Meet Paul Thornton

 

We recently connected with Paul Thornton and have shared our conversation below.

Paul , thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

“… you will be dead in six months.” Those were the words stated to me by a neurosurgeon in May 1985. I was 29 years old and up until that moment life had been wonderful. I was a rapidly rising executive at one of the world’s largest companies. I had recently purchased my first home in the suburbs; was married to my beautiful childhood sweetheart, and had two adorable daughters, one six and the other a newborn. Life as I knew it was about to drastically change. I had just been diagnosed with a brain tumor. The next day, a Friday, after the doctor made his inartful comment (I guess the look on my face and my questions suggested I was not agreeable to having the tumor removed), my family and I went home to NY. I was able to see a doctor there on Saturday. By Monday, I was admitted to the hospital and a week-and-a- a half later underwent 12-hours of brain surgery. The consequences, some temporary and some permanent were devastating. I was quite depressed for months and my self-esteem was shot. Then I decided to take control of matters and purchased a business–a video store. That was the beginning of the rest of my life! My business grew to three states and I was in the home video, and variety retail business for 23 years, and have been an entrepreneur ever since. In 2016, I published an award-winning book about my story of resilience.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

Although there was some outward evidence of my plight with brain surgery back in 1985, after some plastic surgery few people I worked with and interacted with over the years were aware of the permanent consequences I lived with quietly over the ensuing 30 years (loss of hearing, sight, taste, and facial paralysis on the right side.) I told few people due to embarrassment and self-consciousness; I found ways of compensating including positioning myself in meetings, avoiding social settings, and never smiling due to my crooked smile. You can say I did not live my full life for 30 years.

Then in 2014, my daughter Kina got married. She insisted I address the reception attendees. I was reluctant and asked what am I supposed to talk about and she told me memories of her growing up. Among Disney trips, high school sports, proms, and first boyfriends, and other fatherly recollections, I divulged the most powerful memory of all, when Kina was six and my life changed forever with my surgery. I told the story of six-year old Kina helping me to relearn to walk–she would hold my hand with her tiny had, and with a cane in my other hand, walk me around my mothers neighborhood in NY where I was convalescing. At the end of the talk—as they say—”there wasn’t a dry eye in the house.” It was liberating and cathartic to release secrets about my physical deficits that I had held inside for 30 years. Needing to hold on to that feeling of release and empowerment, as soon as I returned to my hotel room I started my memoir, provocatively titled White Man’s Disease. About race? No, it was about life and death.

White Man’s Disease, is a memoir described as “gripping and inspiring” in the press release announcing it as the winner of the North Street Book Prize for Memoir and Creative Nonfiction about Paul’s harrowing brush with death, the journey of recovery from trauma, resilience and ultimately transformation. White Man’s Disease is at once poignant, sad, tragic, funny, and compelling. (And, if I could get a dollar for everyone who asks what White Man’s Disease means…) I left nothing to the imagination in the book and ever since, have been able to lead my full life.

I learned I loved writing and wrote three additional books about my passion of cruising on the ocean.The cruise-themed books are a stark departure from my debut memoir. Despite their very different subjects, at the heart of White Man’s Disease and The Joy of Cruising Trilogy is passion and how passionate people do wondrous things.

After the completion of my 3rd and final cruising book last year, I started The Joy of Cruising Podcast. I am now well over 100 episodes, and it is listened to in 115 countries, is a leader in the cruising field, and in the top 20% of all podcasts worldwide.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Clearly resilience first and foremost. I also learned a lot about empathy for others, especially those dealing with physical challenges and/or traumatic matters. Finally, a sense of humor. In my first book, which dealt with some very difficult matters, tragedy even–my wife and mother of my daughters passed away in her 30’s, there were parts of the book which were laugh out loud funny.

How would you spend the next decade if you somehow knew that it was your last?

For most of the years subsequent to my medical calamity at 29, I was very healthy and as mentioned had adapted to my physical deficits. Then 15 years ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I was treated, operated on and cancer was in remission for 13 years. Two years ago, cancer returned and my treatment options were limited because of the treatment I received 15 years ago. I did have a procedure a couple of years ago and am fine for the most part but have to rely on medication that presents some unpleasant side effects for the rest of my life. But The Joy of Cruising Podcast brings me great comfort and joy, and virtually every waking hour I am working on it!

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