One morning David Richman woke up and realized how unhappy he truly was. While he loved his twin children, his great job in the financial industry, and his friends, he spent most of his time behind his desk, was out of shape and a smoker, and was in a very abusive relationship with an alcoholic partner.

He decided he wanted to live his life for himself and no longer please other people and he embarked on what he describes as a self-empowerment journey. He took his two young children, left his toxic marriage, set goals for himself, and nine months later had stopped smoking, started running, and completed his first Ironman Triathlon.

During this new stage of his life, he received a call from his sister June who told him that she had been diagnosed with brain cancer. Not long afterward, June lost her fight again cancer. Three days after she passed away, he ran for 24 hours straight at the American Cancer Society 24-hour Relay For Life and brought his 9-year old children along who each ran 31 miles that day.

To work through his trauma from his sister’s passing David decided to write his book Cycle Of Lives: 15 stories, 5000 miles, and A Journey Through The Emotional Chaos of Cancer about how people talk about and process cancer. He found that the loss around cancer seems to be a unique kind of grief and that people who believe their stories are nothing more than ordinary are actually the most extraordinary.

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