The Outworker
Stories of healing, personal development, and inner work. Founded on the idea that the relationship with oneself is the most important to develop, but the easiest to neglect, The Outworker shares conversations aimed at helping you develop that relationship.
The Outworker
#043 - Edie Littlefield Sundby - From 3 Months To Live To Healing Through 1,600 Miles Of Walking
Edie Littlefield Sundby, a stage-four cancer survivor, shares how walking 1,600 miles with one lung transformed her life. She reflects on facing death, the power of solitude, and how movement became her spiritual anchor. Edie’s story is a testament to resilience, healing, and her philosophy: 'while alive, live.' Discover her insights on embracing life, overcoming fear, and finding strength through physical and emotional challenges.
Timestamps:
00:00 3 Months To Live
01:34 Edie's Diagnosis
02:33 Alone Time At The Start
09:19 Cancer Treatment Plan
12:01 Controlling The Emotional Mind
13:51 Reacting Well To Chemo & Important Of Physical Movement
19:37 Walking All 1,600 Miles Of El Camino Real
25:20 Difference Between Walking In California & Mexico
33:04 Healing vs. Recovery
40:04 Life In The Mundane
43:17 Power Of Your Breath
43:48 Unwilling Pain vs. Willing Pain
46:21 Multiple Internal Voices
48:09 Wisdom Over Physical Accomplishments
50:28 Connect With Edie & Future Work
52:00 The Outworker Resonating With Edie
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What’s up outworkers. Edie Littlefield Sundby, a stage-four cancer survivor, shares how walking 1,600 miles with one lung transformed her life. She reflects on facing death, the power of solitude, and how movement became her spiritual anchor. Edie’s story is a testament to resilience, healing, and her philosophy: 'while alive, live.' Discover her insights on embracing life, overcoming fear, and finding strength through physical and emotional challenges.
Tim Doyle (00:15.534)
Take me back to being told you had three months to live.
Edie Littlefield Sundby (00:21.309)
Well, you kind of wipe those things out of the mind, out of the consciousness. Reflecting on it, it's like looking at life through rear view mirror. Everything is a little distorted. You can never go back really. But if I go back in a few words, was shock, disbelief, not real terror. It takes a while for terror to set in. I've always found that...
Fear isn't in the mind, not in the moment. And even in a moment like that where you have cancer, it's widespread, it's innate organs. In fact, you're dealing with doctors who don't even want to treat you because it's so widespread, you don't have that long to live. The fear sets in later after the words sink in.
Tim Doyle (01:15.212)
What was the exact diagnosis?
Edie Littlefield Sundby (01:17.587)
The diagnosis, at first it was so widespread, it was innate organs, that they weren't sure if it started in the liver or where it started. But then we decided that it actually probably started in the gallbladder. The gallbladder, gallbladder cancer is quite rare. 75 % of people who it hits are women, and often women of, on part Native Americans, so Native American, Polish, Israel is the number one.
cancer, one of the number one cancers in Israel, which is interesting, and also in parts of Asia. But so it was gallbladder cancer. And by the time it was discovered, it was already spread because it's one of those silent cancers. So 75 % are women and 75 % of the time, it's already spread so fast and so far that it's stage four and there's really no cure.
Tim Doyle (02:13.238)
You were alone in the doctor's office when you found out the diagnosis and then you were alone for two full days after that before your husband Dale was able to get back to you after a business trip in Ukraine. What was that? What was that alone time like?
Edie Littlefield Sundby (02:28.573)
Yes. Yes.
Yes. You know, I'm so glad you started our discussion on being alone because what attracted me to you, Tim, in the very beginning, I'm going to answer a question, but what attracted me to you and what you're doing without Worker is when you first introduced yourself to the world in your podcast, you quoted Schopenhauer and the fact that Schopenhauer believed very strongly in Solitude, believed that
we are only free when we're alone. And so that you would start this conversation with aloneness. Thank you. And I hope that that's kind of the theme throughout today. Because I noticed that many of the guests you have on, that that is the underlying current, the underlying theme. In fact, I think it may be one of the most underlying current themes in life today. It's not existentialism as much. It's not Freudian existentialism.
It's more, think, think Shalpener, the aloneness. And I think we're just so overwhelmed. There's so much clutter. There's so much noise. We cannot think. OK, so go back to when I was diagnosed. I felt in reflection that being alone was a strength. Because when you're alone, your emotions are much more controlled, if you will.
You're much more rational when you're alone than when you are surrounded with others. And so I was totally alone. I had not been to a doctor in over 18, 17 or 18 years since my children were born. And my children had just gotten out of high school. They were on their way to college. So we were empty nesters for the first time, free, free, free, free.
Edie Littlefield Sundby (04:29.357)
and had this wonderful life path, all sketched out, perfect life path, next chapter of life, and then bang. Like the Buddha said, like Zen said, the slap, the slap that brings you to your knees. And yeah, it was quite a slap. You have a few months to live, widespread cancer. But because I was all alone, I was able to deal with it.
rationally and really.
