March 20, 2025 • 36 mins
After the recent heartbreaking headlines, actor Colin Egglesfield is ready to talk about battling cancer forthe third time. The 'Something Borrowed' and 'All My Children' star details beating testicular cancer TWICE, only to be diagnosed with prostate cancer just when he thought the coast was clear.
Find out why he hid his illness at work, how his health changed his goals and ambitions, and what he says men need to do NOW before it's too late.
Plus, Colin is on a mission to support thrivers around the world with wellness retreats around the world!For more information on his upcoming rejuvenating retreats in Arizona, Ireland, and beyond, go to agileartist.com/inspireretreat.
Follow @ColinEgglesfield and @LetsBeClearPod on Instagram
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Let's be clear, who's Shannon Dhorney. All right, Hello,
let's be clear listeners. My name is Colin Egglesfield, and
I am so grateful and honored to be here today
to be able to share with you my personal journey
and my experiences of having some health challenges over the
(00:23):
past few years. Some of you may know me as
an actor, some of you may know me as someone
who is active in the health and wellness community, and
I just wanted to come on here today to share
with you some of my experiences because what I've realized
that going through a cancer journey has really taught me
(00:44):
a lot about myself, a lot about life, and it's
made me realize that life is something that can't necessarily
be done alone if you really want to have a
purposeful and fulfilling life. So I'm just going to tell
you a little bit about my upbringing, my background, tell
(01:06):
you a little bit about my experiences with acting, and
tell you a little bit about what I'm doing now
in terms of having now survived cancer for the third time, yes,
three times, And also just wanted to give a little
bit of a shout out to everyone out there who's
dealing with any sort of health journey, answer journey, whatever
(01:29):
it is, I'm going to be sharing with you tonight
some of the things that have empowered me and enabled
me to stay empowered through this scary experience. Because when
someone tells you that you've been diagnosed with cancer, for
those of you who have heard that phrase, it can
be very jarring and it can put you into a
(01:51):
headspace that is not necessarily the best place to be in.
So the things that have enabled me to stay empowered
and stay positive through this experience is something that I
want to share with you all. But first I just
want to give a huge shout out to Shannon Doherty.
So Shannon is someone who I grew up watching on
nine oh two and O and she was someone that
(02:12):
I always looked up to. When I watched nine O
two and oh, I was always like, man, those those
kids look like they're so having so much fun. And
I think it was a I want to say, I
was a freshman in high school when that show came on,
and I always would love to tune in because I
was like, man, those kids are in Beverly Hills. They
seem to have you know everything, you know, just the
(02:35):
best life ever And just to watch the show and
see them go through their trials and tribulations of relationships
and heartbreaks and breakups, and you know, it's it's it's
amazing how close we can feel to characters that we
watch on TV. And though I never met Shannon, I
felt like she was someone who I knew just from
(02:56):
watching her on TV and someone that inspired me to
know that no matter what's going on in life, that
you can overcome challenges. From what I knew, Shannon was
resilient and determined and so passionate about what she did,
and I think we can all learn something from her
experience of how she dealt with her cancer journey. But
(03:18):
just I'll go back a little bit to tell you
a little bit about my journey and where I'm from.
And I came from a small little town outside of Detroit,
Michigan called Farmington. Was born there and grew up and
my dad was a doctor, actually he was an obstratrician gynecologist,
and he had gone to school in Chicago, and so
once he met my mom there, they got married and
(03:40):
they moved back to Michigan where my dad was from,
and he had my sister, and then myself and my brother,
and then my dad got offered a position to move
back to Chicago to teach at the hospital. So we
moved back to Chicago when I was about ten years old,
and watching my dad be a doctor and show up
to be there for so many people in times of need,
(04:01):
I really loved the idea of potentially doing that. So
when it came time for me to go to college,
I actually started out engineering first because I for some reason,
was interested in architecture and building things. I was always
into legos. But once I got to three dimensional vector calculus,
I was like, you know what, this isn't for me,
(04:21):
and so I decided to switch majors to biology and
decided to pursue my pre med endeavors. And when I
got to my senior year, I was going down this
road and if anyone of you have seen something borrowed.
My character Decks actually asks his father this question in
(04:42):
the movie, where he says, Dad, have you ever been
in a position where you've been heading down a road
and you don't think that it's necessarily maybe the path
that you intuitively think that you're supposed to be on.
And my character's father in the movie shuts me down
and he says, Dex, that's not who we are. You're
(05:04):
going in this direction. And I think I could, I
could relate to that in a lot of ways, because
I think sometimes in life we find ourselves in a
position in life, and you may find yourself in that
experience or have in the past where in a sense,
you've been miscast in the story of your own life.
And so what I mean by that is because of
(05:25):
where you were born, how you grew up, where you
you know, who your parents were, what religion you were raised,
we can find ourselves sort of pushed this into the
traditions or the path that are considered normal for wherever
it is that you're from. And so you know, getting
the job and having a family and raising kids and
(05:48):
the white picket fence. Although that's something I absolutely desire
at the time when I was, you know, twenty years old,
it's hard to really know what you really want in life,
and when you feel like you're being pushed down a
path and then you end up into this role and
you wake up one day and you're like, how the
hell did I get here? I found myself where I
(06:10):
could see that path unfolding, where I wasn't sure if
that's necessarily where I really wanted to go. And as
it turned out, I heard on the radio about this
model talent search. So I went to this model talent
search at the Davenport Holiday and I was going to
the University of Iowa at the time, and I went
to this thing and I met these model agent ladies,
(06:32):
and next thing you know, I got connected with an
agent in Chicago. And so the reason why I bring
this up is because in life, we get presented these
opportunities and these doors may open up to us, but
sometimes we don't always walk through those doors for whatever reason.
And I think it's important to at least walk through
(06:52):
that door and see what it might look like, because
it's hard to make a decision on where you want
to go in life and what you want your life
to be about if you haven't necessarily experienced it yet.
