pro on kind of communicating that with people because she said you know, as a nurse, there's this big stigma around if you're in palliative care it's the end of the road and it's end of life care, and that's not necessarily true.
Lacey Horta:What I love about digital stories is they are such a nice complement to other information and support resources that you can have out there for people. Having Diane's story on Cancerca with you know other videos that describe palliative care and other styles right, they each have their own special touch. I think that help people kind of really understand. I think has been a really nice balance. You know you can watch Diane's story. You can read a bit more about palliative care. There are publications about palliative care you can watch. You know some polished kind of movies and videos that have been made about palliative care as well. You know you get kind of the full experience, yeah.
Kristy Wolfe:Well, and this is a topic that, again, as a medical parent, this is top of mind talking about life and death and celebrating life and death and that entire journey, like we're all going towards the same direction, and so making it something that we are able to talk about, even with children, in my case, is something that I do think about. So, thank you, I'm actually going to take a look at some of those palliative videos and I have a few people in mind that I'm going to share them with as well. Thinking ahead, do you have a project coming up that you are excited about, something that you would like to do with digital storytelling?
Jenni Haggie:I would like to do a workshop specific for individuals with advanced cancer, not just for increasing awareness and kind of amplifying their voices, but also to really give them that legacy piece to create that connection as well with others that are going through the same thing. So that kind of therapeutic intent that the workshops have I have found personally is really amplified when there is one or more people in there that have advanced cancer and are able to connect with others and just be open and honest about their experience. Right, they feel safe in that space to show up as their authentic self and really everyone is supporting each other. So I'd love to do a workshop specific for advanced cancer, lacey. What about you?
Lacey Horta:Something that I'm looking forward to is Jenny and I we plan to run a digital storytelling workshop in a different kind of style.
Lacey Horta:So we talked with a colleague of ours, Melody, from our Common Language Collective, about how she currently is structuring workshops through Wellspring and that's kind of rather than do this weekend session where it's kind of done all at once in those few days, it's actually carried out over a period of eight weeks.
Lacey Horta:So it's a little bit maybe more manageable for people going through cancer treatment to be able to commit a couple hours a week over a period of time. It can be a really therapeutic experience for people going through cancer to meet those supports and get that weekly contact with them. And I mean we have such a great avenue to find people right. So through CancerConnectionca we have people there actively telling their stories every day to help other people, and so we're hoping that you know we could approach people and run an eight week workshop and create, you know, five, six, seven stories while we're at it over that period. So we're planning a pilot very closely aligned with the way that Melody has been delivering this at Wellspring for quite some time. I mean we're really excited to see the outcome because if this means that we can do more digital stories at CCS, then you know, jenny and I are all for that.
Kristy Wolfe:Well, and I should mention that Melody was already on leading through stories, so we go back and forth between having facilitators come on as well as having storytellers come on. So episode six of this season is with Melody Williamson. She does talk about Wellspring in there, so that would be a good one to listen to. If you are thinking about running workshops or want to hear a bit more about that, all right, ladies. So if somebody wanted to work with you to create a digital story through Canadian Cancer Society, how would they connect?
Lacey Horta:Awesome question. So people who might be interested in creating a story could send us an email to cancerconnectionatcancerca.
Kristy Wolfe:Perfect, I'll throw that in the show notes as well. If you are interested in doing a one-on-one story or interested in some of the workshops that are coming up, please reach out to Lacey and Jenny. That way, ladies last one, if you were going to create a digital story, a personal digital story, do you have a moment that you would focus your story around?
Lacey Horta:So my first digital story Well, my first two I guess that I made personally were all kind of focused around grief, because I lost my father to cancer eight years ago, and so my first one was kind of, you know, talking about what it was like to go through that experience of him having cancer and how to support him, how to support my mom, how to be a CCS employee at the same time. It was all kind of a lot during that time. My second one was more about moving through grief, with kind of the conclusion of you can still be grieving and experience joy and still be moving forward in your life. Right, that's like a hard thing to get to when you first lose someone, and I think my story would still kind of be about the grieving process, because I think it is a process and it's a long one and it goes on forever in some way. But I think something that I find myself thinking back to all the time is, you know, when my father was really ill, near the end, I just remember him saying to us I just want you guys to be okay. You mean more to me than anyone. I just want to know you're going to be okay.