Edie Littlefield Sundby (05:06.811)
I think that led to quicker acceptance and I feel acceptance is key and the key to acceptance is understanding. Now acceptance and so I because I was alone, I had an opportunity to really understand what was happening to me and feel what was happening and that helped me accept it. Now do not think for a minute Tim that acceptance is surrender.
Acceptance has nothing to do with surrender. Acceptance is an ability to, it's almost like the Stoics, Epictetus is a, know, deal with it. It's reality, deal with it.
Tim Doyle (05:55.246)
I know there's a lot of people who could probably be within that environment of being alone after getting a cancer diagnosis like this and they would struggle a lot and it would probably beat them up. But you're saying it's was more of a powerful environment for you to be. Do think that stems from your childhood? I know you had a big family and you were one of the younger kids in the family and grew up with a lot of alone time. Do you feel like throughout your entire life you've
kind of always had that as a superpower of being in a solitude environment.
Edie Littlefield Sundby (06:31.801)
Isn't that interesting that you could be the next the youngest of 12 children, but be in a solitary environment. People think of your solitary environment if you're low only child. But, you know, life is interesting. It's full of complexities. And being I was alone in rural Oklahoma on a cotton farm, we didn't even have running water. I was free. I was so free. I was free of of of other people. Oftentimes we define ourselves by how others define us.
And actually it interferes with your ability, I think, to define yourself. And it can interfere with your ability to define yourself for the rest of your life. So I think that one of the best things you can do if you have children is find a lighthouse someplace, know, someplace where that children can roam free. And it's really interesting. Just watch that wonderful Ken Burns documentary on DaVinci. And DaVinci, the first 12 years of DaVinci's life was totally free, totally free.
free in the olive orchards and the vineyards of Italy. Totally, totally free. And that freedom is really what led to his genius. And I really feel that that's, know, our tendency today is hover, to protect, to guide, to direct, to helicopter, which is actually disempowering of spirit, spiritually disempowering. we just can't help ourselves, can we?
And anyway, yeah, so yeah, that ability to be alone, think blessed is the child who is left alone.
Tim Doyle (08:11.96)
getting back to the timeline now with your cancer, you get the diagnosis. What did the treatment plan look like after that? And also what year is this that this is all?
Edie Littlefield Sundby (08:24.595)
Yeah, OK, it's 2007 and I was given a few months to live. It's in eight organs. It's so widespread that and even if it had not been so widespread, the prognosis was still less than one percent live with a hepatobiliary cancer, less than one percent live more than two years. So it was pretty much a death sentence.
a lot of stage four cancer because stage four cancer is incurable. can go into remission, spontaneous remission, but oftentimes clinical remission with chemotherapy and treatment. doctors hardly ever proclaim that it's cured. So that's how I found myself in a situation with death, basically. Death staring me in the face. It was that abyss, that void, that darkness, know, that, whoa.
the end of me. And the reaction, of course, is always a visceral, wow, not yet. And I think sometimes fear can set in and fear can interfere with our ability to survive something like that. Fear can actually, believe, hasten cancer's ability to kill us. Fear is an emotion we really want to guard against.
And how do we do that? And I think that's the million dollar question. How do we do that? Especially with a diagnosis like stage four cancer. Well, if that was in 2007, it was a long journey to get to where I am now. It took 832,000 milligrams of chemo, 79 rounds of treatment every three weeks for six and a half years. And I credit my growing up barefoot on a cotton farm surrounded by all kinds of
barnyard bacteria as supercharging my immune system. A supercharged immune system is your superpower. Okay? I mean, our physical body is often our superpower. And we can be as strong-minded, as strong-willed as we want, but if we have weakened our body for whatever, we're not gonna, it's our bodies, this is our best friend, our bosom buddy. So every time you look in the mirror, you blow yourself kisses and you think that body.
Edie Littlefield Sundby (10:46.333)
for dealing with you, putting up with you, because it's gonna get you through hell if you get through hell.
Tim Doyle (10:54.508)
I would need to learn to control my emotional mind and not let it interfere with my body. The emotional mind can make the body sicker. It can paralyze the body with fear. The mind is full of falsehood.
Edie Littlefield Sundby (11:07.859)
Absolutely, and fear is in the mind, not in the moment. But that's why I think we have to do things wild in the wild. We have to get ourselves back in the wild. I mean, people are afraid nowadays to walk in their neighborhood. Okay, they live in these sequestered neighborhoods with guard gates, and yet they still lock their doors and their windows at night. I think it makes you more terrified.
And I walked alone by myself through Mexico alone with nothing but a mule and a couple of old REI gear bags with the help of a local, you know, Vaquero or a guide to the sierras, to the desert. And it was that experience that really that I think empowered me. But the first thing that empowered me was cancer.
was cancer. Someone once said, you you look into the abyss and nothing looks back. There's nothing. And that's when you find your character. That's when you find your character. And stage four cancer is looking into the abyss. And that is the moment when
You know, you have cancer, you have a few months to live. That is the moment that you find your character.