And when a door opens up, I think it's important
to listen to your gut, to listen to your instincts,
say some prayers to God, to the universe, whatever it
is that, whatever it is that you pray to. And
(07:15):
as I started going through these doors, as they started
opening up, I found myself facing a decision do I
want to go to medical school or do I want
to go to Europe to pursue this modeling career. And
I decided that against probably what I felt everyone expected
me to do, I was like, you know what, I'm
going to do something that may I may not be
(07:37):
able to do ever again. So I decided to go
to Europe. And next thing you know, I was finding
myself on the runways doing Versace runway shows and met
Georgia Ormani and some of these amazing designers, and for
the first time, I really discovered what it meant to
be around really creative people who were doing something that
they truly loved and were passionate about. And after that,
(08:00):
I found myself in New York City and started going
on some commercial auditions, and acting was something that I
never thought was going to be on my radar because
I growing up was introverted. I was shy, and the
last thing I wanted to do in class was to
get up and give a speech or anything. I literally
would have these hyperventilating panic attacks, and any time I
(08:22):
would have to get up in front of school to
talk about anything or give the answer. And so the
last thing I ever thought was in the cards for
me was getting up in front of people to do
an acting career. But again one of these doors opened
up where my acting or my acting modeling agents said,
why don't you take an acting class to see if
(08:42):
you like it, see if this may be something that
you want to give a shot to. And so it
would have been very easy to say no. And again,
if we don't know what something is, it's very easy
to judge it to shut it down before we even
really know what it is. So I went to this
acting class, and I would say it was the first
(09:03):
time in my life where I genuinely felt that this
was a place where I could learn how to give
over my fear of being in front of people, being
authentic and being vulnerable. I mean, as a guy, we
don't necessarily like to be vulnerable, We don't necessarily necessarily
like to admit when we are struggling, and I think
(09:26):
this can keep us stuck in alone. And what acting
class I started to realize provided to me was this
space where I could show up and learn how to
unlearn a lot of the things that I was conditioned
to how to act growing up. And I started to
realize that the most important thing in life is to
(09:46):
be authentic and to be truthful and to be honest
with yourself. And one of the greatest pieces of advice
that my acting teacher gave me was she said, it's
so important for you in order for you to be
able to play these characters and walk into these auditions
and for people to be able to to connect with
you and want to go on these journeys with you,
(10:10):
is that first and foremost, you have to honor yourself first,
honor yourself in every regard. And I really was like
thinking about what that meant and what I started to
really think and realize that growing up, I was always
more on that people pleasing side, where I just wanted
(10:31):
to make friends and I wanted everyone to like me,
and I was afraid of what people thought of me
in the fear of judgment. I was super skinny growing up.
I had headgear and braces, and so I didn't always
feel comfortable in my own skin. And so the last
thing I wanted was to be, you know, be a
target and to be put myself out there for criticism,
(10:55):
because a lot of what happens when you get in
front of the camera, front of audiences with TV and
film is that people are naturally gonna have judgments and opinions.
And the second piece of advice my acting teacher gave
us was when you start acting and you start getting
in front of these audiences, she said, inevitably, people are
going to judge you. And she said that roughly thirty
(11:18):
percent of the people that you perform in front of,
that you get in front of to act or to
whatever it is, that thirty percent are gonna like you.
They're gonna resonate with you. You're gonna say something or
you're gonna do something that makes them feel connected to you,
and they're gonna like you. They're going to root for you.
She said. The next thirty percent of the people out
(11:40):
there that you perform in front of, and even that
you meet in your daily life, they're not gonna like you.
For whatever reason, they're not gonna like you. They're gonna
think that you just look weird, or the sounding of
your voice is horrible, or that you just look whatever
a certain way. So thirty percent of people are not
gonna like you. And then she said, the other forty
(12:00):
percent of the people in the world, let's see you
that see your performances, that you meet out in the world,
they don't care. So she said, it's not your job,
with acting or with anything in life to try to
make everyone happy or to please everyone. She said, your
job is to show up, be truthful, honor yourself, honor
(12:22):
the character, and be of service to the writer, to
the director, to the producers and everyone that has come
together to tell this story. And so it kind of
just took that pressure off of me for the first
time where I felt like, Okay, I've got permission to
not have to worry about what other people think. And
(12:43):
knowing that people are going to have opinions and they're
going to have probably negative opinions, it's not my job
to try to fix it, change it, or be worried
about what other people think. So now that I had
(13:06):
this this release of like trying to shoulder the burden
of pleasing everyone, I could get to work and focus
on what was the work of the actor and the
first aspect of being an actor and creating these characters,
and what really helped me in my real life was,
in addition to kind of piggybacking on honoring yourself, is
(13:27):
actually a piece of advice that my grandmother gave me,
and that was you got to know who you are
and know where you're at. So when I was growing up,
my grandmother always used to say, remember who you are,
and I was like, of course, man, I know who
I am. I'm like I'm calling you know. I come
from the South side of Chicago and I go to
(13:48):
the University of Iowa. I'm ma Hawkeye or whatever it is.
So we tend to identify ourselves with our external experiences
or circumstances. And so when she said remember who you are,
you are if you look at that word, remember, it's remember.
So a lot of the times when we are seeking
outside validation for who we are, we can get lost
(14:10):
in the seeking approval or trying to fit in. And
when my acting teacher talked about knowing who your character
is at twenty six, twenty seven years old, I finally
truly understood what my grandmother meant in terms of remembering
(14:31):
and reconnecting to who you really are. And most of
the time we haven't really thought about who we really are.
So I'm going to give you a little a little
exercise here for you to really truly know who you
really are. And for a while, you know, I think
we go through life trying to figure out who we
are and where we fit in. And what I realized
(14:52):
with acting classes is that in order to play the
characters that we play, we have to decide who this
character is and we have to to make choices. You'll
hear that a lot with acting teachers. They'll say, you
got to make strong choices. Casting directors say, we like
actors that make these really strong, bold choices that make
you stand out from every other actor that walks through
(15:13):
the door. Because with acting, it's roughly you know, for
every role, there's about four hundred actors that are vuying
for that same role. So you can imagine if a
casting director is sitting there an actor after actor after actor,
or coming in or nowadays it's all on our iPhones
or whatever. Within that first few seconds of someone seeing
(15:34):
you or meeting you, it's important that you're able to
connect with them authentically. And when a casting director is
seeing so many people, creating and choosing these strong choices
will help you stand out. But if you're trying to
fit in and be like everyone else, you're just going
to blend in and be forgettable. So by making these
(15:56):
bold choices as an actor, choosing these care I realized,
we decide who these characters are. We build these characters
so that when we show up on set, we can
truthfully play these characters in these imaginary circumstances. And so
it's an active choosing who you are with acting. And
I started to realize that as I was going into
(16:18):
these auditions and choosing these characters and the characteristics of
who these characters were, whether it was a vampire or
a fighter pilot or a doctor, I started to realize
that I was doing more work on analyzing and knowing
these characters than I even knew myself. And so I
started to apply this same strategy to my own life.
(16:39):
So what you can do, start to ask yourself in
this circumstance, no matter where you're at, And this is
where I'm going to get into my friends here who
are dealing with cancer or every other any other health
ailment out there. No matter what you were dealing with,
you get to decide who you choose to be. Is
(17:00):
this experience now, as someone who's been diagnosed with cancer
three times, this has come in incredibly handy is the
right word. But it's been incredibly empowering for me to
use this because in this experience, and I wouldn't wish
cancer on anyone, but what it has made me do
(17:22):
or afforded me the experience is to choose who I
choose to be in life. So I'm not waiting for
life to tell me who I am, because most of
the time, as we grow up, you know, we get
told who we are. Again, we get to decide who
we are. And when we start actively choosing who we
are in life, that gives us more of a definitive
(17:43):
idea of who we are and how we want to
show up. And a quick and easy way to decide
who you are is pick three characteristics, and in enacting
class we choose who is the character's core value. So
whether your character's value is truth or justice, or power
or love or revenge. By choosing these three core values,
(18:05):
you get to decide to be lived by the energy
and the essence and whatever else you can channel by
these three qualities. And so what this does is it
gives you instant access and connection to the answers that
you need in order to navigate whatever it is that
(18:26):
you're dealing with. So the three core values that I
choose to be lived by are inspiration, self expression and boldness,
And the reason why I choose this is because I've
always loved to be inspired. I always loved watching inspirational
videos and movies, and I think that's why I love
acting so much, Because I love going to movie theater
(18:48):
or being at home and seeing inspirational stories about incredible
people who have overcome the odds. I love to be
in that space of just feeling like empowerment and facing
you know, and facing the odds and moving forward anyway.
