Beyond Brave
Meet Kyla and Lyle Thomson, co-hosts of Beyond Brave. As parents to Bella Brave, who inspired the world with her courage, they spent over a decade navigating her rare medical challenges. Together, they've channeled their experiences into helping others find resilience and healing. On Beyond Brave, Kyla and Lyle share stories of hope, love, and the lessons they've learned—both through Bella's journey and in their everyday family life. Join them as they honor Bella’s legacy and inspire others to find light even in the darkest moments.
Beyond Brave
#011 - Lyle's Takeaways From 'Grief' Books, & Special Memories of Bella
In this week’s episode of Beyond Brave, Kyla takes us on a journey through some of the more intimate, unseen moments of her life. We kick things off with our excitement about recent interviews—big names like Anxiety Josh and Ryan Reynolds. It’s a mix of excitement and nerves, but we’re so grateful for the opportunity to have these conversations. Kyla also shares some fun behind-the-scenes stories about Instagram mishaps and accidental followings that had us both laughing.
But the episode isn’t all lighthearted—there’s a heavier, deeply personal segment where we talk about the profound impact of losing our daughter Bella. Lyle shares some powerful pieces from Rob Delaney's book A Heart That Works, and the words just hit home in such an emotional way. It’s raw and real, and we know it’ll resonate with so many of you.
We also take a moment to reflect on some of the most cherished memories of Bella—her favorite books and the little moments that still bring us so much warmth. As always, Bella’s legacy continues to fuel our advocacy work, from speaking engagements to collaborations with medical organizations. It's amazing how her story continues to inspire change.
We wrap up the episode by encouraging all of you to stay brave, and we’ve got a special discount code for our listeners as a little thank you for your support.
It’s an emotional episode, but we’re grateful to share this part of our journey with all of you.
Thanks for listening! Check us out on our socials.
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Beyond Brave Ep 11 Take 2
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[00:00:00]
Introduction to Beyond Brave
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[00:00:00] Kyla: Welcome to Beyond Brave. I'm Kyla, and here's where we dive into stories of hope. Bravery and laughter. Millions followed our journey with my daughter, Bella. But now it's time to go beyond the headlines and highlight reels to those raw, real moments I haven't shared anywhere else. So are you ready to go beyond brave?
[00:00:20] Kyla: Let's dive in.
[00:00:24] Podcast: But if you want it to be perfect, you can make
[00:00:27] Kyla: it perfect.
Episode Overview and Guest Announcements
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[00:00:29] Kyla: Hey, welcome back to Beyond Brave. We are so grateful and happy to have you here. This episode, you have a Lyle and I once again, um, so we are ready to chat. We have lots of things to chat about the recent two episodes, which, um, are live listeners.
[00:00:46] Kyla: Um, we'll know about later. Uh, no, wait. I always get it confused.
[00:00:53] Lyle: Well, we did two interviews. Yeah, we did two interviews. One's out, one's not out yet. One's out. Right. One out was [00:01:00] with Josh Fletcher. Anxiety Josh.
[00:01:02] Kyla: He's
[00:01:03] Lyle: awesome. I love that interview. Yeah. And then the next Monday we'll have Ryan Reynolds come on.
[00:01:09] Kyla: Yes.
[00:01:09] Lyle: And that's a pretty exciting interview.
Instagram Mishaps and Funny Stories
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[00:01:11] Kyla: Yeah, I just started sharing on my socials and everyone's like, oh, and I have a really funny story about that. So I, uh, I saw on my friend's post. On Instagram stories, you can do like shake to reveal, so you legit like shake your phone and just the movement triggers, uh, like the picture to be revealed, the picture that you have on your stories.
[00:01:33] Kyla: It's like a thing.
[00:01:34] Lyle: This is brand new?
[00:01:35] Kyla: Yeah, well, I thought it was, but what's newer, like, because there's certain things when you have larger followers on the app, um, that you have that other people don't, and so with mine, it's message to reveal, so people put like a little, they message me like a little emoji.
[00:01:50] Kyla: And then they get to see the picture that I have hidden on my Instagram stories. And so I thought it was shake to reveal, but it was message to [00:02:00] reveal. So when I posted like Matt, I said, shake to reveal who our celebrity guest is on beyond brave. And I get all these messages and these DMs. My friends text me like it's not working and they're like shaking their phone.
[00:02:13] Lyle: Oh, you just trolled them with that.
[00:02:15] Kyla: I totally did. And then I reread it and I'm like, oh, it's message to reveal.
[00:02:22] Lyle: But some people have shake. Some people have shake, but the update is a message.
Unexpected Instagram Follows
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[00:02:26] Lyle: So the even crazier thing that you showed me tonight about Instagram is you had some friends messaging you saying, Hey, I've heard this from other people and it's happened to you.
[00:02:36] Lyle: Where you're following people that you've never followed before. I mean political people. Yeah, no matter where it could be just but I mean We haven't checked who you're following them are but apparently you were following Donald Donald Trump JD Vance and Kamala Harris and you're probably following Joe Biden even but like yeah, you've never I'll look for them on
[00:02:58] Kyla: I've never went.
[00:02:59] Kyla: I'm like, I'm not [00:03:00] like a political person. I've never went out of my way to follow any political parties. And so my friend texted me and she's like, I've had this happen. This is happening right now. She's like, just so you know, you might be following these political leaders and not even know it. So it's like, wait a minute, how did they get into my account and do that?
[00:03:16] Kyla: So then I go in there and I'm like, she's, she's must have a glitch or something went in there. Sure enough. I'm following Trump. I'm following, uh, JD Vance, who is the guy?
[00:03:26] Lyle: He's the vice president.
[00:03:27] Kyla: Vice president. I didn't even know who it was. I didn't even know. And I'm, my Instagram account was following him and I'm like, what is happening?
[00:03:33] Kyla: Okay. So I'm going to go right now. I'm going to go in. I'm going to search. I'm
[00:03:37] Lyle: doing this for you and it said you were following Kamal Harris and
[00:03:41] Kyla: her political party, which I'm like, I didn't even know was a thing on there
[00:03:44] Lyle: like the Democrat Party.
[00:03:45] Kyla: Yeah. Okay, I'm gonna do Joe Biden following Joe Biden. I have never followed Joe Biden in my life on my Instagram.
[00:03:53] Kyla: What is happening? And I checked
[00:03:56] Lyle: mine. I'm not following any of them on Instagram. So it's [00:04:00] kind of weird. It's just my account. And it's not on your account, Kate. I wonder if it's maybe verified accounts or something like that.
[00:04:06] Kyla: How are they secretly getting into our verified accounts and make, and like, it's like someone went into my account and followed all these political leaders.
[00:04:16] Lyle: It's kind of like when people got that new iPhone and they had to get the YouTube album downloaded on their iPhone. You remember that? I did
[00:04:23] Kyla: not. No, I don't remember
[00:04:25] Lyle: that. No, but that was just, it was kind of funny. This is sneaky and weird. This
[00:04:28] Kyla: is sneaky and weird. I'm like shook right now. I'm shook right now because like, Also, there's not like a ploy from one, oh my little googly eyes falling off, there's not a ploy to like, specifically to like, this party, or that party, or this person, or that person, it's all of them.
[00:04:44] Lyle: Which is probably better, as long as it's all of them and not
[00:04:47] Kyla: So is it like a, like a meta thing?
[00:04:50] Lyle: Zuck.
[00:04:51] Kyla: Zuck. Zuckerberg's in our phones. I saw a really funny Well, he is. I don't know why I would have said that. Yeah, I don't. [00:05:00] Mark Zuckerberg is in our phones. Yeah, Kyla. That's been happening for a while. Um, I saw a really funny TikTok where this guy had like Windex and he's like spraying the screen and he's like Wait, stop, stop scrolling.