Tim Doyle (12:44.674)
Physical movement plays a massive role for you, especially, especially throughout your process of your chemo treatments. And you have this mindset with physical movement where if I can move, then I'm not sick. And you responded very well to chemo and you say in your book that you have no idea how your immune system was able to take such a beating. Do you still have
Edie Littlefield Sundby (13:00.071)
Exactly.
Tim Doyle (13:12.702)
no idea or do you have any hypotheses?
Edie Littlefield Sundby (13:17.169)
Well, I sought out very, very aggressive treatment. I mean, this was not something I just kind of did on my own. A lot of people are afraid of chemotherapy. I was more afraid of cancer than chemotherapy. And I realized that my only, the only enemy of cancer, the main enemy is chemotherapy. Of course, cutting it out, there's several ways to kill it. You can cut it out, but you can't cut it out if it's growing all over into several parts.
cavities of your body. But you can cut it out, you can burn it out with radiation, you can drown it out with chemo, or you can melt it with like the bio stuff that they have today. And it basically takes all four, even today, to get it under control. So yeah, it is a long process. It's a long, tedious process. And it's your immune system, it's your body, your bosom buddy that will get you through it.
What I've always said is that life has a tendency to break us and walking heals us. Movement. The body is a healing machine. It's a naturally healing machine that it requires movement to do its job. And that's why I, from the very, very get go, I was walking up and down canyons.
within hours of a chemotherapy infusion. I'd be drinking enormous amounts of water and I'd get to the canyon and I'd listen to Elvis sing gospel and I'd sweat it out. I'd pee it out, sweat it out, purge it out. I wanted the chemo to come in, kill the cancer that purged from my body before it killed me. And so I, and you have a 48 hour high right after chemotherapy with some of stuff they put in, dextrose, saline.
stuff they mixed chemo with. So for the first 48 hours, you have a semblance of energy and then you're bedridden often. But you have to take advantage of that first 48 hours when you do have some energy. And that's when I would just get out and I would sweat it out. I tried to purge it out. I wanted it again to kill the cancer and then get out of my body, purge of the chemo. And that's how I was able to have 832,000 milligrams of chemo, 79 treatments.
Edie Littlefield Sundby (15:44.467)
over the course of six and a half years. But during that time, also had, I was very blessed. At end, I had a lung removed. I lost half of my liver, part of my colon, part of my stomach, my right lung, and part of my throat. So I had a lot of radical surgeries as well. And again, my body, my body got me through that.
Tim Doyle (16:09.038)
cancer treatments is physical movement like this promoted a lot by doctors or were you kind of just doing your own thing?
Edie Littlefield Sundby (16:18.779)
I was coming to it was just kind of natural to me, you know, in the sense that, you know, because as a child, that's what children do is move. And if you ever have surgery, the first thing the doctor wants you to do like when I had radical liver surgery by the head of surgery at Stanford, Stanford Stanser Hospital, when he went in and did radical liver surgery, he was when I was still in the intensive care unit, he came to see after the surgery.
And he said, have you been out of bed yet? Have you walked yet? And I looked at him with disbelief. said, my gosh, what do you mean? Have I walked yet? I can't even move. I hurt. No, doctors want you to move. Doctors know that the only way your body is going to heal is through movement. And you don't want to get out of bed. In fact, with late stage cancer, with any disease, and even with life, life, sometimes we just want to stay in bed and put the cover over our.
our eyes and a lot of people do that. But I guess with me, I've always been more afraid of not living than of dying. And so I've, you know, while alive live because we're all mortal, we're all terminal, life is terminal. And this is such a precious gift. And I want to see everything.
I mean, my God, how lucky am I that I made it through that? And that's why I went on that pilgrimage. That's why I walked 1600 miles along an old mission trail. That's why I'm walking today. That's why I'm walking across Texas. I walked from Pensacola, Florida, across Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and almost all of Texas now. I just...
love to walk. Walking slows life down and it energizes us with its visceral. mean what we see out there is so beautiful what we experience because walking is a very much a lone activity very much.
Tim Doyle (18:33.986)
You have this mindset for physical movement. And what I also appreciate is that you have a mindset of a salesman as well. And you would dress up for your doctor's appointments and you wanted your doctors to feel like you were a person who was worth saving and had a life to save.
Edie Littlefield Sundby (18:56.311)
Not worth saving because we're all worth saving and every doctor wants to save every patient. I've not met many doctors that do not have that longing. However, they can't save every patient. And what I wanted is I wanted them to see that I could be saved. In other words, I would do my part because healing.
is 50 % me, it can only be 50 % the doctor, but I'm half of it. Like a relationship is, I'm 50 % of it. And that's why there's no blame in life. I mean, my gosh, those relationships get out of balance. Doctor-patient relationships get out of balance. Marriages get out of balance.
children get out of balance. But I think the equilibrium there is 50-50. And so with your doctor, you know, it's like, okay, you do your part, which is hit me as hard as you can with most aggressive treatment, I'll do my part. And I'll do everything I possibly can to keep my body energized to be educated on what I need. For example,
You might think, well, you need to go and eat healthy, you know, a lot of veggies and stuff. No. The last thing you need when you have a gastrointestinal cancer is vegetables. I mean, fiber, you just don't want any of that stuff. You want steak, eggs. I mean, because you're losing weight, you're losing muscle so fast. You get down to 80, 85 degree pounds and there's not much there. Your body, because the cancer is stealing the nutrients, stealing the nutrients.