So I choose to be lived by inspiration. The second
(19:09):
one is self expression because growing up I wasn't always
self expressed. I was shy, I was nervous about what
people would think. And by choosing to be self expression,
you get to show up and ask the question, not
what would Colin do or what would Lisa do? Or
what would Mike do? You get to ask what would
(19:30):
self expression do? In this moment? Self expression would tell
the truth. Self expression would show up and be freely
open about their experiences, about their challenges, about whatever it
is that they're dealing with. And then the third one, boldness.
I choose to be lived by boldness, and that way
(19:51):
you get to decide. By deciding this, you get to
be lived by would what are the characteristics of boldness?
So when I was going through my cancer journy and
having to go to my radiation treatments and my surgeries
and my chest X rays and cat scans, you get
to ask and decide and be lived by what would
(20:11):
boldness do right now? So again not what Colin would do,
because Colin would want to run for the hills and
be like, no way, I don't want to get poked, prodded,
lit up or cut open any more times. But when
you ask the question what would boldness do? Or you
can ask if you want to be if maybe you're
lacking love in your relationship, you could choose love as
(20:31):
one of your three core values, and then that way
you can be lived by love. And so you could ask, well,
what would love do? So instead of showing up in
the world and expecting or wishing that someone would love,
you show up as love, so that when you show
up that you are the giving and receiving of love.
And when you are showing up in life being the
present moment existence of something, you attract it. So I'm
(20:55):
sure you've heard of the law of attraction and manifestation
a lot of people have been talking about it. It's
become a buzzword. But it's important to know that like
energy attracts like energy, and so if you're constantly showing
up in life with the negative thoughts and doubt and uncertainty,
you're going to attract more of that. And it's amazing
how when you start to, as my nana said, know
(21:17):
who you are, remember who you are. When you start
to go inward and choose these three core values, it's
amazing how empowerment or love or self expression will start
to show up in your life because you have actively
chosen it. So that really helped me start to embark
along my path. And as I was going through my
(21:38):
acting journey, I was going on these auditions and finally,
after like seven eight years of auditioning, I booked a
role on All My Children, playing the the transplanted, unboarded
fetus of Ericacane otherwise known as Susan Lucci, and so
being able to play Susan Lucci's son and All My Children,
(21:58):
it was an amazing experience. And soap operas are incredibly
demanding for a regular TV show that airs on nighttime TV,
that hour long TV show is essentially actually only forty
minutes because it's about twenty minutes of commercials, and a
normal hour long primetime television show that airs once a
week usually takes about five to seven twelve hour days
(22:21):
to film. For a movie, you're and you usually for
a primetime TV show, you're shooting about maybe ten to
fifteen pages of dialogue every day, and then for a
movie you're maybe shooting three to eight pages a day.
With soap opera, you're shooting eighty pages a day. So
it is you show up, you got to know your lines,
(22:42):
you got to deliver, and so it's this constant, just
like flood of dialogue and information, and so very quickly
you start to realize that you've got to become good
at memorizing. And by showing up and having this experience
of doing this for three years, it empower me to
realize that if you know you can make soap opera believable,
(23:03):
then there may be a chance of actually doing some
other things as well. So when my contract was almost
like well, i was six months into my three year
contract with all my children, and when I got that role,
I was super excited because I'd been pursuing acting for
like seven or eight years, and what really emboldened me
(23:24):
to pursue acting in the first place was if I
could just go up for a second go back. I
was living across the street from the World Trade Center
in two thousand and one, and I'd only been studying
acting for like two years, and I'd done one role.
My first role was actually getting into bed with Jenny
Garth from nine oh two to zero, giving her a
(23:47):
glass of wine in this show called The Street, and
I had one line. And then my next role was
a mail escort on Law and Order SVU. So not
the biggest resume to be thinking I could go out
to Hollywood and be the next Tom Cruise. That morning
of nine to eleven, when I woke up and I
saw out of my window the flames, and quickly soon
thereafter saw that people were hanging their heads out of
(24:09):
the windows of the World Trade Center. I quickly realized
that those people weren't just watching, that they were trapped,
and I turned on the TV and I started I
grabbed my video camera, I started videotaping, and I've got
footage of that second plane coming in and it was
just horrific to see people actually then starting to jump
out of the top of the towers. And after that
(24:31):
second plane hit, I ran downstairs and standing outside of
my apartment building just watching people stuck up at the
top of those towers. It was just heartbreaking and something
you can't on sea. And when that first tower fell,
I was one of the people running down the street.
And then the second tower fell, and it was a
few days before I could actually get back to my
apartment and when I did, when the towers fell, my
(24:53):
windows got blown through, so I my place looked like
a bomb had blown up inside of my apartment. So
I had only a few minutes to grab whatever I
could put into a suitcase and then leave, and I
went to a hotel and I sat down on the
floor and it really made me think about what was
important in life and what did I want my life
to be about, because I've essentially I felt like in
(25:14):
that moment, I had a second chance, and I realized
that those close to three thousand people that perished that day,
they don't have a second chance. And so no matter
what you're dealing with, whether it's cancer or a challenge
or a relationship issue, at least you have the chance
or the opportunity to decide who you want to be
(25:35):
in this experience, and the last thing I wanted to
do was to let that experience define who I was
and to get me down. And I realized the only
thing that was holding me back from going out to
Hollywood to pursue this crazy idea of being a professional
actor was my limiting beliefs and that fear of failure.
And I just I was like, well, what would my
(25:57):
acting teacher, Jackie Siegel say, on yourself and Nana, remember
who you are? And I was like, you know what,
the only thing that's stopping me is my own self doubt.