[00:05:13] Kyla: I need to disinfect your phone. We got like this Mark Zuckerberg bug going around. Okay, next. He like cleans your phone screen. Like it's some kind of virus.
[00:05:23] Lyle: I'll probably have to see it to get it. I don't know.
[00:05:30] Kyla: Anyways, I was gonna say that we are um, The last two episodes we've had guests, which we're gonna.
[00:05:36] Lyle: Yeah, we haven't been down. We haven't been down here and recorded in probably three weeks.
[00:05:39] Kyla: Yeah, that's kind of nice. And I have, um, so we'll get to a little bit more on Anxiety Josh and Ryan Reynolds.
Guppy Updates and Naming Dilemmas
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[00:05:45] Kyla: I have a gupdate.
[00:05:49] Lyle: What's a gupdate?
[00:05:50] Kyla: So gupdate, remember, I've been requested since I spoke about this on the last pod in the pod before, when it was just you and me, and I have birthed baby guppies, and they're called [00:06:00] guppy fries. I did not personally birth them. You
[00:06:01] Lyle: facilitated the birth. I facilitated the birth. With a is a birth facilitator?
[00:06:05] Lyle: What are they?
[00:06:07] Kyla: A doula?
[00:06:08] Lyle: Yeah. A guppy doula.
[00:06:10] Kyla: I'm a guppy doula.
[00:06:11] Lyle: Is that what they are?
[00:06:12] Kyla: I don't know.
[00:06:13] Kyla (2): Sounds
[00:06:14] Kyla: great. Sounds professional. I don't know. I'm a guppy doula.
[00:06:16] Podcast: Anyways.
[00:06:17] Kyla: Anyways, I, um, okay, so I haven't named them yet and I really wanted to name them and I thought maybe like the seven dwarfs because I thought I had seven and then went back to the tank a couple times like I stare at them every day all day and I check them and they're growing they're a little over a centimeter long now and I'm like wait there's not seven and I thought okay maybe.
[00:06:40] Kyla: There was a shadow because you know how like tanks have that kind of like magnifying effect and you can like maybe a little shadow I thought was a guppy fry. I counted for sure six. So the seventh might have been like a shadow but I think I have six. So I need to start thinking about how I'm going to name my guppy fries.
[00:06:57] Kyla: Now that I have six new fish. Waylon [00:07:00] helped me name the adults. So our four adults. are stinky and dirty, because he loves that cartoon. Stinky and dirty, I'm pretty sure, are females. Which is also really funny. Same
[00:07:08] Lyle: old guppies, because he'll get sick about that cartoon by about the same time as the guppies will move on.
[00:07:13] Lyle: Probably move on to the afterlife. They'll both move on.
[00:07:16] Kyla: And then Pearl, I named Pearl because she looked like a pearl. She's really pretty. And then, uh, Squirt was just because he was small.
[00:07:23] Lyle: I thought Bella named Squirt or Pearl.
[00:07:25] Kyla: No, Bella named our previous guppies Sunset and Sunrise.
[00:07:29] Lyle: Okay, so I think with the guppies, if there's six of them, we got to think of something that there's already six of.
[00:07:35] Kyla: Mm
[00:07:35] Lyle: hmm. But
[00:07:36] Kyla: they're also guppy fries, so I was thinking like, all the different types and names of fries.
[00:07:40] Lyle: Like McDonald's. Like, oh, you were thinking, thinking like, restaurant brand, but uh, like curly fries. Curly fries. Curly, French.
[00:07:49] Kyla: Um, uh, what's the one with gravy? Waffle. Waffle fries? Poutine.
[00:07:54] Lyle: Nobody would call it poutine fries, you just call it poutine.
[00:07:56] Lyle: That's true, but still, it's a type of fries. We got curly, french, waffle. [00:08:00]
[00:08:00] Kyla: Waffle fries. What other fries are there?
Live Audience Interaction
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[00:08:02] Kyla: Oh, I wanted to address everyone on our lives tonight. So like, um, hi, TikTok, Instagram, we're live on YouTube, Facebook. And, uh, so you guys are getting a sneak peek into this episode, but this episode won't actually air until February 3rd.
[00:08:18] Kyla: So hello, welcome to the future. And if you're on
[00:08:20] Lyle: the, listening on the podcast, follow, you're going to get some of the lives.
[00:08:23] Kyla: Yeah. And we've done one live. This is our second live. All of you live right now are waiting in anticipation for our Ryan Reynolds episode to come out on Monday, the 27th.
TikTok Ban Concerns
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[00:08:39] Kyla: Uh, TikTok ban.
[00:08:41] Kyla (3): Happened. You were nervous. No I wasn't. No?
[00:08:45] Kyla: No! No I wasn't nervous. I'm Canadian, because we're Canadian. Yeah but, I wasn't going
[00:08:49] Lyle: in the way of him. Like, two thirds of the people that follow you aren't.
[00:08:53] Kyla: Okay yeah, so I wouldn't say, I wouldn't say nervous. Right. I would say I was worried, because, okay, well [00:09:00] number one, I know what TikTok means to the people who have it as a paying like paying job livelihood in the States,
[00:09:08] Lyle: right?
[00:09:08] Lyle: It's not really that for you.
[00:09:10] Kyla: It's not well, it's not really that for any Canadians because it's it's not like It's not paying the bills right like in in the States. It pays the bills It's just a different setup for a monetization there. But in Canada for me what I was worried about is I built this platform with Bella to advocate for medical families.
[00:09:31] Kyla: And so I have collaborations with like these important organizations that help medical families. And, and they're global, right? Like RMHC global and, um, children's hospitals. And I didn't want that reach to get lost. Right.
[00:09:47] Lyle: And just like, it's so effective to share what they're sharing.
[00:09:50] Kyla: Yeah.
[00:09:50] Lyle: Through it.
[00:09:51] Kyla: Yeah.
[00:09:51] Lyle: Right. I guess you're, yeah, you're what was not nervous. I wasn't
[00:09:55] Kyla: nervous, but I was like, oh man, if this really goes away, it's like, how do I get this message out [00:10:00] to millions of people ever again? You know what I mean? Like that, that was what I was worried about. Because like, there's still like, not to dumb it down, but I still have had people come up to me and be like, what's the wrong McDonald's?
[00:10:14] Kyla: And I'm like, what, like how, oh, and like, that is, we lived there for 10 years. Like, it's so important. So of course, like, you know, in the general scheme of things, when something affects you or your family, like cancer or MS or rare disease, that's what you're going to start working towards fighting for.
[00:10:33] Kyla: Right. And so this is, you know, Bella's, all of Bella's conditions was like,
[00:10:39] Kyla (2): hey,
[00:10:39] Kyla: this led us to the Ronald McDonald House. This led us to children's hospitals. We want to continue supporting those who supported us.
[00:10:45] Lyle: Yeah. It'd be sure shame to, with just a legacy, legacy, Bella.
[00:10:50] Kyla (2): Yeah.
[00:10:51] Lyle: So keeping that going is really helpful for us and I think for other people as well.
[00:10:56] Lyle: And so if we, you know, de platformed [00:11:00] ourselves, that would be, it'd be a shame.
[00:11:02] Kyla: Yeah. But putting that aside, I'm just like, how could it have ever Like it was only banned for like overnight, like people are making so many jokes about like having longer sleeps than the TikTok ban, which is great. It was great.
[00:11:15] Kyla: Those 12 hours, like even before and after and like TikTok would still play ones that were happening before the ban after the ban. So it was really funny to kind of like, it was just hilarious content. I haven't been on
[00:11:27] Lyle: it much at all lately.
[00:11:28] Kyla: You haven't? I don't
[00:11:30] Lyle: know. I know, but it's okay. Um. Big guy stepped in and fixed it for you.