You know, so lot of times what you have to do is you can't listen to modern day or, or, you know, experts necessarily because, what's good, you should eat like that before you get cancer. You need to eat really healthy, but once you get cancer, the game changes. and that's so true in life. Oftentimes the game changes. And it's interesting. I read about this young person, Tim, that's about your age.
Edie Littlefield Sundby (21:01.383)
He was a delightful person. Anyway, he unfortunately had a short life because he did sign up for the military. He was killed in Iraq and he was a real high school football hero and everything. His whole life and his parents emphasized this his whole life. He had this, he had this philosophy and he called it win his win philosophy. W I N win. W what's I important.
in now. When? What's important now? And that changes often in our life. What's important now?
And the creator of All in the Family made it to the age of 100. And he was asked, OK, what's made the difference because you're robust and healthy at 100? And he said, he said, a lot of times people don't realize that it's over. Whatever it is, it's over. It's over. And by acknowledging that it's over.
That frees you to move forward. And it's what's important now. And the winning formula in life is what's important now. So when I was struck with stage four cancer, what's important now changed radically, dramatically. And I was lucky, so lucky, lucky, lucky, lucky to have an incredible team of doctors. I'd always had good health insurance.
And I just wanted, had, just, plus I wanted to learn everything I could about the disease. And I know that cancer is smart and relentless, but we are smarter and we can be even more relentless. And that said, I just am very lucky to be sitting here today.
Tim Doyle (23:07.82)
Walking obviously plays a critical role throughout your cancer treatment, but it gets even further accentuated afterwards. Where did your obsession with walking El Camino Real come from?
Edie Littlefield Sundby (23:22.643)
On the way to Stanford, I was in San Diego and it's 500 miles from San Diego to Palo Alto, to the Bay Area, to Stanford, 500 miles. And it's the old El Camino Real, old highway 101. There's also an interstate. In your life, get off of the interstates. Get off. You have never seen a place if you're stuck on an interstate, get off.
The old Highway 101, historical Highway 101 is the El Camino Real in California. And it stretches from the border all the way up to Sonoma, which is the end of the Mission Trail in California.
San Francisco and Stanford is about 75 % of the way on the old El Camino Real. And every mile on the old El Camino Real is a mission bell. And as I would drive up, my husband and would drive up for my treatments, because sometimes I'd have to fly up myself with the airlines, sometimes I'd have to drive up, and sometimes I'd have to stay up there, and sometimes I'd have to the treatment overseen by Stanford, but it was B locally in San Diego because I was too sick to manage hardly
even getting down to get the infusion. You you're almost, you're so close to death during cancer, you die many times. You're in emergency rooms, a lot of overwhelming things are happening to you.
But at the times that we would drive up to Stanford, usually when I had a radical surgery planned, we would drive up and there was a mission bell every mile. And I had never seen those before, but I'm looking out the window. And when you're confronted with death, life becomes electrifying and you see everything. And for the first time in my life, I saw those admission bells, although I'm not from California. Originally, I'm from Oklahoma.
Edie Littlefield Sundby (25:13.883)
But I saw those mission bells and I noticed, my gosh, they're everywhere. And they were every mile. And I just wanted to get out and hug every single one of them.
I was so happy to be alive and I was on my way to Stanford to have my lung removed and that was after six and a half years. I'd already lost over half of my liver. I'd lost part of my stomach, part of my colon and here I was going to have, I was going to lose my lung and that was such a positive thing because if I didn't lose that lung, the cancer, that was the only way really to kill the cancer was to cut it out and Stanford agreed to do that.
And that was a whole story. And by the way, the mission marker, my book by Harper Collins, the first 74 pages of it. By the way, it's available in hardcover and it's available now. Harper Collins just re-released it in January in a paperback. The first 74 pages is what you can hopefully do, possibly do, some ideas on how to kill cancer before it kills you.
Tim Doyle (26:20.248)
Was there any prep work that you tried to do to condition your body before going on this walk?
Edie Littlefield Sundby (26:28.751)
You know, that's so interesting because people talk about, got to get ready. You know, I've got to prepare myself. But you know, the preparing yourself is wearing your body down. You know, people who put heavy packs on and on everything and get out. But, you know, I'd much rather prepare myself out actually on the journey. And we're never prepared, ever, ever, ever prepared for what we expect.
You can never prepare. You can never prepare for a 1600 mile walk. You can never prepare for 100 mile walk or a 200 mile walk. Heck, it's even hard to prepare, you know, for a local walk. You just have to get out and do it one step at a time because if you don't do it, you'll never know if you can do it. And sometimes the preparation convinces you you can't do it.
