Episode Overview

When the scan comes back clear, does the thought of cancer actually leave with it?

For so many of us, the answer is no. The disease can be gone from the body while the identity of being a person with cancer quietly stays behind.

This episode started with a question a friend asked me over dinner, one that made me look closely at what really happens to who we are after a diagnosis.

Cancer can be something you are managing without being the identity you are living from.

Resources Mentioned:

Download for iPhone: 

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Work with Laura:
https://www.thebreastcancerrecoverycoach.com/health 

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Read the full transcript:

Laura Lummer 0:00
You're listening to Better Than Before Breast Cancer with the Breast Cancer Recovery Coach. I'm your host Laura Lummer. I'm a certified life coach, and I'm a breast cancer thriver. In this podcast, I will give you the skills, and the insights, and the tools to move past the emotional and physical trauma of a breast cancer diagnosis. If you're looking for a way to create a life that's even better than before breast cancer, you've come to the right place. Let's get started. Hey, friends! Welcome to episode 479 of Better Than Before Breast Cancer. I'm your host Laura Lummer. Thrilled to be here with you today, and you know I want I want to start this off with a little bit of a personal story. So I have an amazing friend who is a delicious cook, or should I say a delicious cook? She's a great cook that makes delicious food, and you know I'm just so lucky to be surrounded by wonderful people. And the other night she brought over some food that she had made for me, some Salisbury steak with this delicious creamy mushroom sauce. was so amazing, and we were chatting. We were talking about things that are going on with my health recently. She is a doctor. I'm super lucky to have her on my team. Just amazing, amazing the support that she's provided for me over the years, but as we were talking, she asked me. She said, "Do you think that the work that you're doing now is actually good for your health? And I said, "Oh God, absolutely! Like I feel like the work that I do and the people that I interact with is a really important part of what I do to support my healing. And she said, "Really, but aren't you talking to people about like really negative stuff all day? Are you just hearing people complain about cancer all day? And I said, "No, no, not at all. I mean, what I-that's not even the work that I do with people. The work that I do is to help people decide what they want to create in their life. I help women look at their thoughts. I help give them the tools to help overcome the fear that may be limiting them in their lives. But the conversations that I have are even if we bring up things that are causing sadness or causing suffering, we're really looking at what is your thought about those things and what else is true, and what helps move you forward in life? So all the work that I do is really about creating a better life for themselves, even when it comes to food, because when we start making better nutritional choices for ourselves, we start to feel better. When we feel physically stronger, we feel emotionally stronger, and vice versa. So she was like, "Oh, okay, that's really interesting. She says, "I would have thought that the conversations that you have were just really negative and like Debbie Downers all day. I said, "Absolutely not, not at all. I love, love, love the work that I do, and I'm so glad that she asked me that question. We had a really good conversation about what my coaching actually looks like, and I want to share some of that with you because I think it's really going to resonate with a lot of women who are listening right now. I work with women in all different places after a breast cancer diagnosis. Some are still in treatment. Some are still in, or some are living with metastatic disease. Some have finished treatment. Some have been told they have no evidence of disease. Some are many years out. Some are really in that first year of being released from treatment, which I think is very similar to a year of grieving, right? Of really going through the all the feels, you know, the anger about it, the resentment about it, the sadness about it, and I see something really interesting across this spectrum of women: having no evidence of cancer in your body doesn't necessarily mean that the thoughts of cancer are no longer running your life.

Laura Lummer 3:54
Because sometimes what I've seen is that when the cancer is gone, the identity of being a person with cancer is still very much there, and another thing that really kind of reinforced this, as I was thinking about this podcast, is I'm reading a book called Cure, and in that book he talks about working through your identity and healing your identity as being one of the pillars of health and of healing, and I totally agree with it. And I don't say this lightly, and I definitely don't say it with judgment. But if you think about what happens when you get a diagnosis, suddenly your life is all about appointments, scans, treatments, side effects, really, really difficult decisions, scary things. You start researching. You start to try think differently about food. You notice every little ache and pain. You wonder what's causing it. You wonder what you can do to keep cancer from coming back. So for months or sometimes years, your brain learns. This is what I'm paying attention to now, and then one day, you hear those words. There's no evidence of active disease in your body, but nobody hands you a new identity along with that report. Nobody says, "Okay, so now here's how you get to stop being a cancer patient, and here's how you go back to being yourself, but there's really no going back to being yourself because you're not the person before cancer. You can't be. You can't undo the experience you just had. You can never be a person who didn't have breast cancer or go through treatment for breast cancer. And I heard something really cool the other day. I was on a coaching call, and this woman was talking about a business that she had built that was super successful, and then it kind of all came crashing down. And she was saying, you know, I just want to get back to where I was. And what she was offered in that call was, how about if we don't focus on getting back to where you were, but we focus on becoming the newest and best version of yourself going forward with everything that you've learned, and that just landed with me. And I just really thought, you know, that's what I feel our lives are like all along, and I think that breast cancer makes it come out even more. But even after we have cancer, our identities continue to shift because we go through transitions of life. So yes, we get a cancer diagnosis. Suddenly, we're the person with cancer. Maybe we have a stage four diagnosis, and we can call ourselves the person living with cancer, or we call ourselves the person healing from cancer-two very different identities. But even as we go through life with these identities, do we become a person at the same time who is someone's wife, someone's mother, someone's daughter? And the evolution of those identities comes right along with us, so it all seems to me to be coming together right now because I'm working with my members on my four pillars of breast cancer recovery, and when I say working on it, I mean I've gone back to reconstructing it, to looking at the type of coach I was, and the person that I was when I first wrote this coaching program, the Four Pillars of Breast Cancer Recovery, and I'm pulling it back out and dusting it off and looking at it with my new identity of all the things that I've learned and the person that I've become, and not only the person I've become, but the coach that I've become. How do I want this to look different? What does my new identity see in this program that can be upgraded to something that can serve people even better? And a lot of my members who are going through it have been with me for a long time, so they've gone through it before. But I see in them a readiness for this, because I see it all the work that they've done on themselves. Many of them, most of them, also have a new identity. So the work that I do, and I think the work that all of us do in our lives every day, is not about helping us be better cancer patients, get better at being cancer patients.