[00:11:34] Kyla: Well, I'm just like, what? I was kind of stunned about is like, what if you just someone you just woke up one day and in your in your country just loses 100, 000 and some jobs? What would that do to a
[00:11:49] Lyle: country?
[00:11:50] Kyla: Like,
[00:11:51] Lyle: Oh, like tick tock employees? Yeah, I mean, get absorbed. But yeah, it sucks for all those people.
[00:11:57] Kyla: I'm just like, that was actually that was legit gonna happen. And [00:12:00] it did happen for 12 hours. Think not during working hours. Yeah, like, I just like, where would that have even gone? If it totally actually did just disappear.
[00:12:09] Podcast: Right?
[00:12:10] Kyla: Like, it was cray cray. But the content
[00:12:14] Podcast: It was funny.
[00:12:14] Kyla: was friggin hilarious.
[00:12:15] Kyla: The amount of TikToks where it's like, Canadians and Australians and like, people from the UK, the United Kingdom, and it's just like, I love her, but no, I know, and
[00:12:26] Podcast: I love her,
[00:12:26] Kyla: but And it's like that one that like, went viral about the Kardashians talking behind someone's back. Right, right, right. And it was about the US.
[00:12:33] Kyla: Oh my gosh, just so funny. I'm gonna miss those. Uh, interesting little update I have for all of you. I realized the other day. Okay, so this, this backstory I, uh, had Ryan Reynolds on. Uh, the, our, we had Ryan Reynolds on our podcast as a [00:13:00] guest and I started going through my TikToks and just bringing back up the ones that Ryan and was in when he was talking with Bella and I wanted to use those for some like, um, uh, promotions of our interview with him.
[00:13:13] Kyla: And I realized just digging into my TikTok account and like moving things around and making sure everything's all good, I came across a request. For someone to follow me back, and when you see it, it's like when you go to their page, it also had a lot to do with, um, okay, so, you know who it was?
[00:13:35] Lyle: No, I'm, I'm waiting.
[00:13:36] Kyla: Paris Hilton.
[00:13:39] Lyle: Like, The Simple Life, Paris Hilton? Yes! And you didn't follow her back?
[00:13:43] Kyla: I just,
[00:13:43] Lyle: no, and
[00:13:44] Kyla: I don't know for how long. And then I saw her comment, she commented on the video I made with Ryan. Okay, so, no, this would have been Over a year. Over a year. [00:14:00] Paris Hilton requested that I follow her back on TikTok.
[00:14:04] Kyla: And I totally, like, snapped her for a year, but unknowingly, of course. Did you follow
[00:14:08] Lyle: her and message her?
[00:14:09] Kyla: Yes. Right away. Because at first I'm looking at my phone like, Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. I screenshotted it because it's like follow back and bring red letters because I noticed as I was going through the videos with with Ryan and Bella that she had commented on one and she said something like, oh, this is lovely or something like that.
[00:14:27] Kyla: And I was just like, oh, and then. Like, because I'm
[00:14:31] Lyle: just
[00:14:32] Kyla: not
[00:14:33] Lyle: Is she still I haven't been following, what does she do?
[00:14:36] Kyla: So, okay, so she is, um, she is a strong child advocate. And so she recently passed, I forget how you say it, I'm not very, like, legal or Like a legis like a bill to for in supporting, um, children.
[00:14:54] Kyla: Oh, okay. I'm just
[00:14:56] Lyle: Pardon me?
[00:14:58] Kyla: Sorry, sorry. Children's she's [00:15:00] a children's rights
[00:15:01] Lyle: Activist. She's a children's rights advocate
[00:15:05] Kyla: and
[00:15:06] Lyle: and activist
[00:15:06] Kyla: and activist. She passed a bill in support of that recently. Uh, she's an actress, and my favorite part about her is she's a DJ. I knew that for a while. I love that she's a DJ.
[00:15:16] Kyla: She's also been a model, a singer, and of course, the star with Nicole Richie on The Simple Life.
[00:15:21] Lyle: What movies has she been in? I think there was like some Sharks movies. Oh, wasn't she in Scream,
[00:15:25] Kyla: too? That sounds right. Something like that. She was in Scream. Anyways, so I'm stunned looking at my phone. Noticing that I ignored Paris's request to follow her back for like a year.
[00:15:36] Lyle: I like it.
[00:15:37] Kyla: I was just like Power
[00:15:37] Lyle: move.
[00:15:38] Kyla: Mortified. Power move. I was mortified. I quickly follow her back, message her the sweet, like, sentimental message or whatever, because I think the reason why she's been on my For You page for a while too is, um, she's been doing a lot of work with the animal shelters, um Okay.
[00:15:53] Kyla: That have struggled since the fires in California.
[00:15:57] Lyle: Well, I haven't had anyone asking [00:16:00] Need to follow them. Oh, yeah. How is your Instagram?
[00:16:04] Kyla: It's
[00:16:04] Lyle: kind of flatline. You
[00:16:05] Kyla: flew up my flatline. You
[00:16:06] Lyle: know, I don't push much content out. Yeah, you're not great at that Let me see. I think I am up to Oh, 4, 000 followers.
[00:16:15] Kyla: Stop! That's pretty good. you were at 2, 500. I was. That's really good. Your growth is good. Like, the slow incline, that's really good. You could start, like,
[00:16:25] Lyle: For doing nothing. You
[00:16:26] Kyla: could, like, reach out to, like, Kubota or John Deere and be like, Hey, I'll, you know, make some content for you guys. That would be
[00:16:33] Lyle: my niche.
[00:16:33] Lyle: You totally
[00:16:34] Kyla: could. You totally could. Uh, so yeah, so that was my exciting little update besides my guppies. And, um, Paris Hilton requested I follow her back on TikTok, so that was, I have to go on there and see who other, what other celebrities I've been ignoring.
[00:16:50] Lyle: Maybe me, you haven't followed me yet. What? I guess I'm not a big enough celebrity.
[00:16:53] Lyle: On TikTok? Yeah.
[00:16:55] Kyla: I thought you were on
[00:16:55] Lyle: TikTok.
[00:16:56] Kyla: I followed you back on Instagram. I started your page. Yeah, I guess. Or [00:17:00] you started it and then I was like
[00:17:02] Lyle: anyways, what do you got on there for us?
Public Speaking and Bella's Legacy
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[00:17:04] Kyla: Um, I also wanted to mention before we get into Well, I have lots of recent or recent events why I am wearing this Button my Bella Bella's pin from her funeral and a butterfly a beautiful butterfly that was made.
[00:17:21] Kyla: I Got to speak at a local high school today, and it was really really amazing and I It was the first time I did any public speaking since Bella had passed away. Uh, I was really happy to be there and support our youth, support their mental health, share Bella's story, carry on her legacy, uh, share bravery.
[00:17:47] Kyla: And it was just, like, my cup is full today because of the youth that I got to surround myself with today and share our story with. And the way they Accepted [00:18:00] it and the way they acknowledged it. And I was just
[00:18:04] Lyle: I thought it was really good my cup was really full it was powerful, I think the Points around bravery and you know what it is and how you can exemplify that Was probably the most powerful portion of your speaking and Yeah, like you said it was a first Public speaking thing you've done since Bella passed away.
[00:18:27] Lyle: Mm hmm. Didn't quite know how you were going to handle that. I think you did great. Yeah, of course there were some tears, but Yeah,
[00:18:32] Podcast: yeah.
[00:18:33] Lyle: That's, it'd be kind of weird if there wasn't.
[00:18:35] Kyla: Yeah, yeah. And it was like I, I, um, I really enjoyed the way they took it in, and I would try to be a good public speaker, you know, you want to look up, you want to look at your audience, you want to see how they're taking it in, and I would look up, and I would see some tears well up in their eyes, so then it would kind of start welling up in my eyes, but.