But if you just get out and do it, if it's meant to be, it's going to be. If you can do it, you will do it. And you don't know you can do something until you've done it. know, it's like Thoreau reminded us. He said, you know, you walk alone, you leave now, you walk with someone else, you have to wait till they're ready. Oftentimes, preparedness is actually involves others. And and
And that's why it was so wonderful walking alone through Mexico, because I was all alone. I got on a plane in Tijuana alone. I flew down to Laredo, down in the very southernmost part of Baja California, Mexico, where the Mission Trail starts. Started in 1697. That's where I wanted to start. And I flew down there. I had the promise of a packed meal.
for 10 days than the promise of a Vaquero, a Mexican cowboy guide. Sometimes it was a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes it was a couple, sometimes it was a young teenager, but I had the promise for only five days of a guide through the Sierras. And having a promise of a meal, a packed meal for 10 days than the promise of a guide for five days, that was enough for me after dealing with almost seven years of
Edie Littlefield Sundby (28:49.223)
more than seven years of stage four cancer.
Tim Doyle (28:52.846)
How did the two walks differ, the one in California versus the one in Mexico?
Edie Littlefield Sundby (28:58.329)
night and day, night and day. And actually the California walk from San Diego Sonoma, I did that first. I did that starting five months after Stanford removed my right lung. And I was so diminished by the time that I got that lung out. That's after the 79 rounds of chemo.
And I had already had four radical surgeries. so losing that lung, my body was so diminished, it was so depleted that I walked from San Diego to Sonoma to really to heal my brokenness and to soar above and the fear, because there's always, there is fear of cancer coming back.
and just not knowing how long I had to live. And so there's nothing more energizing when you don't know how long you have to live is to get out and actually experience life. And so that walk from San Diego Sonoma is a lot of long.
the coast and there's now a whole group of people on California mission walkers and I'm one of the trailblazers of that. I was the sixth person to walk from San Diego to Sonoma and I did it as a through walk, 55 days walking on average 15 miles a day but I was so depleted from the cancer that once I started walking I couldn't stop and I knew that as I was walking I was healing and when I started I could hardly walk.
I could hardly breathe. And there's a lot of mountains. There's five mountains in that from San Diego to Sonoma, five mountains and 21 old missions. And they're about three, three day or four day block apart. And so I was out there and walking up the mountains. Oftentimes they could hardly get up a mountain, but I just supercharged my one lung. So by the time I got to Sonoma, 800 miles later, 55 days later,
Edie Littlefield Sundby (30:56.691)
When I got back, my doctor did a lung capacity test. I was 80 % of normal lung capacity with just one lung. And so that's been my goal the entire time. But the walking from San Diego to Sonoma is really the Broadway of beauty, a lot of it up the coast and even over the mountains because it's like a ladder up the coast, over a mountain to a valley because
the missions were built wherever there were Native American, indigenous settlements. And so that was always usually a water source. And so you go up and then you cross over the mountain, then you cross back across the mountain, go up and you do that for 800 miles. And it's absolutely a beautiful walk, but it's United States. And so there's a place to eat everywhere. There's a place to get water everywhere. There's fast food everywhere. There are camps.
everywhere. There's Motel 6s everywhere. know, there's just, it's, it's, the United States is very amenable to walking. You can, you can easily walk without anything. In fact, I walked just a 22 pocket Cabela's vest. I walked a hundred miles with nothing but a vest. And I actually wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal.
they published and that actually led to Harper Collins asking me to write the Mission Walker. But anyway, yeah, so, well, what do you do? You do what you gotta do. And for me, that's walking. So that was the northern part of the California Mission Trail. The southern part, which starts in Laredo, Mexico.
It was so brutal. It's 300 miles, 300 years since that old mission trail was trod by the Jesuits. And it's all overgrown with cactus. And there's it's the Sonoran Desert, hottest desert on earth. The the carols who live there, they live in roadless ranchos. And what that means is that in and out of the ranchos is one way and one way only. And that's on a mule or a donkey. They often have a
Edie Littlefield Sundby (33:12.723)
a or a truck, but it will be up over the Sierra, you know, a half a day or a day's ride to get to their truck. But they're so self-sufficient. For 300 years, they've lived there along the old mission trail. They were the sheep herders, the cow herders, the carpenters. They were the craftsmen who accompanied the Jesuits there in Baja California, Mexico.
And they live today much like they lived 300 years ago. They can take a little bit of water and they can survive. I've always said if North Korea nukes California, head south. Head south to Baja California, Mexico, because let me tell you, they know how to survive. They're the most amazing, resilient, truly
incredible people I've ever met in my life. I mean, here I am alone, this crazy American gringa. They knew I was on a pilgrimage. They knew I had cancer that I was, because the cancer had come back in my remaining lung. And that's what motivated me to go down and try to finish the mission walk that 800 miles down there. And I never ever knew for over two months where the next meal was coming from.
who are my next mule was coming from or where the next man or person, the guide would be coming from. And every walk is a walk of faith and especially a pilgrimage along an old mission trail, anywhere actually it's a walk of faith. But there the difference was in from San Diego to Sonoma, food, water, supplies, lodging, camping, everything just.