And I just started thinking about if I were one
of those people trapped up in the towers, if I
was given a second chance at life, or if you
were given a second chance at life, what would you
(26:17):
do and would you let your fears and your doubts
stop you from going after what you truly care about
and what matters most to you? And I was like,
I realized the only thing that was holding me back
was me, and so I decided, you know what, screw it,
let's go, let's do this. I went out to Hollywood,
(26:48):
and this is where you got to understand you don't
have to be the best, you don't have to be
the smartest, you don't have to be the best looking,
because that's not about that. I only had two years
of acting experience and I went out to Hollywood and
I started booking these roles because I was going into
these auditions with this passion and this desire to be like,
holy crap, I'm glad to be alive. So when you
(27:08):
show up in life not worried about what other people think,
but you're focused on whatever what it is that you
truly passionately desire and want from here not from here,
the world starts showing up differently for you. And after
I started doing this, after a few years of auditioning,
I booked that role on all my children. So then
I'm like, oh my god, this is amazing. I'm now
(27:28):
doing what I love to do. I'm now getting paid
to do it. And six months into my three year contract,
I got diagnosed with testicular cancer. And now, for those
of you out there have been diagnosed with cancer, that's
not a fun day when someone you know, when my
doctor told me you've got cancer, it's advanced stage, and
(27:49):
I'm scheduling you for surgery. This was on a Friday,
scheduling you for surgery on a Monday. It was like
I was in denial. I was like, how can that be?
I take care of myself. I try to eat healthy.
And so this is where the disempowerment can come up.
And you really got to decide that I'm not gonna
let this experience define who I am or how my
(28:10):
outlook is going to be. So I decided, all right,
I'm going to decide who do I need to be
in this experience. And so I started relying on my
acting training, and so I decide to be bold, courageous.
I decide to be Maximists from Gladiator or whoever character
or superhero that you choose to be, and start channeling
that energy because this is this is the access and
(28:33):
the leverage for us to be able to accomplish anything
in life. And I'm telling you it doesn't matter what
challenge you are facing right now. You can start to
create this definitive way that this is going to go
for you and know that no matter what happens in life,
that we are these spiritual creatures having this human experience.
(28:56):
And if you can start to look at yourself through
the eyes of like let's say a screenwriter or a director.
You can start looking at your life and say, how
do I want my life to go? How do I
want this story to go? And if I don't like
how it's going, how can I choose to be this
empowered character in this experience? Because face it, we all
(29:18):
know this. We're not all going to live forever. We're
all gonna die at some time. So it's important to
focus on making this life as amazing and as great
as it possibly can be. And if you are feeling stuck,
if you are feeling frustrated, or if you're feeling like
there's no way out, I'm telling you there is. And
(29:39):
the way to find a way through this is to
look at this from a different perspective. And so this
is what now leads me to my third point. The
first one is know who you are. The second one
is decide who you are. The third one is you
got to have the support of your community around you.
So it's important that you reach out to your friends,
your family, and you don't have to be needy in
(30:01):
this experience. It's about being honest and honoring yourself and
communicating to other people what you need in this experience,
and by doing so, you provide other people the opportunity
to show up to be what and for them to
be who they want to be. And a lot of
(30:22):
people want to be purposeful and they want to experience
what it means to be there for someone. But when
you deny them that experience, then both people are disconnected
and alone. And after being diagnosed with cancer that first
time and having my first surgery, I had to go
for my radiation treatment, and I was showing up on
all my children working in the morning and then going
(30:45):
for my treatment. And after my treatment, I would just
feel sick and tired and just sluggish, like you've got
the flu. And I would go back to work the
next day and do this over and over again. And
towards the end of my treatment, I had my scene
and all my children were scheduled for the end of day,
so I scheduled my radiation treatment for the morning, so
(31:05):
I went to that and then I went to work,
and then I started feeling tired and sluggish and just
sweaty and hot, and I tried to do my scenes
and one of my director, the director at the time,
came up to me and he said Colin, you're right,
you don't look so good, and I immediately I just
I broke down because I realized that I couldn't hold
(31:26):
it in any longer. I'd been holding this in for
like three months, and I didn't tell anyone at work.
No one knew it all my children because it's guy stuff,
it's testicular cancer. And I realized that I finally realized
I couldn't do this alone. I needed to tell people.
And what was great about that as soon as everyone
found out at all my children, everyone showed up and
(31:50):
they offered to take me to my doctor's appointments, to
go with me, to help, you know, to bring food
to me. And it really helped make me feel supported
to be able to go through this experience. And then
that way, as I started to get better and I
started meeting other people who are going through this experience,
I started to be able to then show up for
them to pay it forward and pay it back. And
(32:13):
then a year later I got diagnosed with particular cancer
on the other side now was two thousand and six
and two thousand and seven. So the benefit to this
is that I've been in this high risk category, so
I've been getting my checkups regularly, And for those of
you out there who haven't gone to the doctor in
a while, I would say, if you care about yourself.
And again, as Jackie Siegel, my first acting teacher, said,
(32:35):
honor yourself. One of the things I got to do.
Whenever you're facing a decision, just ask the question, does
this honor me if I don't do this? Or does
it honor me if I do do this? And so
by asking you that question, does it honor you to
go to get your checkups? If not for you, for
the people that love you and care about you, It's
(32:55):
not that difficult to go to the doctor and get
your checkups. For prostate cancer, which I was recently diagnosed
with last year, it's the number one diagnosed cancer in
the world. And for women it's breast cancer. And so
by going and getting your checkups, if you go for
early detection, and if you get it and catch it early,
(33:16):
the cure rates are are way more in your favor.
For men, it's a ninety seven percent cure rate if
you catch this early. And I elected to have surgery,
and so after that, and that was two months ago,
and so I'm two months post surgery from prostate cancer
(33:36):
and again being diagnosed and being told you have cancer
for a third time. It's still it's still a scary experience.
But what I've realized again through this third time of
going through this is that now that I'm more able
and open to be able to communicate to people what
I'm going through and what I need, this has been
(33:59):
an incredible exp because so many people have been able
to show up to support me along this journey. So,
no matter where you are at or what you're dealing
with again, I would implore you to honor yourself, remember
who you are, and to ask for support when you
need it. It is actually courageous and it requires strength
(34:21):
to ask for support. But when you do that, your
community will show up. And if they aren't showing up
for you, there's a lot of support groups out there
that can support you in whatever journey that you are
going on. And so if you are looking for any need,
if you're in need of any support, you can go
to my website callin Nicholsfield dot com. I do monthly
meetups through my Patreon community. I do retreats. I've got
(34:44):
one coming up April third through the seventh in Scottsdale, Arizona.
At these retreats, anyone is welcome, men, women, And what
we do is we do a weekend of rejuvenation. It's
health and wellness. We do yoga, sound bowl healing, we
go hiking, we do a dance contest. On Saturday night,
I have a whole lineup of empowering guest speakers about
(35:05):
mindfulness and wellness. And on Sunday we're doing horseback riding
and then I'm going to be doing a private screening
of my new movie Where the Wind Blows on April sixth.
So if you're interested in coming to the retreat, we've
got a great group of people coming. We've got four
spots left. Again, you go to my website Collinegglesfield dot com,
(35:27):
click on the events tab and so I've got Scott
still and I've got Ireland coming up May twenty seconds
through the twenty sixth hike's wellness, yoga, all that good stuff.
