Welcome to the commune podcast. This is Jeff Krasno. How many of you may receive my weekly

Sunday commusing article where I address a breadth of issues from the spiritual to the sociopolitical.

And on occasion, I will also record an audio version of these articles and release it as a bonus episode.

Well, today's recitation is from guest author David Romanelli, who relays the moving story of his daughter's leukemia

and the powerful, painful, and uplifting lessons he and his family have learned along the way.

So here's David with my four-year-old guru. It's the same advice you hear from meditation and yoga instructors every class.

Equanimity, breathe through the discomfort, let the thoughts come and go.

I use that language with my students, but I will be the first to tell you that I never lived that advice until April 30th,

2020 at about 5.30 p.m. That's the moment our pediatrician called to tell us our three-year-old

daughter, Cooper, had leukemia. I will never forget that moment. My heart dropped. My wife broke down. My world collapsed instantly.

The pediatrician told us we needed to get our daughter to the children's hospital that same night.

Acute leukemia comes on aggressively, and the doctors want to start treatment immediately.

It took every bit of breathing and equanimity to calm my wife, pack a suitcase, keep things relatively normal for our

six-year-old son, and make that long drive to Phoenix Children's Hospital. Carrying your child into the emergency room to confirm a

cancer diagnosis is already tough enough, but due to COVID restrictions, they only let in one

parent, so I had to wait outside the hospital. How many times had I practiced equanimity

holding a warrior two for an insanely long time?

Well, here I was in a moment that was every bit of insane.

But I do believe, with all those years of yoga and meditation,

I had the tools to let the angry, fearful, anxious thoughts come and go. I attribute holding it together

instead of losing my mind to the fact that a security guard came outside and said, we're going to get you

in with your wife and daughter. That was only the first two hours of what would become the hardest year of our lives.

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