Lacey Horta:And so when I connect with people on Cancer Connection today who have recently lost someone and are struggling to get out of bed or struggling with the day to day, I try to remind them that what's most important to your loved one is that you are okay. Right, and it might take a little while to feel more okay. You might have a day where you laugh again and you think, oh no, I shouldn't be laughing. Right, I'm grieving, but remember, they want you to be okay and this is kind of your path to be okay again. So I think if I made another story, that's really, I think, where I would go. That moment for me was huge. It really turned things around for me when I was like, no, it's okay. Like it's okay to go to that soccer game, it's okay to want to hang out with your friends again, it's okay to miss him. He just wants you to be okay.
Kristy Wolfe:And I'm wondering when you are working with storytellers, do you share your story?
Lacey Horta:Yeah, we usually open up, sharing our own personal story. It's such a vulnerable thing, and so, you know, to kind of sit there makes you feel like an observer, right. And we're not observers in this process, right, we very much kind of take part in it. And so both Jenny and I have kind of a story of grief that we share. We've both lost parents to cancer. It's not an uncommon thing that you hear around the walls of the Canadian Cancer Society. Many of us are there for a reason. We have a tie to the cause. You know that keeps us safe. It keeps us so motivated to support the folks that we do.
Kristy Wolfe:Lacey, are you comfortable sharing your story with the audience? Absolutely. It also made me think about Lacey.
Kristy Wolfe:I don't usually talk about digital stories that I would like to do, but mine is overlaps what you're talking about. A lot and some of how I got into digital storytelling was through photographing families, and I have a digital story about photographing a child's death that I I can't get through it Like it's ready to go. I could record it. I can't get through it without sobbing, but it is a incredibly impactful story for me because of my feeling around taking photos at end of life.
Kristy Wolfe:I think it's incredibly important and not everybody feels this way, but I think it's incredibly important to capture moments at end of life as well, and so the digital story is about why I do it and thinking about the fact that I would want somebody to do it for me if we were in that situation. You see, I can't even talk about it without tearing up, and I've done it multiple times. I agree. I think that people seeing grief is important. When you're embarking on that journey, when it's a part of your life for sometimes years on end, that grief process can mean different things for different people in talking about how we have processed it and are still processing. It is incredibly powerful, so I would love to see you do that story and share that as well, jenny what about you?
Jenni Haggie:So mine is really focused on the grief aspect as well.
Jenni Haggie:So that's probably why Lacey and I connect together so well, as we kind of do have a similar experience in both losing a parent. So my first one that I did do I lost my mom when I was a teenager to cancer. I didn't really understand why I wasn't told she was as sick as she was and she didn't tell me. She just wanted me to be okay, like Lacey kind of had that opportunity but she did with her actions right and it took me a long time to forgive or move past and kind of accept that piece of it of she did that because she's a mom and it wasn't till I became a mom that I understand now. She just wanted me to have my childhood right and I think if I was to do another one, it would focus on living beyond the grief right Especially for people that are teenagers or children when they lose their parents of.
Jenni Haggie:There's no timeline on grief and it comes when you, like Lacey, expect it and that's okay and I think you have to be gentle with yourself and kind of give yourself that time when it does happen and it'd probably be focusing on me and how I learned that. You know it might be 15 years, but to me I still need to take that time to grieve what I have lost and the things that I can't change.
Lacey Horta:Honestly, yeah, it makes me think, Jenny, of a special moment that we had in one of the first workshops we sat in on, where we were doing a story with a gentleman who had advanced cancer and he was talking about how hard it was to break the news to his kids. So much so that on the way home that he kept saying to his wife nope, keep going around the block, keep going, keep going. I'm not ready. I watched Jenny and him kind of have these conversations about their experiences and I watched her kind of hear that perspective as a parent, like just how hard it is to tell your kids that You're thinking about. Oh, their 11th birthday is coming up. You're thinking, oh, well, maybe after Christmas. You don't want to ruin this, I don't want to ruin that.