[00:18:58] Kyla: Overall, it was such a good feeling, and it [00:19:00] wasn't hard, it was, it felt good to be able to talk and just support these kids and share our story, and, yeah, I really enjoyed it, and I'm looking forward to more, I have another public speaking event coming up in February, which is the Heart's Desire Gala in Saskatoon that's supporting the Ronald McDonald House there.
[00:19:17] Kyla: And, uh, that'll be a bigger event.
[00:19:20] Lyle: Where is it at? TCU Place?
[00:19:22] Kyla: TCU Place. I'm one in the keynotes. And I'm really, really looking forward to it. And there's a dance afterwards? I don't, I go talk to my friend Jen. So Jen is Embers Productions on Instagram. And she's organized, she's an event organizer, planner.
[00:19:37] Kyla: She set this all up in support of Little Wonders families, which is an organization that she set up to help support so the It's gonna be like a meet and greet. It's gonna be the keynotes. It's gonna be like a party There's gonna be like so much fun stuff and I was like my birthday is the day before this happens, February 12th [00:20:00] And I text her ahead of time and I'm kind of like what, what's like the itinerary, I kind of want to plan what I'm going to do for my birthday, I have a friend coming up with me, I have friends in Saskatoon and like, I kind of want to know where I need to be when kind of thing and she's like, Oh.
[00:20:13] Kyla: Oh, we have a plan for the dance floor for your birthday party on Thursday.
[00:20:19] Lyle: Oh, so maybe somewhere else.
[00:20:20] Kyla (3): Yeah.
[00:20:21] Lyle: The night before.
[00:20:22] Kyla (3): Maybe. Maybe. What the hell? Is that why I wasn't invited? Or, no, cause there's, during the gala event, maybe. I can't remember. I'll just talk to Jen. Anyways,
[00:20:31] Lyle: moving on.
[00:20:31] Kyla: Uh, moving on.
[00:20:33] Lyle: Me?
[00:20:34] Kyla: Yeah, do you? Okay, so.
Ryan Reynolds Interview and Book Recommendation
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[00:20:35] Lyle: Okay, well, we did our interview with Ryan Reynolds. It was fantastic, but at one point he recommended a book to us, and it was called A Heart That Works, and it's by Rob Delaney. Now, if you don't know who Rob Delaney is, he's a comedian and an actor, and you might actually know him from Deadpool 2 and Deadpool vs.
[00:20:54] Lyle: Wolverine, and he's He plays Peter, I think it's called Peter [00:21:00] Poole, and he has a big mustache, and he's kind of like Ned Flanders looking, and he's really funny. He's got kind of like a dark, edgy humor, actually. So, and, this would have happened maybe, I forget when, his son passed away, but his son, they had a three year long battle, uh, with cancer, with their, their son.
[00:21:20] Lyle: Well, I think he passed away when he was three, uh, really tough book to get through, but it was really heartwarming. And, and so he wrote a book about it and it's called, yeah, Heart That Works. And do you have it? Well, yeah, I do. Show
[00:21:31] Kyla: it to our live.
[00:21:32] Lyle: Yeah, there was so many moments in it that shockingly enough, there's not a lot of books out there about, uh, dads grief, like dealing with grief.
[00:21:42] Kyla: Medical dads. And then on top of that.
[00:21:45] Lyle: Yeah, it wasn't just, yeah, I think that's a big part of it that spoke to me was that he went through it. Three years of medical data, and then eventually them passing away. So there's a lot of things that we had in common. [00:22:00] I wrote down a few. I just kind of wanted to break them down and see what your thoughts were.
[00:22:03] Lyle: You have no idea. You don't have these papers. So
[00:22:06] Kyla: no, I don't. I was just looking at mine because I was going to ask you like what what this was about and what resonated with you. But to summarize it, Rob Delaney is good friends with Ryan Reynolds.
[00:22:16] Podcast: Yeah.
[00:22:17] Kyla: And he has been in his movies, and, and, did it say like when did they find out his son had cancer, like at birth, or like when he was like, months old?
[00:22:29] Kyla: Uh, one year
[00:22:29] Lyle: old.
[00:22:30] Kyla: Oh, he's one, okay. Yeah, one, they, they,
[00:22:33] Lyle: why, I forget, he was always really, really, oh, he was always vomiting.
[00:22:38] Podcast: Oh. He started vomiting
[00:22:39] Lyle: more and more and more, and then they, they found a tumor in his brain. Brain kind of his brainstem.
[00:22:43] Podcast: Oh, okay,
[00:22:45] Lyle: but he's here five two years after that going through all this but okay So in one of the chapters Rob was describing training for scuba diving any trip and he describes I consciously thought my son Henry died I consciously thought [00:23:00] my hunt my son Henry died not long ago And I consciously thought I'm quite a bit closer to death being 12 feet underwater when they're training scuba dive I won't drown on purpose But if I got stuck down here, panicked, and inhaled, and they couldn't revive me, well then that would be okay.
[00:23:19] Lyle: It's pretty dark stuff, but I was just like, he said my son, Henry, had died, and that my own death would see me walk through a door that he had walked through, and I kind of share that same sentiment. Not all the time, but sometimes, it's just like, when we were in a plane, I was,
[00:23:38] Podcast: well,
[00:23:38] Lyle: That wouldn't be the way, I know this is morbid, but I'm just like, I'm comfortable with that.
[00:23:46] Lyle: I don't have a death wish or anything like that. But it was just like, it made me, I don't want that to happen. But if it did, if, if you knew on the other side of the door, is your daughter waiting for
[00:23:57] Podcast: you?
[00:23:59] Lyle: How could you not feel [00:24:00] that way? Just a little bit? Exactly.
[00:24:02] Kyla: Because it, we're sitting here as 40 year olds thinking.
[00:24:09] Kyla: How painful it is. It's that constant, like if we're going to dive deep into grief, it's that constant. Wrenching feeling of how long you need to wait before you could possibly pass away and then see your daughter again.
[00:24:26] Lyle: I think that's, yeah, a lot more eloquently, uh, That's a crazy thing to say.
[00:24:33] Kyla: That could be a suicide wish.
[00:24:34] Kyla: No,
[00:24:35] Lyle: and I just, I feel the same way, but I'm not suicidal. I don't have thoughts of self harm. Right. But I know I'm more okay with it than I was before. Yeah. Like, just once you get to that point. Two, not as heavy. Rob describes that listening to some very sad music does make him depressed and he compares it to exposure therapy.
[00:24:56] Lyle: So he writes, Am I giving myself homemade exposure [00:25:00] therapy? I don't know. Maybe it's like how I now love it when people bring up Henry. If they worry, I assure them that they're not really bringing him up at all. I was probably already thinking about him anyways. I love that. I'm just like, yeah, no, bring her up.
[00:25:14] Lyle: She's my favorite topic. You're not going to upset me because like, like you said, I'm probably already thinking about her anyways.
[00:25:20] Kyla: It's 24 seven for me. Like I just and everything and everything. And I know recently, like, in the last week, I really had a day where it was heavy, heavy, heavy. And you had to like, kind of like, not snap me out of it.
[00:25:36] Kyla: But you really helped me. I just felt everything. Everything was so dark in my world that day that I would cry out of nowhere all day long. And it was because I just kind of had that mentality that day where it was like, why? Why am I doing this? Why does this matter? None of this matters because she's not [00:26:00] here and my brain Often has a turmoil with that because I we cannot like I know there's lots of people in the background questioning Okay, well you have a son.
[00:26:11] Kyla: What about Waylon? Well, absolutely, you know, and that's the thing It's
[00:26:14] Lyle: out thumbs us right back.
[00:26:16] Kyla: It's kind of like those intrusive thoughts, you know, they're there And we're expressing that we're being vulnerable about it, but it's not we're not taking action to it. Like,
[00:26:25] Lyle: I am like, it's like anxiety, Josh.