Too much, too much, too much. I mean, a lot. Down there, nothing. No banks, no ATMs, no credit cards, no doctors, nothing. And so you have to carry pretty much everything. But you can't carry much because you're carrying it and a donkey's carrying it and you have to transport it on and off the donkey. So anyway.
Edie Littlefield Sundby (35:34.355)
I carried with me 4,000 US dollars in pesos, in small bills, pesos, because I paid for the donkeys, I paid for the burritos, I paid for the guides. So I had this cash, a country that where the average person makes 300 US dollars a month. I had 4,000 US dollars on me on this mule. I had also...
And my physician's assistant for my doctor, George Fisher, was well-schooled in wilderness medicine. she is called Dr. Donna's Wilderness Survival Kit, necessary medicines you need to take with you on a wilderness trip. And she called CVS and did all these prescriptions. And I put them all in the bottles and I put it in Spanish, what it was for, because I didn't speak that good of Spanish in case you know.
You got kicked in the head around listening bitch you you fell off of a mule or you broke something or you went into shock They had water whatever the what if there was so many what ifs but I had a pill for every what if and I had pesos and you know, I walked from Loretto, Mexico to the California border. I never took one pill and I never had one peso stolen or taken
Tim Doyle (36:59.458)
Walking for you isn't just about the physical exercise or the physical challenge. There's a greater purpose behind that. And that purpose for you is healing and a common theme and question that I think I ask a lot of my guests is thinking about this difference between healing and recovery. And within your writing in your mindset,
It seems like you are fully focused on healing. What do you think the difference is between healing and recovery?
Edie Littlefield Sundby (37:39.057)
That's a good question because you know, we can be healed and still die. And that's a nice thing about a disease like cancer, because you do have time for reflection, time to connect with your loved ones, time to make amends, if you will, with yourself, with your family, with your friends, with your God. You have time to reflect. It's not like being killed in an auto accident or something where you're gone.
So, and wholeness, holy, they're all part of the same derivative. healing is really wholeness. And we can be made whole and still die. We can be healed and still die. And actually, I think maybe that's one thing we should pray for is that by the time we do die,
that we have been made whole and that whatever that means, whatever that means. So yes, I was lucky because my cancer was cut out, burned out, ground out, and even melted with some of the biotherapies. And so I got to the
Okay, I'd already crossed that fine line that separates us from eternity. Many times I was more dead than alive and it was very painful crossing that line to death. But once you cross that line, there's a lot of peace there, a lot of peace there. So if you have a loved one who's crossed that line, you will understand that peace. oftentimes, and I was very ready, I mean, to just leave.
Because I believe very strongly, mean, quantum theory tells us that nothing, no atom has ever been the same atoms. An atom never ceases to exist. Any atoms anywhere never cease to exist. I do believe that everything about us in one form another, and we don't understand the mystery of it in one form or another, live forever, from dust to dust. But that's living, you know?
Edie Littlefield Sundby (40:02.798)
And so, yeah, we're all mortal. So we're all going to die. It's that while alive, we have time to please live. And my favorite poet, course, like many people is Mary Oliver. And she always said, tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? That gives me goosebumps. What is it you want to do with your one wild and precious life?
And that's not just a question to ask yourself in reflection. That's a question to ask yourself every day before you get out of bed. And that can change. But what is it we want to do with our one wild and precious life? And I think that gets back to your question about wholeness and healing. We want, I think, to connect. We want to connect with that wholeness. We want to connect with people, with places.
with God. Yeah. Which is really, when I say I love aloneness and I'm connected, I really am attracted by Schopenhauer and some of the things that you mentioned that motivated you to do the out-worker. He said that aloneness is freedom, being aloneness when you're truly free, which is true. But
And that's why I love to walk, because I'm totally alone when I'm walking. Totally, totally, totally alone. But there's no greater thrill than connecting. Connecting and as you're walking, you're connecting with the past. Think about walking. It's it's true meditation. The step I just took is the past. The step I'm taking is the present and my
leg is going forward to the next step, it's going to the future. So in one breath, your past, present, future, and you realize that mindfulness is not sitting and breathing and, you know, mindfulness is, electricity. Mindfulness is total experiences. It's totally alive. It's visceral. And when you're out on a long walk,
Edie Littlefield Sundby (42:27.431)
whether it's across far west Texas or it's across the bayous of Louisiana or it's the cactus jungle of Mexico or it's even along an old highway on the Broadway of Beauty in California. When you're out there walking alone, you truly are alive. You are swivel headed. You have eyes in the back of your head as
especially when you're walking like in California, you are walking sometimes and these cars are coming towards you. You're so aware not of what you're seeing, you wonder what is that person seeing? You develop enormous sympathy. Is the sun in their eyes? Are they distracted? And you just assume they're distracted. You assume because you're the stranger out there. You're weird.