Lacey Horta:And Jenni was able to say like, just talk about you. Know how much she remembers of her mom still, right. And I remember him thinking like okay, and he was saying like, oh, that's great, I really want to make sure that my kids remember me. That's so important to me. So I guess this brings us back to that experience of you don't have to have people in the room who have exactly the same experience. We can actually benefit a bit more if they can learn from each other's experience, because they're a bit different. Him talking to someone who lost their parent at a young age was so powerful for him. Yeah, it was pretty powerful stuff. I mean, that happens in those rooms, you know, yeah, it definitely does, or on those screens.
Jenni Haggie:And just to add on to that, like when you know I share my story, is he has mentioned in my story because he was a big part of that for me and grieving that and then moving past it Like I never had that understanding until I met that man and I do believe our paths were made to cross and I do mention him actually in my story I had permission from his wife, so he is a part of my original story.
Kristy Wolfe:And sorry, jenni, do I have permission to share your story as well? Yes, you do. One more question that I have for you, and then we're going to close this out Are your workshops, are your digital storytelling experiences, always for patients, or are they for caregivers connected to the Canadian Cancer Society? Are they for youth that have lost a parent? Do you have other options?
Jenni Haggie:like that. So we have done it with caregivers people that have that lived understanding as well and it's from a different aspect, because caregivers as well face their own challenges that need to be acknowledged and recognized and understood. We haven't done it with, you know, an individual that has lost a parent, specifically maybe if they were an older adult and they were kind of that caregiver role as well. But it's something that we would love to do because it is about understanding the different experiences and different perspectives from people.
Lacey Horta:We've also had the opportunity to work with different national events, like Best Health for Black Women, where they weren't people who had cancer but they were people who were helping us educate about the importance of screening for breast cancer and gynecological cancers. You know they had some genetic links. Screening was very important in their lives and we helped them tell their story. That was a really neat experience for us Ageni to kind of do something a bit different from the prevention side. That was just a really powerful way to really make sure that we recognize the unique experiences. But I think there's definitely opportunity to do stories around so many different areas.
Jenni Haggie:The one other area we have done is with volunteers as well. For a lot of our support programs they're volunteer based, so usually they always kind of have a connection to cancer. But it's been a unique experience to see the why Like. Why do you volunteer? You know what brought you to be able to support the Canadian Cancer Society and what they get out of it.
Kristy Wolfe:So I have a bit of a dream of bringing together six different voices so a patient, a caregiver, a volunteer, maybe somebody in policy and having them each tell their own story because of the power of the story circle. We were talking a lot about bringing groups of people who have had similar experiences together, and I don't know if this it's just one of those things I think about down the road that I would love to have those conversations be heard by other people. So do you think it could happen?
Lacey Horta:We could make it happen.
Jenni Haggie:I think we have done something, like you know, we've had a volunteer, a caregiver, and we've had, like someone with advanced cancer, someone that has, you know, was a youth and young adolescent when they have it. So we have done a lot of mixes and we always try to get diversity in the workshops when we do do them. All right well, ladies.
Kristy Wolfe:Thank you so much for joining me on Leading Through Stories today. I can't wait for our next mentorship meeting.
Lacey Horta:See you then.
Mike Lang:Thanks for listening to this episode of Leading Through Stories, presented by Common Language Digital Storytelling facilitator. Training for health and wellness change makers. Everyone has a story to tell and we would love to hear from you what resonated for you in this episode. What health and wellness story do you wanna tell? You can email kristy@commonlanguagedst. org or find us on Instagram at Leading Through Stories. Don't miss out on the next episode. Subscribe to Leading Through Stories on your favorite podcast platform or sign up for our newsletter to get new episodes straight to your inbox. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time.