[00:26:28] Lyle: Talk to us about it. Like intrusive thoughts. They're there. They exist. You can smile, they can labeling it. That's an intrusive thought. Yeah, I'm not gonna just, I'll accept that. It's there. Yeah, it's crazy. So it's fine.
[00:26:41] Podcast: Yeah, yeah.
Overwhelming Medical Responsibilities
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[00:26:43] Lyle: Rob describes coming home from hospital with overwhelming medical responsibilities that adapt to.
[00:26:50] Lyle: So he said he wrote having Henry at home was terrifying at first. The first couple of weeks felt like running half a marathon, then taking the SATs every day. But we did it. And after the [00:27:00] initial fear subsided, we loved it. We were home together under one roof. We could spend the whole day together from waking up until sleeping as a family.
[00:27:07] Lyle: It felt good and it felt right.
[00:27:10] Kyla: That brings me right back to all of the training that you and I did in hospital to run Bella's IVs at home. So Bella had an ostomy bag.
Home Nursing Challenges
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[00:27:20] Kyla: At one point she had two, and she always had, uh, IV, a permanent IV, which some people call a PIC, or a Broviac, or an IVAD, and she needed that because before her bowel transplant she was surviving off of IV fluids because her bowels are failing, and then on top of that she had a G tube because For the first, I think, year or two of her life, I think it was the first two years of her life.
[00:27:44] Kyla: She kept her G tube, but the first two years, it was like, that was how she was fed because, um, she had such oral aversions from having NG tubes from birth till she was over a year. And we always strive to bring [00:28:00] her home when we could to give her that normalcy, normalcy, because she was in hospital from birth two consecutive years straight.
[00:28:06] Kyla: And it's like, Any chance you could get her home, it didn't matter what you had to do, whether you had to take weeks of TPN training. I had to learn how to draw blood off of her line, take it to the lab in our local hospital, set up her TPN, set up IV fluids.
[00:28:24] Lyle: TPN was her IV nutrition.
[00:28:26] Kyla: IV nutrition. So this is, to someone who's not familiar with this, this is Basically being an at home nurse for your child because you are in charge of making sure you get those numbers right, making sure you get the cleanliness right, because you are actually injecting and infusing something into your child's veins.
[00:28:49] Kyla: That alone is a heavy weight to carry
[00:28:52] Lyle: when you like, but it was worth it all.
[00:28:54] Podcast: Oh, worth
[00:28:55] Lyle: it all. It was worth it to have that, that evening at home altogether.
[00:28:58] Podcast: Oh yeah. You
[00:28:59] Lyle: knew it could, [00:29:00] you know, it could go sideways four days after being at home, but it was worth it just to have that opportunity. And looking back, I remember those nights, I'm like, no.
[00:29:07] Lyle: Yeah, it was worth every bit of work that we put into it.
[00:29:10] Kyla: We would set up the TPN. Her IV pool we had at home, we'd set it up on the deck and enjoy some summer evenings outside on the deck when she had, when her TPN or her IV fluids had to run like overnight. Sometimes they had to run 24 hours, sometimes they had to run 18 hours.
Missing the Medical Care
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[00:29:24] Lyle: And so Rob describes on my next point, he says, Rob describes missing the medical care. That was my next one,
[00:29:30] Podcast: which
[00:29:30] Lyle: you're jumping into pretty heavy there. To manage his breathing and swallowing, Henry got a tracheostomy. I'll just say. I hated that thing and I also wish to hell I was still spending a good portion of the day doing his tracheotomy care.
[00:29:43] Podcast: Mm
[00:29:44] Lyle: hmm. I was like, oh my god, that was just like the lowest ostomy.
[00:29:46] Podcast: Yeah, I
[00:29:47] Lyle: hated that frickin thing. But
[00:29:49] Podcast: yeah,
[00:29:49] Lyle: I wish I was still spending a good portion of the day doing the ostomy care.
[00:29:54] Kyla: I remember, it's funny how it, it switches on you so drastically. I remember being [00:30:00] so frustrated with her ostomy, especially before I learned what a stealth belt is, those belts that hold up ostomies.
[00:30:05] Kyla: And Bella had a high output ostomy, she had an ileostomy, so that's like fluid, fluid drain, because you don't have your colon to thicken things up. And I remember before I learned about the belts that held them up. I would be changing her pouch six to eight times a day because it would just fall off from the weight.
[00:30:23] Kyla: And she was really little at this time. Like, she would have been maybe, like, three. And She can't just you can't run around with an ostomy that's falling off and then poop is spilling everywhere, right? but I remember being so frustrated because it's like it's taking her away from so much and Then that slowly grew into something that gave her life gave her the ability to be home more gave her the ability to go do Sports.
[00:30:47] Lyle: Yeah to go swimming. She saw the other side. She's like anything. Oh, yeah out of a hospital
[00:30:51] Kyla (2): Yeah,
[00:30:51] Lyle: yeah, and so it the other thing it spoke to me like you describe All the work that goes into it. He does, too. And, you know, I'm really aware that people, [00:31:00] they might see us or think, like, since, you know, now our lives.
[00:31:05] Lyle: are easier for us and I can assure you that yeah, our lives are easier and it fucking sucks. Yeah. Like I wouldn't.
[00:31:14] Kyla: It's the emptiness that just has a way bigger fatter hole to come in and just stab you in the chest a hundred times a day because you are not doing that medical care that you long to do now because it meant she was alive.
[00:31:26] Kyla: Yeah,
[00:31:26] Lyle: Bella was never, she was never ever a burden. It was truly, she gave us meaning, purpose, joy. It was that guiding light. And that guiding light is just gone and we need to this is helping doing this is helping it's it is you know something to work on it is not easy putting a podcast together and we've had a lot of help getting here yeah but it's it's just one thing to feel like yeah I want to work hard because whatever's easiest is I'm not, I told you that an hour before we all got in here, whatever's easiest.
[00:31:59] Lyle: [00:32:00] I'm like, I'm not interested in easy right now.
[00:32:02] Kyla: No, and that was just me. I know. Wanting the technical, like the camera. Like we were a half hour late. Sorry guys, by the way, because we were like a half hour late, but that was to do with like actual like physical technical stuff setting up. That's what I meant by that.
[00:32:15] Kyla: Um, but what I did want to mention was like back to that about it not being easy.
Dealing with Online Trolls
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[00:32:22] Kyla: I have struggled with the way the outside world sees me as a grieving parent. I've struggled with that, and I, I hate to say that, like, really crappy people can say really crappy things to you, and it freaking sucks. But, we're, we're being open and vulnerable, because we want to support other parents and kids out there and families like ours, and carry on our daughter's legacy.
[00:32:49] Kyla: And we want to put in that work. But the 5 or 30 seconds you might see me on a recent TikTok telling you about my podcast [00:33:00] and having a smile on my face is not me 24 7. And I had a, I had someone comment and say like, Oh, well, you don't look very sad about it. And like, in reference to my daughter having passed.
[00:33:12] Kyla: And I'm just like, Oh my gosh, if I could reach the phone and just punch you in the face, like, I would, but it's like, I need to stop and remind myself. Like I talked to the kids about today, like I talked to the students today about like trolls and I call them, I call it dealing with nasties online. I need to stop and remind myself, this person has not taken the time to understand my story.
[00:33:37] Kyla: So they are not worth my time in a response, right? Like, they, they don't see, they see 30 seconds of me talking to them on a screen. They don't see the other 23 hours of me bawling my guts out on my daughter's floor. I'm not going to pick up the phone and record that,
[00:33:55] Lyle: right? That's just not, not the right vibe.
[00:33:57] Kyla: People need to realize, first of all, I, [00:34:00] I could go on a whole other rant with this, but people are way too sensitive online. And if. If you want to be vulnerable online to help other people, you got to have tough skin.
