Hello, and welcome to a special edition of Living With Hospice. This is one of our seven minute scoops, and this episode is about expressing our gratitude to you - our supporters, followers and subscribers -for making this podcast a successful endeavor that continues to bear fruit in the lives of those who are involved in an end of life journey.
When we started this endeavor 15 months ago, if you would have asked me what I would consider success in this endeavor, I would have told you, "Well, our goal is to help as many people as we can, especially those folks who are knee deep in an end of life situation, either as a patient or as a caregiver. If you'd ask me, "What is your goal?" , and I would have told you, if we can help one person or one family, then all that goes into the making of this podcast is well worth it.
Success in the podcast world is pretty much measured in the number of downloads that you get, if you'd ask me, how many downloads do you think is a good goal for the first year or so I would have said a couple of hundred, maybe. 100 in the first year, and maybe 200, in the second. Knowing that we'd help 50 people or 100 people would really warmed my heart.
Well, this week, friends, because of you, we surpassed 5000 downloads!
5000 downloads!
That just blows me away. And I'm so very humbled by all of the support that we've received. And we have listeners on six of seven continents. (So we need to find someone down in Antarctica, that we can get to listen to a few of our episodes. Then we can say we have the entire globe covered all seven continents!)
And the notes and the comments that we get are very encouraging. We've received notes like this one from Kelly really early on. She says, "Before I heard your podcast, I was totally frustrated. I felt lost and alone. I couldn't enjoy my time with my mom. Now I can thanks to you."
Faye wrote, "I was led to your website by your sensible, knowledgeable and insightful answers to heartbreaking heart wrenching questions on several social media sites. Rest assured I'm now tuned into Living with Hospice. You're a lifeline to me, as I know you are too many others."
Linda wrote, "Thank you for your podcasts. I'm now a subscriber. What a great blessing you are to so many on this journey."
Shannon wrote, "Thank you, Mitch, for your sweet words of encouragement and comfort. And yes, I will call tomorrow about joining a grief support group."
Diane writes about our caregiver burnout episode. "Mitch, thank you and the team so much. That was an eye opener, you are absolutely correct. And I didn't see it. I have now taken more time for myself. When he's sleeping, I take advantage to go run or walk my dog or play in the garden and do deep breathing exercises my husband and kids take over and it's a relief for me. I realized now they can take care of him just as well as I can. Thanks again, Mitch."
And Larissa writes, "Thank you living with hospice. I'm finding your podcast very helpful and interesting. I'm listening from Germany, understand most of what you're saying. And I still appreciate the insight that you're providing everyone around the world on end of life care. We love hearing how these short episodes impact you and your family on your journey. Our goal continues to be getting straight, unbiased information to our audience about hospice, caregiving, and most anything related to an end of life journey."
I never thought when we started this a year ago that we would have this much support. I knew the need was great, but I didn't know exactly how great it was, I guess. And it just goes to show that there are a lot of people hurting and a lot of people looking for answers to this whole end of life situation.
We count it a high honor to help fill the void on the information highway regarding end of life journeys. Thank you for inviting us into your homes, your work, your cars, and everywhere else you listen to our podcast. And thank you to Apple and Spotify and Stitcher and IHeart and Buzzsprout and Google and all the other platforms that carry our podcast. 5000 downloads in one year is just amazing, especially in this genre!
I want to thank several people that make this possible starting with Rick Vuyst and Justin Barclay, who are terrific big time broadcasters and have podcasts of their own. And a huge shout out goes to Cassandra. She is our webmaster and producer of this podcast would have never got off the ground without her. She brings an incredible amount of expertise when it comes to the internet and website development and design. She's also a good friend and a great sounding board for different ideas that we present here on this podcast.
And finally, thank you to all of YOU for your support. We are especially grateful to those of you who pass our podcasts on to others who need straight, unbiased information, and quite frankly, need encouragement. You are the reason we're here!!
Next time we get together, we're going to be talking about retriggered grief. This is such a common and so upsetting event to most of us. And in that episode, we'll discuss how we get triggered and retriggered, why that happens, and we'll learn how to deal with these ongoing feelings in a very healthy way.
That about wraps things up, we just want to say thank you again. We can't say thank you enough. And "thank you" those words just don't seem to be adequate. But please accept our gratitude and appreciation for all that you've done to support this podcast.
Please drop us a note at www.livewithhospice.com. Feel free to send us any questions you might have. Tell us any stories or comments that you might want to share with us and others and who knows you might hear your question or your comments or story in an upcoming episode. As always, we appreciate your allowing us into your lives and into your journey and we look forward to seeing you next time. So until next time, this is Mitch Ware with Living With Hospice. Have a blessed day!