So again I'm here to support you, and I'm here
to just sends you through the internet waves. Here my support,
my love, my strength, and i just want to say
(35:49):
thank you again to Shannon for inspiring me to go
out there into the world and pursue my dreams and
my goals. And I just want to say thank you
teaching every one of you out there who's here listening
to this, And if anyone you know needs to hear
this message, I would encourage you to share it with them.
And I just want to say, take care for now,
(36:11):
You're not alone. Love you all,
This is Let's be clear, who's Shannon Dhorney. All right, Hello,
let's be clear listeners. My name is Colin Egglesfield, and
I am so grateful and honored to be here today
to be able to share with you my personal journey
and my experiences of having some health challenges over the
(00:23):
past few years. Some of you may know me as
an actor, some of you may know me as someone
who is active in the health and wellness community, and
I just wanted to come on here today to share
with you some of my experiences because what I've realized
that going through a cancer journey has really taught me
(00:44):
a lot about myself, a lot about life, and it's
made me realize that life is something that can't necessarily
be done alone if you really want to have a
purposeful and fulfilling life. So I'm just going to tell
you a little bit about my upbringing, my background, tell
(01:06):
you a little bit about my experiences with acting, and
tell you a little bit about what I'm doing now
in terms of having now survived cancer for the third time, yes,
three times, And also just wanted to give a little
bit of a shout out to everyone out there who's
dealing with any sort of health journey, answer journey, whatever
(01:29):
it is, I'm going to be sharing with you tonight
some of the things that have empowered me and enabled
me to stay empowered through this scary experience. Because when
someone tells you that you've been diagnosed with cancer, for
those of you who have heard that phrase, it can
be very jarring and it can put you into a
(01:51):
headspace that is not necessarily the best place to be in.
So the things that have enabled me to stay empowered
and stay positive through this experience is something that I
want to share with you all. But first I just
want to give a huge shout out to Shannon Doherty.
So Shannon is someone who I grew up watching on
nine oh two and O and she was someone that
(02:12):
I always looked up to. When I watched nine O
two and oh, I was always like, man, those those
kids look like they're so having so much fun. And
I think it was a I want to say, I
was a freshman in high school when that show came on,
and I always would love to tune in because I
was like, man, those kids are in Beverly Hills. They
seem to have you know everything, you know, just the
(02:35):
best life ever And just to watch the show and
see them go through their trials and tribulations of relationships
and heartbreaks and breakups, and you know, it's it's it's
amazing how close we can feel to characters that we
watch on TV. And though I never met Shannon, I
felt like she was someone who I knew just from
(02:56):
watching her on TV and someone that inspired me to
know that no matter what's going on in life, that
you can overcome challenges. From what I knew, Shannon was
resilient and determined and so passionate about what she did,
and I think we can all learn something from her
experience of how she dealt with her cancer journey. But
(03:18):
just I'll go back a little bit to tell you
a little bit about my journey and where I'm from.
And I came from a small little town outside of Detroit,
Michigan called Farmington. Was born there and grew up and
my dad was a doctor, actually he was an obstratrician gynecologist,
and he had gone to school in Chicago, and so
once he met my mom there, they got married and
(03:40):
they moved back to Michigan where my dad was from,
and he had my sister, and then myself and my brother,
and then my dad got offered a position to move
back to Chicago to teach at the hospital. So we
moved back to Chicago when I was about ten years old,
and watching my dad be a doctor and show up
to be there for so many people in times of need,
(04:01):
I really loved the idea of potentially doing that. So
when it came time for me to go to college,
I actually started out engineering first because I for some reason,
was interested in architecture and building things. I was always
into legos. But once I got to three dimensional vector calculus,
I was like, you know what, this isn't for me,
(04:21):
and so I decided to switch majors to biology and
decided to pursue my pre med endeavors. And when I
got to my senior year, I was going down this
road and if anyone of you have seen something borrowed.
My character Decks actually asks his father this question in
(04:42):
the movie, where he says, Dad, have you ever been
in a position where you've been heading down a road
and you don't think that it's necessarily maybe the path
that you intuitively think that you're supposed to be on.
And my character's father in the movie shuts me down
and he says, Dex, that's not who we are. You're
(05:04):
going in this direction. And I think I could, I
could relate to that in a lot of ways, because
I think sometimes in life we find ourselves in a
position in life, and you may find yourself in that
experience or have in the past where in a sense,
you've been miscast in the story of your own life.
And so what I mean by that is because of
(05:25):
where you were born, how you grew up, where you
you know, who your parents were, what religion you were raised,
we can find ourselves sort of pushed this into the
traditions or the path that are considered normal for wherever
it is that you're from. And so you know, getting
the job and having a family and raising kids and
(05:48):
the white picket fence. Although that's something I absolutely desire
at the time when I was, you know, twenty years old,
it's hard to really know what you really want in life,
and when you feel like you're being pushed down a
path and then you end up into this role and
you wake up one day and you're like, how the
hell did I get here? I found myself where I
(06:10):
could see that path unfolding, where I wasn't sure if
that's necessarily where I really wanted to go. And as
it turned out, I heard on the radio about this
model talent search. So I went to this model talent
search at the Davenport Holiday and I was going to
the University of Iowa at the time, and I went
to this thing and I met these model agent ladies,
(06:32):
and next thing you know, I got connected with an
agent in Chicago. And so the reason why I bring
this up is because in life, we get presented these
opportunities and these doors may open up to us, but
sometimes we don't always walk through those doors for whatever reason.
And I think it's important to at least walk through
(06:52):
that door and see what it might look like, because
it's hard to make a decision on where you want
to go in life and what you want your life
to be about if you haven't necessarily experienced it yet.
And when a door opens up, I think it's important
to listen to your gut, to listen to your instincts,
say some prayers to God, to the universe, whatever it
is that, whatever it is that you pray to. And
(07:15):
as I started going through these doors, as they started
opening up, I found myself facing a decision do I
want to go to medical school or do I want
to go to Europe to pursue this modeling career. And
I decided that against probably what I felt everyone expected
me to do, I was like, you know what, I'm
going to do something that may I may not be
(07:37):
able to do ever again. So I decided to go
to Europe. And next thing you know, I was finding
myself on the runways doing Versace runway shows and met
Georgia Ormani and some of these amazing designers, and for
the first time, I really discovered what it meant to
be around really creative people who were doing something that
they truly loved and were passionate about. And after that,
(08:00):
I found myself in New York City and started going
on some commercial auditions, and acting was something that I
never thought was going to be on my radar because
I growing up was introverted. I was shy, and the
last thing I wanted to do in class was to
get up and give a speech or anything. I literally
would have these hyperventilating panic attacks, and any time I
(08:22):
would have to get up in front of school to
talk about anything or give the answer. And so the
last thing I ever thought was in the cards for
me was getting up in front of people to do
an acting career. But again one of these doors opened
up where my acting or my acting modeling agents said,
why don't you take an acting class to see if
(08:42):
you like it, see if this may be something that
you want to give a shot to. And so it
would have been very easy to say no. And again,
if we don't know what something is, it's very easy
to judge it to shut it down before we even
really know what it is. So I went to this
acting class, and I would say it was the first
(09:03):
time in my life where I genuinely felt that this
was a place where I could learn how to give
over my fear of being in front of people, being
authentic and being vulnerable. I mean, as a guy, we
don't necessarily like to be vulnerable, We don't necessarily necessarily
like to admit when we are struggling, and I think
(09:26):
this can keep us stuck in alone. And what acting
class I started to realize provided to me was this
space where I could show up and learn how to
unlearn a lot of the things that I was conditioned
to how to act growing up. And I started to
realize that the most important thing in life is to
(09:46):
be authentic and to be truthful and to be honest
with yourself. And one of the greatest pieces of advice
that my acting teacher gave me was she said, it's
so important for you in order for you to be
able to play these characters and walk into these auditions
and for people to be able to to connect with
you and want to go on these journeys with you,
(10:10):
is that first and foremost, you have to honor yourself first,
honor yourself in every regard. And I really was like
thinking about what that meant and what I started to
really think and realize that growing up, I was always
more on that people pleasing side, where I just wanted
(10:31):
to make friends and I wanted everyone to like me,
and I was afraid of what people thought of me
in the fear of judgment. I was super skinny growing up.