[00:34:08] Lyle: I think they're, and maybe I'm wrong in the wording on this, but it would be very, I would be so embarrassed if you, yeah, I did take a video of, like, When you're
[00:34:22] Kyla: reeling
[00:34:22] Lyle: for clout.
[00:34:23] Kyla: Yeah, no. Is that the right word? Yeah. Yeah, that would be
[00:34:26] Lyle: disgusting.
[00:34:27] Kyla: That is, no, yeah.
Sharing Bella's Legacy
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[00:34:28] Kyla: And that is the way I've always thought about any time I'm sharing something, whether it's like medical details or something really personal, I, I think about how that looks and I only do it like, I, well, I don't do that, but when I do share something, it's, it's either in the moment or.
[00:34:47] Kyla: It's not that, you know what I mean? Like you see people online all the time and you, you pick up, you imagine picking up the phone in that situation. And it's just [00:35:00] not like you can't write, like you don't like, I don't imagine. Well, I was like, okay, we're going off on a tangent. No, but this has been my thing as like a content creator.
[00:35:09] Kyla: I, I seriously dive into that. And I, that I constantly think about the way it's portrayed because I'm sharing a message with people. That hundreds of thousands of millions of people, I want to be true and authentic. Right. But the back end of that is when you're sharing only the shareable moments, the positive moments.
[00:35:33] Kyla: And when 90 percent of that is positive, because so much of our life was sharing bravery and sharing hope and inspiration. Yeah, you're not going to see all the times, you're not going to see the screaming and the crying and the pain.
[00:35:46] Lyle: I think, like, to be in that emotional state and then to start filming it is pretty weird.
[00:35:52] Lyle: That's a whole nother, like, weird wrong thing. But after that has occurred, you can describe what you went through.
[00:35:59] Kyla: [00:36:00] Often with writing, as something I have done, yeah, not so much with videoing. But what I was going to say is, it sucks because so many people, because they see more of the positive, it sucks because so many people, because they see more of the positive.
[00:36:10] Kyla: It's like their brain just thinks, Oh, the negative isn't happening.
[00:36:14] Lyle: So, in Rob's book, on my fifth topic, Oh,
[00:36:18] Kyla (3): sorry,
[00:36:18] Kyla: I'm like, pounding my
[00:36:20] Kyla (3): papers.
[00:36:20] Lyle: But, and I chose the order of these, of these fairly, um, I, so, he writes, I suppose, I think we have a rainbow of emotions. Perhaps blue is sadness, red is passion, and so on.
[00:36:35] Lyle: I still have all the colours in my rainbow, after Henry's death. So, whatever, happiness, whatever color that is, name and emotion, I can still feel it, and we often do. Leah and our boys, that's Rob's wife, and I laugh every day. But now there's a band of black in my rainbow too, that wasn't there before, it's a part of me now, and it should be.
[00:36:55] Lyle: And I think that's just, that, put it well, how you, you know, how [00:37:00] basically our emotions work, that there's just now this black band of grief, and it's one of the emotions that, You know, I didn't have before and now I do and it comes black is in your rainbow Yeah,
[00:37:12] Kyla: black is in your rainbow and it will be forever more and I get that I there's another way someone I heard described that where it was like I am always sad.
[00:37:21] Kyla: I will smile I can laugh I can go out and have fun. I can enjoy my son's birthdays But I am still sad. I am sad and all of that. That's that's The black in your rainbow is everything you do enjoy, and you look like you're enjoying, you're still sad. At least that is, that's for me. Like, I'll catch myself smiling and enjoying something and thinking,
[00:37:45] Lyle: Belle is not here to enjoy this.
[00:37:46] Lyle: Does my rainbow analogy, that's not new to you? That is very new to me. Oh, okay, you don't really.
[00:37:52] Kyla: No, I was just, I was comparing it to what, how I heard it. I heard someone describe it as like, no, I'm always sad now. Sad as in my happiness. Sad [00:38:00] as in my joy. Yeah, you said it. Sad as in your rainbow is black. In your Rambo.
[00:38:04] Kyla: Wah
[00:38:05] Lyle: wah. Sorry. What? No! What are you talking about? It's heavy stuff, but it was such a good book. It was so nice and refreshing to read someone, like, wow, he's going, he went through what I went through. Yeah. And I'm like, this. Related. So thank you Ryan Reynolds for recommending it, and thank you Rob Delaney for writing the damn book.
[00:38:22] Lyle: It kicked ass. It
[00:38:23] Kyla: did. It did. I'm excited to read it when you're done. So that.
[00:38:26] Lyle: It was a quick read too. It was nice. Yeah. And it was so funny. Uh, Ryan recommended it, right after we had interviewed him, I went on Amazon and ordered the book, and then a day later, you found it.
[00:38:39] Kyla: Okay, so I have this cupboard, you guys, and I, okay, to, to, backstory, I want to say this in the shortest way, but I don't want to be, like, mean.
Dreamlight Valley Addiction
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[00:38:48] Kyla: I am a Dreamlight Valley addict and I'm not much of a reader.
[00:38:54] Lyle: Dreamlight Valley is a game on Switch, like the Nintendo Switch, that you just, uh. I'm a gamer. [00:39:00] No, you, you play one game. I wouldn't call you a gamer, you're a game person.
[00:39:04] Kyla: I really need to find out, I need to talk to my, I do have a Dreamlight contact, and the only reason I call her my contact is because she's.
[00:39:11] Kyla: realized how much when Bella was still alive, like this was Bella's number one game. And so Bella got me.
[00:39:16] Lyle: And where is the game? You operate like Disney characters, right? And you go around like it's fishing. You quest
[00:39:21] Kyla: quest quest and dream about it. I freaking love it. I play it every night. I need to talk to her more and more.
[00:39:28] Kyla: It's just it's my like sit down brainless, chill time activity.
[00:39:32] Lyle: You must be ranked on a leaderboard.
[00:39:33] Kyla: That's what I want to find out. I want to find out if I'm ranked on leaderboard, because I feel like I'm the one who's like waiting for the updates. We're people who are like months and months behind, or like, I haven't got to that point.
[00:39:44] Lyle: Right, because you aren't a fan, Facebook fan.
[00:39:47] Kyla: I'm also in like a, it's like a chat group for Dreamlight Valley, and we like, we help each other out with different things. It's a whole thing. But what I was gonna say is like, instead of sitting down and reading a book at night, I'm playing Dreamlight Valley.
[00:39:59] Kyla: [00:40:00] So, we, I have this giant cupboard, like our cupboard is like, You can't see me. My cupboard is like
[00:40:07] Lyle: this big. Your cupboard is cupboard shaped and cupboard sized, so if you're wondering, she's describing a cupboard to you right now, like you can't picture what one is.
[00:40:16] Kyla: I keep forgetting that we're like, live, so I'm like, trying to like, I don't want them to be bored.
[00:40:21] Lyle: They don't understand what a cupboard is. Okay, let me finish my story. Sorry, why do you have to?
[00:40:26] Kyla: It's a cupboard because the whole bottom row is filled with all books like from one end to the other. We were gifted so many valuable, really good books to support us through our grief. And I haven't got a chance to get to any of them.
[00:40:41] Kyla: So when Ryan recommended this book and you went on Amazon to buy it, it was actually already in my, in my bookshelf of like 20 different books on grief.
[00:40:52] Lyle: So, sorry Rob Delaney, I did cancel the Amazon order. Oh yeah,
[00:40:57] Kyla: it was gifted to us, we already had it.
[00:40:59] Lyle: I'm like, ah, [00:41:00] I need to buy
[00:41:00] Kyla: a book. Yeah, I go to that book and I was just like, I swear, cause after we talked to Ryan I was like.
[00:41:05] Kyla: I've seen that book, and then I go to my cupboard and I'm like, pull it out.