And so you're just totally alive and ready to respond. And as a walker, you can do things that bicyclists cannot do, that motorcycles cannot do, and of course the chorus cannot do. You can just really, but you've got to be on your toes. And that's why I like to walk. I like to walk along. I have never once in thousands and thousands of miles walking, whether across the United States or across the old mission trail, I've never once put anything in my ears.
ever, ever, ever, because I actually, you actually learn to see with your ears. You can hear with your eyes out there. The senses blur and you are alert to everything you have to be because you don't know what's coming at you, whether it's coming towards you, coming up from behind you to the side. But isn't that life? Isn't that life? We never know what's coming at us.
Tim Doyle (44:17.352)
one of your biggest obstacles when it comes to walking is actually not walking and taking days off. And you felt like on the days that you would take off throughout your mission walks that you became more connected with the mundane and disconnected with your spirituality. Do you always feel like
Edie Littlefield Sundby (44:17.821)
You want to? Yeah.
Edie Littlefield Sundby (44:28.952)
Thank
Tim Doyle (44:45.738)
It's challenging to live within the mundane everyday life.
Edie Littlefield Sundby (44:51.795)
No, actually, don't really think I don't really mundane. It's like there's there's there's the extraordinary and the ordinary. And there's nothing more electrifying than just like going out and sitting outside and just closing your eyes wherever you are on your porch, closing your eyes and seeing what kind of distant sounds can you hear? How many birds song can you hear? You know, how many?
for creepy crawly critters, what can you hear? Can you hear the wind? Where is the wind? I mean, it's like, that's part of the electricity of the moment of existence. And you don't have to be on a long walk. But the reason that I'm a little unique is I have one lung. And so if I don't walk, I don't breathe as well. And our body being mortal, if we don't use it, we lose it. We've all heard that.
But since I only have one lung, if I don't supercharge that lung, and I have to really supercharge it just about every day, but nothing supercharges it like a long walk. And a long walk is anything over 200 or 300 miles. Anything under that's not a long walk. But I have to do that two or three times a year, a 200 or 300 mile walk to supercharge my one lung. So I can have normal lung capacity, normal breathing capacity, normal life.
with a diminish. A diminished body is a diminished life and none of us want that. But anyway, in a way it's a blessing. It's a blessing because it gets me out there. And it's also a blessing because I have to learn to breathe and I have to breathe daily, fully. And when you breathe fully, you truly capture, you capture the wonder.
everywhere around you. So there is really no such thing as mundane.
Edie Littlefield Sundby (46:57.907)
But the thing is, is with walking, you're addicted to it. You're totally addicted to it. I mean, the dopamine, the endorphins, I mean, all of these things. so when you stop, it's like, you don't want to stop. You don't want to stop. It's so electrifying. You're so energized. You're so full of life. And what you see out there is so gorgeous. You don't want to stop. But of course, you do stop.
And then what happens is your life fills with all that clutter again. All that clutter and removing the clutter is, think, especially in today's noisy, noisy world. We can't do it alone. We have to be alone in order to remove it.
Tim Doyle (47:46.134)
I think something that is seen as mundane and what you've talked about there is your breath and breathing the action of breathing. And when you have a conscious awareness of how powerful your breath is,
Tim Doyle (48:07.626)
I can see, you know, how much more impactful it can make your walking and just having that deep sense of connection between your body and your mind and building that relationship and continuing down that path of the relationship that you have with your body. You say cancer had brutalized my body and now the desert Sierra is threatened to do to the outside. What cancer did.
to the inside. And another topic that I think I discussed with a lot of my guests is this relationship between unwilling pain and willing pain. And you've certainly have experienced both on the unwilling side, the pain that would come from cancer, but then also on the willing side of how you put yourself through these very physically demanding
very long walks. It's almost as if you needed to willfully put yourself through this pain on the walking to make sure you weren't controlled or have your identity be defined by this unwilling pain with cancer. Does that feel like it's true?
Edie Littlefield Sundby (49:26.003)
Well, I think what happens is you must be empowered to get through and you never know what life is going to be throwing at you next. And so all of life is a preparation for what we don't know. that walking empowers me, it strengthens me spiritually, physically, emotionally, and for whatever's around the curve, whatever's coming at me, whatever.
whatever's going to be hitting me next and knocking me to my knees. When it knocks you to your knees, and life will do that over and over and over again, when it knocks us to our knees, we just don't want it to knock us out. Okay? Now there will be a time when I'm knocked to my knees and I want to stay there.
Is that true? don't know because death does not necessarily knock us to our knees. Death to me invites us in. yeah, and I've been very close to death and it's.
Edie Littlefield Sundby (50:37.567)
There's a lot of peace there in the exhale, in the exhale. You know, the first thing we do in life, come into the world and we take that deep inhale. And it's like everything in between. The last thing we do is the last exhale. And it's how we breathe in between makes the difference. Yeah.
Tim Doyle (51:05.382)
another duality into the conversation. Your internal voice, you have your feel sorry for Edie voice and your cowboy voice. What does the relationship look like between those two internal voices?