I had headgear and braces, and so I didn't always
feel comfortable in my own skin. And so the last
thing I wanted was to be, you know, be a
target and to be put myself out there for criticism,
(10:55):
because a lot of what happens when you get in
front of the camera, front of audiences with TV and
film is that people are naturally gonna have judgments and opinions.
And the second piece of advice my acting teacher gave
us was when you start acting and you start getting
in front of these audiences, she said, inevitably, people are
going to judge you. And she said that roughly thirty
(11:18):
percent of the people that you perform in front of,
that you get in front of to act or to
whatever it is, that thirty percent are gonna like you.
They're gonna resonate with you. You're gonna say something or
you're gonna do something that makes them feel connected to you,
and they're gonna like you. They're going to root for you.
She said. The next thirty percent of the people out
(11:40):
there that you perform in front of, and even that
you meet in your daily life, they're not gonna like you.
For whatever reason, they're not gonna like you. They're gonna
think that you just look weird, or the sounding of
your voice is horrible, or that you just look whatever
a certain way. So thirty percent of people are not
gonna like you. And then she said, the other forty
(12:00):
percent of the people in the world, let's see you
that see your performances, that you meet out in the world,
they don't care. So she said, it's not your job,
with acting or with anything in life to try to
make everyone happy or to please everyone. She said, your
job is to show up, be truthful, honor yourself, honor
(12:22):
the character, and be of service to the writer, to
the director, to the producers and everyone that has come
together to tell this story. And so it kind of
just took that pressure off of me for the first
time where I felt like, Okay, I've got permission to
not have to worry about what other people think. And
(12:43):
knowing that people are going to have opinions and they're
going to have probably negative opinions, it's not my job
to try to fix it, change it, or be worried
about what other people think. So now that I had
(13:06):
this this release of like trying to shoulder the burden
of pleasing everyone, I could get to work and focus
on what was the work of the actor and the
first aspect of being an actor and creating these characters,
and what really helped me in my real life was,
in addition to kind of piggybacking on honoring yourself, is
(13:27):
actually a piece of advice that my grandmother gave me,
and that was you got to know who you are
and know where you're at. So when I was growing up,
my grandmother always used to say, remember who you are,
and I was like, of course, man, I know who
I am. I'm like I'm calling you know. I come
from the South side of Chicago and I go to
(13:48):
the University of Iowa. I'm ma Hawkeye or whatever it is.
So we tend to identify ourselves with our external experiences
or circumstances. And so when she said remember who you are,
you are if you look at that word, remember, it's remember.
So a lot of the times when we are seeking
outside validation for who we are, we can get lost
(14:10):
in the seeking approval or trying to fit in. And
when my acting teacher talked about knowing who your character
is at twenty six, twenty seven years old, I finally
truly understood what my grandmother meant in terms of remembering
(14:31):
and reconnecting to who you really are. And most of
the time we haven't really thought about who we really are.
So I'm going to give you a little a little
exercise here for you to really truly know who you
really are. And for a while, you know, I think
we go through life trying to figure out who we
are and where we fit in. And what I realized
(14:52):
with acting classes is that in order to play the
characters that we play, we have to decide who this
character is and we have to to make choices. You'll
hear that a lot with acting teachers. They'll say, you
got to make strong choices. Casting directors say, we like
actors that make these really strong, bold choices that make
you stand out from every other actor that walks through
(15:13):
the door. Because with acting, it's roughly you know, for
every role, there's about four hundred actors that are vuying
for that same role. So you can imagine if a
casting director is sitting there an actor after actor after actor,
or coming in or nowadays it's all on our iPhones
or whatever. Within that first few seconds of someone seeing
(15:34):
you or meeting you, it's important that you're able to
connect with them authentically. And when a casting director is
seeing so many people, creating and choosing these strong choices
will help you stand out. But if you're trying to
fit in and be like everyone else, you're just going
to blend in and be forgettable. So by making these
(15:56):
bold choices as an actor, choosing these care I realized,
we decide who these characters are. We build these characters
so that when we show up on set, we can
truthfully play these characters in these imaginary circumstances. And so
it's an active choosing who you are with acting. And
I started to realize that as I was going into
(16:18):
these auditions and choosing these characters and the characteristics of
who these characters were, whether it was a vampire or
a fighter pilot or a doctor, I started to realize
that I was doing more work on analyzing and knowing
these characters than I even knew myself. And so I
started to apply this same strategy to my own life.
(16:39):
So what you can do, start to ask yourself in
this circumstance, no matter where you're at, And this is
where I'm going to get into my friends here who
are dealing with cancer or every other any other health
ailment out there. No matter what you were dealing with,
you get to decide who you choose to be. Is
(17:00):
this experience now, as someone who's been diagnosed with cancer
three times, this has come in incredibly handy is the
right word. But it's been incredibly empowering for me to
use this because in this experience, and I wouldn't wish
cancer on anyone, but what it has made me do
(17:22):
or afforded me the experience is to choose who I
choose to be in life. So I'm not waiting for
life to tell me who I am, because most of
the time, as we grow up, you know, we get
told who we are. Again, we get to decide who
we are. And when we start actively choosing who we
are in life, that gives us more of a definitive
(17:43):
idea of who we are and how we want to
show up. And a quick and easy way to decide
who you are is pick three characteristics, and in enacting
class we choose who is the character's core value. So
whether your character's value is truth or justice, or power
or love or revenge. By choosing these three core values,
(18:05):
you get to decide to be lived by the energy
and the essence and whatever else you can channel by
these three qualities. And so what this does is it
gives you instant access and connection to the answers that
you need in order to navigate whatever it is that
(18:26):
you're dealing with. So the three core values that I
choose to be lived by are inspiration, self expression and boldness,
And the reason why I choose this is because I've
always loved to be inspired. I always loved watching inspirational
videos and movies, and I think that's why I love
acting so much, Because I love going to movie theater
(18:48):
or being at home and seeing inspirational stories about incredible
people who have overcome the odds. I love to be
in that space of just feeling like empowerment and facing
you know, and facing the odds and moving forward anyway.