[00:41:09] Lyle: I'm not a very big reader either. It was a tiny little book and it took me like a week.
[00:41:13] Kyla: You're a way bigger, you're a much bigger reader than I am. I still have a lot of books to go through. I think, uh, we should, we should do like a, like a book club.
[00:41:22] Kyla: Like,
[00:41:24] Lyle: we should, like, um. We can start with like.
[00:41:26] Kyla: Review books on here.
[00:41:27] Lyle: Harry Potter's.
[00:41:29] Kyla: No. That's one series. You guys are gonna laugh. The only series I've ever read and this was out of high school Like I have not been a reader for a long time Out of high school. The only book series I've read is the Twilight series Oh, really?
[00:41:45] Kyla: This is the only series I have read front to back all books Freaking loved it. I couldn't put the books down. I would reread them now
[00:41:54] Lyle: I saw one of the movies it was on TV and I'm like this was really bad. I'm gonna check it out [00:42:00] Wasn't that bad? Pretty fun movie. Yeah, fun little movie. I never read those books.
[00:42:05] Lyle: I was, I was a goose, goosebumps guy.
[00:42:07] Kyla: Oh, goosebumps. No, I didn't read the goosebumps. I mean, I wasn't a reader in school. I think I read Black Beauty, uh, Little House on the Prairie.
[00:42:16] Lyle: Like. Like this is, I went from like, I went
[00:42:18] Kyla: from that to Twilight series.
[00:42:20] Lyle: Five.
[00:42:22] Kyla: So like, from like, when I was twelve to like, in my thirties.
[00:42:26] Lyle: Yeah.
[00:42:27] Kyla: Like, okay maybe like, late twenties.
[00:42:29] Lyle: That's when I started. You know what the problem is too? Um, when you're in university and they force you to read all this. Material and they just push it and push it and push it then you went after university. You're just so that's the last frickin thing you want.
[00:42:41] Lyle: Yeah, book,
[00:42:42] Kyla: you know what the one I was
[00:42:43] Lyle: like, anyways,
[00:42:44] Kyla: the one class I dropped out of there's only one class out of my five years of university that I went to school to be a teacher. Five years. Art said, the one class I dropped out of Can you guess?
[00:42:56] Podcast: English,
[00:42:57] Kyla: Shakespeare,
[00:42:58] Lyle: Shakespeare. [00:43:00]
[00:43:00] Kyla: I'm done. It's just like, no.
[00:43:03] Lyle: You know, uh, Kyla and I went to university for one year together. Mhm. And we even had one class together. Do you remember what that class was?
[00:43:12] Kyla: Art History.
[00:43:13] Lyle: Yeah, and who, and Kyla was the art, you were the art teacher, major, right?
[00:43:18] Kyla: Mhm.
[00:43:19] Lyle: And what was your mark in that class?
[00:43:21] Kyla: Oh, stop. I think I got like 83 and you got like 89 or something stupid like that.
[00:43:26] Kyla: But you just used me. You were dating me and you're like. I slept every class. And I would take the notes. I nailed
[00:43:34] Lyle: it.
[00:43:34] Kyla: Our producer, Denny, said there's a question we can answer.
Bella's Favorite Books
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[00:43:37] Kyla: What
[00:43:37] Lyle: was Bella's favorite book? Yeah, did you get it? OK, Bella's
[00:43:40] Kyla: favorite book. The Babysitter Club series. She loved the series. I think she has all 12 or 8 books.
[00:43:51] Kyla: I think, I want to say 12. She had the most recent one when we were in hospital. She was, she was doing a book report on it in, um, in May. [00:44:00] June, July, last year. And, uh, She
[00:44:04] Lyle: was totally getting into it. She was starting to like, at night, reading at night before bed. Oh, yeah. And then, wasn't there like, uh, The Babysitter's Club Little Sisters.
[00:44:14] Lyle: What about the one with like, the little fairies?
[00:44:17] Kyla: Oh, those were the ones I would pick out for her, and I'd read those as like, a story time. She loved those, too. But they were like, the fairies. I think they were just called the fairies. And then there was a different fairy for every book. Like, there was like, The Ruby Fairy, or there was like the Christmas Fairy, or, you know, the Summertime Fairy, and they all had these different stories.
[00:44:35] Kyla: They were really, they're like a short little novel
[00:44:38] Lyle: read.
[00:44:39] Kyla: She was in grade five at the time when she started these novel series.
[00:44:42] Lyle: Great question.
[00:44:43] Kyla: Yeah. I hadn't thought about that in a long time.
[00:44:45] Lyle: Uh,
[00:44:46] Kyla: she loved comic books. Her favorite books were comic books, too. Like, um, I think they're called comic books.
[00:44:52] Kyla: Like the one with the speech bubbles and all the different, like, actions. But they weren't,
[00:44:55] Lyle: like, Action. They weren't like X Men and stuff.
[00:44:57] Kyla: Her DC girls. The DC girls. [00:45:00] That was her favorite comic book. The DC girls.
[00:45:02] Lyle: Yeah,
[00:45:04] Kyla: that was a good one.
Cherished Memories of Bella
---
[00:45:04] Kyla: I was gonna say, the last thing I wanted to mention on here is we've had a lot of requests from our listeners to share more Bella stories and Bella memories.
[00:45:14] Kyla: Oh. And I know we, we do talk a lot. We share our grief on here, but in that, um, I told them, I was like, yeah, we wanna, we wanna share more. And our last question. Episode we did together, I think it was episode eight. We started sharing memories because we journal memories of Bella in our phones. And I shared a few last time.
[00:45:37] Kyla: And I'm gonna share a few more on this episode.
[00:45:38] Lyle: I have one I just thought of, it popped in my head, but you should go first.
[00:45:41] Kyla: Oh,
[00:45:41] Kyla (3): no, no, go, it popped in your head. I have mine listed on my phone, so go ahead. A list? That's not okay. That's not fair.
[00:45:46] Lyle: Well, it keeps on, it's my journal! Okay, I remember waking up in the morning, and, this maybe happened a handful of times, where Bella, Would be offline or he wouldn't have any lines or anything.
[00:45:58] Lyle: So we wouldn't have the offline [00:46:00] like she's a
[00:46:00] Kyla: robot
[00:46:01] Lyle: Well, we didn't have to unhook her from Austin a bag or an IV or anything like that.
[00:46:07] Podcast: Yeah,
[00:46:07] Lyle: and so she would get up And just kind of pots around the living room, and then Waylon would get out of bed as well. And we would just still be laying there, but we could listen to them kind of interact without us.
[00:46:18] Lyle: And you remember, Bellowed put on her most teacher y voice to Waylon, and she'd be like, Okay, now Waylon, now put the But the toast pushed down the, they were like, she was instructing him how to make breakfast and he was just kind of like listening to him. This would have only been probably a year ago.
[00:46:37] Kyla: Yeah, and he would help her because she, he's taller of course, and she'd be like, okay, get the bread here. He
[00:46:43] Lyle: was listening so hard because he loved her so much. Oh, he
[00:46:45] Kyla: loved her.
[00:46:45] Lyle: Like, okay, I want to impress you so much and I, and I, let's get this together. He didn't know how to do it, but.
[00:46:53] Kyla: Yeah, he was, he would do anything for her and, uh,
[00:46:58] Lyle: they did that a [00:47:00] handful of times.
[00:47:00] Lyle: And so I'm like, well, I'm not going to get up and interrupt them. No, I mean, they're just, you know, doing their own thing. Yeah, so nice to hear. I love that memory
[00:47:08] Kyla: sometimes during the week before school. But a lot of the time on Saturdays and Sundays, you could just sit there and listen to it and they would be like chatting.