Edie Littlefield Sundby (51:22.483)
You know, I was raised on a cotton farm in rural Oklahoma, next to the youngest of 12 children. my parents taught us not to feel sorry for ourselves and not to blame others, but to, you know, it's really just part of the acceptance of life. I try not to feel sorry for myself, but I do sometimes allow myself
a little pity party, okay? But not too much because it's a slippery slope and we have to be very, very careful about those slippery slopes in life. Yeah.
It's kind of a waste of life if you think about it, to feel sorry for ourselves when truly the best cure for depression, the best cure for physical ailments is accomplishment. You know, is getting out and doing something.
And even with the mind, how do we close off that clutter from, how do we, that little inner voice that may be holding us back? Well, the best way to knock that out is by filling the senses with movement and power months and life, nature. That's why I love the sun. That's why I love the desert.
Some people are mountain people, know, some people are ocean people. I'm a desert person. And I love the desert.
Tim Doyle (53:09.07)
certainly an incredible accomplishment after being diagnosed with cancer and being told you have three months to live to walk the entire El Camino Real 1600 miles with one lung. I mean, truly remarkable as we both know, though, it's not the walk or the accomplishment of the physical feet that is most interesting or important. It's the
insights and the wisdom and the healing that can be built from those physical experiences that is more fascinating to talk about. And I think you illustrate this contrast really nicely with two different lines. In the desert, Sierra's a man is but a wind that passes and does not return. The desert doesn't need water or man. It quickly erases man and reclaims itself. And people never die. Their words.
survive forever. So it's not the physical accomplishment itself, but it's the words and the ideas and the insights that are built from those accomplishments that continue to live on. What's an idea that you want your life to be represented by?
Edie Littlefield Sundby (54:32.979)
I think that while alive, live.
that it's really that fear of death will never be as motivating as the joy of living. And while alive, live. While alive, live. It's such a precious, precious gift. And as Mark Twain reminded us, life is so short, it's just a flicker. There's no time.
for arguing, there's no time for bickering, there's no time for dissent, blaming or shaming or any of those things. There's only time for loving and there's just a brief moment for that. So love, laugh and be happy.
Tim Doyle (55:27.808)
It's been great talking with you. Where can people go to support you and see more of what you do?
Edie Littlefield Sundby (55:33.747)
I've got a website, the Mission Walker. I'd be honest with you, I'm out walking now. I'm walking across the United States on the old Spanish Trail Road, 2,817 miles. But I'm doing this in segments. I'm doing this a state at a time. Texas has taken me forever. Texas is halfway around the world. Across Texas is like...
across the world almost, it's one third of the distance between San Diego and St. Augustine, Florida, which is where I'm walking. And I've walked from Pensacola, Florida all the way now to Van Horn, Texas. I've only walked two thirds of the way across Texas. I still have one third left to go. And it got too hot when I was out there. I'm heading back out in a couple of weeks, about February the 20th to finish that Van Horn, Texas, far west Texas, telepaso. And it is a wildness, a barrenness,
bleakness out there that is unlike, I mean every walk is different, but I'm going to be doing that walk. They can pick up the Mission Walker, they can connect with me on my website edie at themissionwalker.com. I speak to a lot of healthcare organizations, a lot of civic organizations about how really to make the most of this thing, this beautiful thing, call life.
And until I was so connected with you and what you were doing when I watched your first podcast and I was just amazed at the clarity, the depth of the, you know, that you scripted it out and that I connected with so many of the central thoughts there. And I was thinking how wonderful, know, Cicero reminded us that it's not
It's not chance that determines our life. It's choice, choice. And that's one thing about the out worker. I think you bring out in all of your guests and in your own life how to reflect on choice and to change chance by a better reflection on choice.
Tim Doyle (57:55.918)
appreciate the kind words and glad that you resonated with it so deeply. that's my exact mindset to really dig into people and their experiences and their lives and ask them deep questions that maybe many other people wouldn't necessarily ask them on every given day. So really appreciate that.
Edie Littlefield Sundby (58:18.419)
Tim, I do want invite people who hear me to get out and walk with me. One of the nice things about a long walk is people join you all the time.
They find out you're out there and when you're walking through a small town or you're walking through a particular place, they'll come out and they'll join you. Sometimes it's for a mile, a couple of miles. Sometimes it's for a day, sometimes longer than a day. But it's interesting, a lot of people don't even understand their own communities, their own places that they don't live. And when you're out there walking, you see things in such a different way. And it just opens your eyes to the beauty of everything that is around us.
please do join me. If anyone wants to walk across far west Texas, you, I think, have you moved to Austin yet? If you want to walk across, if you want a real experience, you know, far west Texas, I mean, it's 100 miles, there's nothing.
Tim Doyle (59:03.822)
Not yet.
Tim Doyle (59:15.278)
I'll meet you for a couple of miles maybe.
Edie Littlefield Sundby (59:18.981)
I'd love that. I'd love that. I'd absolutely love that.
Tim Doyle (59:22.894)
Great talking with you, Edie.
Edie Littlefield Sundby (59:24.413)
Thank you so much, Tim. God bless.