So I choose to be lived by inspiration. The second
(19:09):
one is self expression because growing up I wasn't always
self expressed. I was shy, I was nervous about what
people would think. And by choosing to be self expression,
you get to show up and ask the question, not
what would Colin do or what would Lisa do? Or
what would Mike do? You get to ask what would
(19:30):
self expression do? In this moment? Self expression would tell
the truth. Self expression would show up and be freely
open about their experiences, about their challenges, about whatever it
is that they're dealing with. And then the third one, boldness.
I choose to be lived by boldness, and that way
(19:51):
you get to decide. By deciding this, you get to
be lived by would what are the characteristics of boldness?
So when I was going through my cancer journy and
having to go to my radiation treatments and my surgeries
and my chest X rays and cat scans, you get
to ask and decide and be lived by what would
(20:11):
boldness do right now? So again not what Colin would do,
because Colin would want to run for the hills and
be like, no way, I don't want to get poked, prodded,
lit up or cut open any more times. But when
you ask the question what would boldness do? Or you
can ask if you want to be if maybe you're
lacking love in your relationship, you could choose love as
(20:31):
one of your three core values, and then that way
you can be lived by love. And so you could ask, well,
what would love do? So instead of showing up in
the world and expecting or wishing that someone would love,
you show up as love, so that when you show
up that you are the giving and receiving of love.
And when you are showing up in life being the
present moment existence of something, you attract it. So I'm
(20:55):
sure you've heard of the law of attraction and manifestation
a lot of people have been talking about it. It's
become a buzzword. But it's important to know that like
energy attracts like energy, and so if you're constantly showing
up in life with the negative thoughts and doubt and uncertainty,
you're going to attract more of that. And it's amazing
how when you start to, as my nana said, know
(21:17):
who you are, remember who you are. When you start
to go inward and choose these three core values, it's
amazing how empowerment or love or self expression will start
to show up in your life because you have actively
chosen it. So that really helped me start to embark
along my path. And as I was going through my
(21:38):
acting journey, I was going on these auditions and finally,
after like seven eight years of auditioning, I booked a
role on All My Children, playing the the transplanted, unboarded
fetus of Ericacane otherwise known as Susan Lucci, and so
being able to play Susan Lucci's son and All My Children,
(21:58):
it was an amazing experience. And soap operas are incredibly
demanding for a regular TV show that airs on nighttime TV,
that hour long TV show is essentially actually only forty
minutes because it's about twenty minutes of commercials, and a
normal hour long primetime television show that airs once a
week usually takes about five to seven twelve hour days
(22:21):
to film. For a movie, you're and you usually for
a primetime TV show, you're shooting about maybe ten to
fifteen pages of dialogue every day, and then for a
movie you're maybe shooting three to eight pages a day.
With soap opera, you're shooting eighty pages a day. So
it is you show up, you got to know your lines,
(22:42):
you got to deliver, and so it's this constant, just
like flood of dialogue and information, and so very quickly
you start to realize that you've got to become good
at memorizing. And by showing up and having this experience
of doing this for three years, it empower me to
realize that if you know you can make soap opera believable,
(23:03):
then there may be a chance of actually doing some
other things as well. So when my contract was almost
like well, i was six months into my three year
contract with all my children, and when I got that role,
I was super excited because I'd been pursuing acting for
like seven or eight years, and what really emboldened me
(23:24):
to pursue acting in the first place was if I
could just go up for a second go back. I
was living across the street from the World Trade Center
in two thousand and one, and I'd only been studying
acting for like two years, and I'd done one role.
My first role was actually getting into bed with Jenny
Garth from nine oh two to zero, giving her a
(23:47):
glass of wine in this show called The Street, and
I had one line. And then my next role was
a mail escort on Law and Order SVU. So not
the biggest resume to be thinking I could go out
to Hollywood and be the next Tom Cruise. That morning
of nine to eleven, when I woke up and I
saw out of my window the flames, and quickly soon
thereafter saw that people were hanging their heads out of
(24:09):
the windows of the World Trade Center. I quickly realized
that those people weren't just watching, that they were trapped,
and I turned on the TV and I started I
grabbed my video camera, I started videotaping, and I've got
footage of that second plane coming in and it was
just horrific to see people actually then starting to jump
out of the top of the towers. And after that
(24:31):
second plane hit, I ran downstairs and standing outside of
my apartment building just watching people stuck up at the
top of those towers. It was just heartbreaking and something
you can't on sea. And when that first tower fell,
I was one of the people running down the street.
And then the second tower fell, and it was a
few days before I could actually get back to my
apartment and when I did, when the towers fell, my
(24:53):
windows got blown through, so I my place looked like
a bomb had blown up inside of my apartment. So
I had only a few minutes to grab whatever I
could put into a suitcase and then leave, and I
went to a hotel and I sat down on the
floor and it really made me think about what was
important in life and what did I want my life
to be about, because I've essentially I felt like in
(25:14):
that moment, I had a second chance, and I realized
that those close to three thousand people that perished that day,
they don't have a second chance. And so no matter
what you're dealing with, whether it's cancer or a challenge
or a relationship issue, at least you have the chance
or the opportunity to decide who you want to be
(25:35):
in this experience, and the last thing I wanted to
do was to let that experience define who I was
and to get me down. And I realized the only
thing that was holding me back from going out to
Hollywood to pursue this crazy idea of being a professional
actor was my limiting beliefs and that fear of failure.
And I just I was like, well, what would my
(25:57):
acting teacher, Jackie Siegel say, on yourself and Nana, remember
who you are? And I was like, you know what,
the only thing that's stopping me is my own self doubt.
And I just started thinking about if I were one
of those people trapped up in the towers, if I
was given a second chance at life, or if you
were given a second chance at life, what would you
(26:17):
do and would you let your fears and your doubts
stop you from going after what you truly care about
and what matters most to you? And I was like,
I realized the only thing that was holding me back
was me, and so I decided, you know what, screw it,
let's go, let's do this. I went out to Hollywood,
(26:48):
and this is where you got to understand you don't
have to be the best, you don't have to be
the smartest, you don't have to be the best looking,
because that's not about that. I only had two years
of acting experience and I went out to Hollywood and
I started booking these roles because I was going into
these auditions with this passion and this desire to be like,
holy crap, I'm glad to be alive. So when you
(27:08):
show up in life not worried about what other people think,
but you're focused on whatever what it is that you
truly passionately desire and want from here not from here,
the world starts showing up differently for you. And after
I started doing this, after a few years of auditioning,
I booked that role on all my children. So then
I'm like, oh my god, this is amazing. I'm now
(27:28):
doing what I love to do. I'm now getting paid
to do it. And six months into my three year contract,
I got diagnosed with testicular cancer. And now, for those
of you out there have been diagnosed with cancer, that's
not a fun day when someone you know, when my
doctor told me you've got cancer, it's advanced stage, and
(27:49):
I'm scheduling you for surgery. This was on a Friday,
scheduling you for surgery on a Monday. It was like
I was in denial. I was like, how can that be?