[00:47:14] Kyla: By the time we came out there to peek and see what they were doing, they both had their blankets and their pillows and watching cartoons and eating their little breakfasts and
[00:47:22] Lyle: it was, ugh, it was adorable. What do you got? You got a better one?
[00:47:26] Kyla: Uh, that was a really good memory. It
[00:47:30] Lyle: wasn't specific though.
[00:47:32] Kyla: I wrote some down.
[00:47:33] Lyle: I
[00:47:34] Kyla: wrote them in my phone because I didn't want to forget them. Because it's part of my journaling, remember?
[00:47:38] Podcast: Right.
[00:47:39] Kyla (2): So, let me just bring them up here. Wait. Oh, there we go. Okay. I marked down the ones that I already mentioned
[00:47:49] Kyla: last time. I told her pigeon story and her treasure hunt story last time.
[00:47:52] Podcast: Hmm,
[00:47:53] Kyla: you got another one for us.
[00:47:54] Kyla: Yeah, I got more. I remember, this is kind of a funny little thing between her and [00:48:00] I. We always had like, kind of like our little like, inside jokes. And I titled it Two Seconds. So, whenever I was in a rush, and I'd ask Bella to wait and give me two seconds, She would always, she loved it, she would like, wait for me to do this.
[00:48:15] Kyla: Oh, mom's in a rush, she's gonna say, well, hold on two seconds. And she'd always stand there with her hand on her hip, and she'd say with her sassy little tone, one, two. And I'd be like,
[00:48:29] Lyle: that's
[00:48:30] Kyla: your two seconds, mom. One.
[00:48:33] Lyle: She was like, so concerned about being late for something.
[00:48:36] Kyla: Oh, it was not okay with her.
[00:48:37] Lyle: No,
[00:48:37] Kyla: it was not okay.
[00:48:38] Lyle: It was not okay. And then I'd get fired up, and then she'd get mad at me.
[00:48:42] Kyla: Oh yeah, yeah. This, this is a fun story. Waylon remembers it very, very well. It's called What's Inside. And I think we did a TikTok on it. I can't remember, but Bella invented this game. We were in hospital and she invented this game.[00:49:00]
[00:49:00] Kyla: And it's called What's Inside. And it started with a hilarious conversation. She made a, she was trying to trick me. And she would ask me this question over and over and over again. What's inside? What's inside? And so it was a little game that she invented. She loved playing this with me. One of us would start with a regular conversation, usually me, and you'd stop me and say, wait, what's inside?
[00:49:22] Kyla: Uh, like I'd be having lunch and she'd be like, what's an hamburger? And it would always go on and on and on. So we got to the part where I would like, sometimes it would be like earth. What's inside Earth? Humans. Muscles. Cells. Atoms. Molecules. And I'd always make it go back to space, and then it would start all over again.
[00:49:40] Kyla: And she would howl, and howl, and howl. Uh, should I do one more?
[00:49:46] Lyle: Mm, we could, time for, yeah, one more. We
[00:49:48] Kyla: have time for one more? Just one more. And then, gotta wrap her up?
[00:49:51] Lyle: Yeah. You get two. Huh?
[00:49:54] Kyla (2): I get two? Oh, do you have another
[00:49:55] Kyla: one?
[00:49:56] Lyle: No, out of the top of my head. Not as good as the last [00:50:00] one. Or do you want to save one for next week?
[00:50:03] Kyla (2): We, I could, I could save some more stories.
[00:50:06] Kyla: For last week, but I have a sign, I believe I had a sign from her that I can talk about. I know I talked about my
[00:50:13] Kyla (2): dream. Uh, oh wait, no, yeah, I want to talk about the sign that I had. You guys can,
[00:50:23] Lyle: okay. You want to save it?
A Sign from Bella
---
[00:50:26] Kyla (2): No, it's called the backwards clock.
[00:50:29] Kyla: So this happened on January 10th, and it was late on a Friday night.
[00:50:36] Kyla: Um, I was too tired to stay up, you, I think you were up watching TV and I was like, no, I need to go to bed. So, um,
[00:50:44] Lyle: That's rare. Oh yeah, we were watching,
[00:50:47] Kyla: oh yeah, we were watching a movie and I was like, no, I can't, it was that war movie show you were watching. It was a cult.
[00:50:54] Lyle: That's all I watch.
[00:50:55] Kyla: Anyways, it was a really good one.
[00:50:56] Kyla: It was really good, but I was like, no, I need to go to bed. Oh,
[00:50:57] Lyle: the one with the, the Masters of [00:51:00] the Air. Masters of the Air, yeah. On Apple TV. It was really,
[00:51:02] Kyla: really, really good. Yeah,
[00:51:02] Lyle: it was really good.
[00:51:03] Kyla: And so, I entered the bedroom. And it was like I was just walking in the bedroom and I could just like I have a picture of Bella on my wall and I could just feel her love and I was wishing in that moment so badly that I could kiss you goodnight like I always used to and so instead I gave your picture a kiss the one that was hanging beside my bed and I said I love you sweetheart and I sat down on the edge of my bed and at that moment I look at the time and I go to get under the bedsheets with tears trickling down my face.
[00:51:39] Kyla: Because I'm thinking of you, and my heart is hurting, and I look at the clock, and it reads 1138 PM, my digital clock. For some reason, I look in the opposite direction to my window, and the reflection in the window of the, of the clock that reads 1138, in the window backwards
[00:51:59] Lyle: [00:52:00] No, stop.
[00:52:01] Kyla: In the window backwards, it's 8 3 1 1, which looks, with the way my numbers are, B E L L.
[00:52:09] Kyla: Bell, it literally looked like bell with the shape of my numbers and I felt your love in that moment Knowing that I used to always call you Bell.
[00:52:20] Lyle: Yeah,
[00:52:21] Kyla: and I just felt in my heart. That was her love That was her That was her saying goodnight mommy is I just as soon as I walked in the room before I even looked at the clock I was just like I miss you.
[00:52:34] Kyla: I want to kiss you. Good night I saw I kissed your picture and I just sat down on the edge of my bed I look at my clock and I look at the window and I see the word Bell
[00:52:43] Kyla (2): I'm like, oh, that's you, honey. And
[00:52:46] Podcast: yeah.
[00:52:48] Lyle: Like that's a great way to end. Thanks for that.
[00:52:49] Kyla (2): Yeah.
[00:52:50] Lyle: Yeah.
Closing Remarks and Announcements
---
[00:52:51] Lyle: Well, everyone, thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of Beyond Brave.
[00:52:55] Lyle: Thanks for joining us on our live and we'll definitely be back next Monday. And [00:53:00] follow us on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and uh, click to subscribe on the podcast player. So whatever you do, just give us five stars and it really helps motivate us and keep us trucking. Thanks for tuning in.
[00:53:15] Kyla: I wanted to add to that and just say, um, yeah, if our story resonates with you, we'd love to hear your thoughts.
[00:53:21] Kyla: And just to kind of lighten the mood a little bit, I was kind of frustrated with how we have something everywhere. And I was like, I realized the other day, I was like, Do we have a website for the podcast? yeah, we have a website for the podcast. And I'm like, oh, no, because I was like, I should start a website, but we already have one.
[00:53:38] Lyle: Yeah, it just has like, it's just a video, a player for the podcast. Yeah,
[00:53:42] Kyla: it's a player for the podcast. But we are on all major streaming, um, on YouTube for visual at Kylie CT for my socials. But also, I didn't want to forget this time to mention that are on our website Bella dash brave dot com. If you are here and listening to the end of this podcast, I have a [00:54:00] special discount for you for your entire order to get 10 percent off with code BEYONDBRAVETEN.
[00:54:06] Kyla: I just want to mention that before we say goodbye and good night or good morning and always stay brave.
[00:54:17] Podcast: Don't give things that people say bother you. Don't give them the win. Know yourself and love yourself
first.