I take care of myself. I try to eat healthy.
And so this is where the disempowerment can come up.
And you really got to decide that I'm not gonna
let this experience define who I am or how my
(28:10):
outlook is going to be. So I decided, all right,
I'm going to decide who do I need to be
in this experience. And so I started relying on my
acting training, and so I decide to be bold, courageous.
I decide to be Maximists from Gladiator or whoever character
or superhero that you choose to be, and start channeling
that energy because this is this is the access and
(28:33):
the leverage for us to be able to accomplish anything
in life. And I'm telling you it doesn't matter what
challenge you are facing right now. You can start to
create this definitive way that this is going to go
for you and know that no matter what happens in life,
that we are these spiritual creatures having this human experience.
(28:56):
And if you can start to look at yourself through
the eyes of like let's say a screenwriter or a director.
You can start looking at your life and say, how
do I want my life to go? How do I
want this story to go? And if I don't like
how it's going, how can I choose to be this
empowered character in this experience? Because face it, we all
(29:18):
know this. We're not all going to live forever. We're
all gonna die at some time. So it's important to
focus on making this life as amazing and as great
as it possibly can be. And if you are feeling stuck,
if you are feeling frustrated, or if you're feeling like
there's no way out, I'm telling you there is. And
(29:39):
the way to find a way through this is to
look at this from a different perspective. And so this
is what now leads me to my third point. The
first one is know who you are. The second one
is decide who you are. The third one is you
got to have the support of your community around you.
So it's important that you reach out to your friends,
your family, and you don't have to be needy in
(30:01):
this experience. It's about being honest and honoring yourself and
communicating to other people what you need in this experience,
and by doing so, you provide other people the opportunity
to show up to be what and for them to
be who they want to be. And a lot of
(30:22):
people want to be purposeful and they want to experience
what it means to be there for someone. But when
you deny them that experience, then both people are disconnected
and alone. And after being diagnosed with cancer that first
time and having my first surgery, I had to go
for my radiation treatment, and I was showing up on
all my children working in the morning and then going
(30:45):
for my treatment. And after my treatment, I would just
feel sick and tired and just sluggish, like you've got
the flu. And I would go back to work the
next day and do this over and over again. And
towards the end of my treatment, I had my scene
and all my children were scheduled for the end of day,
so I scheduled my radiation treatment for the morning, so
(31:05):
I went to that and then I went to work,
and then I started feeling tired and sluggish and just
sweaty and hot, and I tried to do my scenes
and one of my director, the director at the time,
came up to me and he said Colin, you're right,
you don't look so good, and I immediately I just
I broke down because I realized that I couldn't hold
(31:26):
it in any longer. I'd been holding this in for
like three months, and I didn't tell anyone at work.
No one knew it all my children because it's guy stuff,
it's testicular cancer. And I realized that I finally realized
I couldn't do this alone. I needed to tell people.
And what was great about that as soon as everyone
found out at all my children, everyone showed up and
(31:50):
they offered to take me to my doctor's appointments, to
go with me, to help, you know, to bring food
to me. And it really helped make me feel supported
to be able to go through this experience. And then
that way, as I started to get better and I
started meeting other people who are going through this experience,
I started to be able to then show up for
them to pay it forward and pay it back. And
(32:13):
then a year later I got diagnosed with particular cancer
on the other side now was two thousand and six
and two thousand and seven. So the benefit to this
is that I've been in this high risk category, so
I've been getting my checkups regularly, And for those of
you out there who haven't gone to the doctor in
a while, I would say, if you care about yourself.
And again, as Jackie Siegel, my first acting teacher, said,
(32:35):
honor yourself. One of the things I got to do.
Whenever you're facing a decision, just ask the question, does
this honor me if I don't do this? Or does
it honor me if I do do this? And so
by asking you that question, does it honor you to
go to get your checkups? If not for you, for
the people that love you and care about you, It's
(32:55):
not that difficult to go to the doctor and get
your checkups. For prostate cancer, which I was recently diagnosed
with last year, it's the number one diagnosed cancer in
the world. And for women it's breast cancer. And so
by going and getting your checkups, if you go for
early detection, and if you get it and catch it early,
(33:16):
the cure rates are are way more in your favor.
For men, it's a ninety seven percent cure rate if
you catch this early. And I elected to have surgery,
and so after that, and that was two months ago,
and so I'm two months post surgery from prostate cancer
(33:36):
and again being diagnosed and being told you have cancer
for a third time. It's still it's still a scary experience.
But what I've realized again through this third time of
going through this is that now that I'm more able
and open to be able to communicate to people what
I'm going through and what I need, this has been
(33:59):
an incredible exp because so many people have been able
to show up to support me along this journey. So,
no matter where you are at or what you're dealing
with again, I would implore you to honor yourself, remember
who you are, and to ask for support when you
need it. It is actually courageous and it requires strength
(34:21):
to ask for support. But when you do that, your
community will show up. And if they aren't showing up
for you, there's a lot of support groups out there
that can support you in whatever journey that you are
going on. And so if you are looking for any need,
if you're in need of any support, you can go
to my website callin Nicholsfield dot com. I do monthly
meetups through my Patreon community. I do retreats. I've got
(34:44):
one coming up April third through the seventh in Scottsdale, Arizona.
At these retreats, anyone is welcome, men, women, And what
we do is we do a weekend of rejuvenation. It's
health and wellness. We do yoga, sound bowl healing, we
go hiking, we do a dance contest. On Saturday night,
I have a whole lineup of empowering guest speakers about
(35:05):
mindfulness and wellness. And on Sunday we're doing horseback riding
and then I'm going to be doing a private screening
of my new movie Where the Wind Blows on April sixth.
So if you're interested in coming to the retreat, we've
got a great group of people coming. We've got four
spots left. Again, you go to my website Collinegglesfield dot com,
(35:27):
click on the events tab and so I've got Scott
still and I've got Ireland coming up May twenty seconds
through the twenty sixth hike's wellness, yoga, all that good stuff.
So again I'm here to support you, and I'm here
to just sends you through the internet waves. Here my support,
my love, my strength, and i just want to say
(35:49):
thank you again to Shannon for inspiring me to go
out there into the world and pursue my dreams and
my goals. And I just want to say thank you
teaching every one of you out there who's here listening
to this, And if anyone you know needs to hear
this message, I would encourage you to share it with them.
And I just want to say, take care for now,
(36:11):
You're not alone. Love you all,
Host
Shannen Doherty
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