Laura Lummer 8:25
It's about helping yourself remember that you're so much more than a cancer patient, than a person who's had cancer, and this sticks with me because a lot of people, again, even if they've received the news, you have no evidence of disease. There's so much fear there that the effort and the energy, the majority of the energy that they still are putting out in their life is energy around researching about cancer and what cancer treatments are available and what if cancer comes back. So we're still choosing that identity of someone living with cancer, even if it doesn't exist in your body, and I'm not saying that there's no reason to be informed, that there's no reason to stay on top of what the newest research is if you enjoy that. But if we're choosing it out of fear, then we're still in that role of being the cancer patient and getting ready for our next line of treatment, rather than choosing to put that energy into the new identity of who this person is, who evolved after going through breast cancer, of what they want in their life, right? Of who you want to be now? What you want your life to look like now? What you want more of in your life, and what brings you joy? What makes you feel alive? And what you want to do to care for your body-not because you're terrified of what might happen to it, but because you love the life you're creating. So much, so I think when our brain offers us the fearful, the fear-based question of "Oh my God, do I have cancer? or "What if I get cancer again? then I think maybe a more important question for how we actually experience our life is, "Am I living from an identity that says I'm sick? I'm constantly under threat of being sick. I have to protect myself, or am I living from an identity that says I am alive, like fully alive? I'm growing. I'm learning how to support myself, and I still have a life to create. No matter how old you are, no matter what you've been through, you still have a life to create. What do you want that life to look like? You know, it's a sure a little antidote with you that this reminds me of is that my mom years ago said she wanted a new car. Got to be at least five or six years ago that she was really. Oh, I really want a new car. My mom's 85 years old, so I would say it's right around when she was turning 80. And so my sisters and I were like, "Yes, mom, get a new car, enjoy your car. Oh no, no, no! She would talk herself out of it. She'd say, "No, I'm too old. What what happens if I get the car and I die tomorrow? Then you guys have to deal with the car, and we would all say to her, "Mom, then you had a whole day to enjoy your brand new car. Like it's fine. We'll we'll deal with whatever we have to deal with. But it's your life. It's your money. Enjoy it. Enjoy your life. No, no, no. So here we are, at least five, if not six years into the future. My mom still has the car that she wanted to trade in because she wanted the new car, and we still say to her, "Mom, get the car. If you would have gotten the car when you initially wanted it, you would have been enjoying it for the last five or six years, right? We put our life on hold, but we do that because of our identity, what we attach ourselves to, and especially if we're someone that's had a medical crisis in our life, our medical status can change long before our identity catches up with it. And I think, like in the case of my mom, part of that identity was an old person, right? She has this identity of I'm an old person at the end of my life, and so she'll limit herself in the things she'll allow herself to enjoy because she believes there's no value right in creating something or doing something when you're close to the end of life. But who knows? Who knows how many years she has left?

Laura Lummer 12:39
Who knows how many years so many of us have left, and you know, as a person in my early 60s, I hear things like this from my clients. I hear them talk about what is the point in doing this thing, right? Maybe save their money and leave it for their children. What is the point of investing in themselves or creating something for themselves or anything that just makes them feel good about themselves, and you know that I think we have to when we catch ourselves saying and doing things like that, and we see that we're putting more thoughts and more energy into the possibility of us getting sick again, or the possibility of this just not being worth it. Like there's not enough time left in life to enjoy life. When we hear ourselves saying things like that, we really have to stop and recognize where we're choosing to put our energy. In my belief system, if you do something, you get the haircut, you get the new hair color, you go on the vacation, and you have one day to enjoy it, then it's worth it, right? Life can be so full and so beautiful, but when we choose an identity that limits that, we can really be doing ourselves harm and causing ourselves suffering without even realizing it. So let's talk for a minute about how do you recognize when cancer has become part of your identity, so when my friend and I were having this conversation, I said, you know, language is very, very important to me, and there is a cohort of people that I see, that I've come across, that I've met, that I even see out on social media, who use a lot of the terminology that says, you know, I have cancer, or I have terminal illness, and for me, I try to move away from that because that, to me, those kinds of statements attach that to my identity, and the identity that I choose is a person who's healed from metastatic breast cancer. So I'm very mindful of language, and I think that language has a lot to do with how we perceive ourselves and the identities that we create for ourselves. So when I'm thinking about the language that I use, it's always about healing. And oftentimes I'll say I had a diagnosis of stage four cancer in 2020 because that's true, that's a fact, right? But I. Don't claim it or say my cancer or things like that are generally not a part of my day-to-day language. At least not if I can catch myself, because it's really important to me to have the identity of a healthy, disease-free person. That's super important to me. So I think one of the ways that we can identify when we're slipping into an identity that doesn't serve us. Is we can ask ourselves, do I feel more fulfilled here? You know. So going back to we're redoing together my four pillars of breast cancer recovery, and that first pillar is release. And in release, we look a lot at what kind of emotions we're going through, and things that feel heavy, things that cause us to feel heavy, to feel small, to feel limited, to feel like our potential is very limited. When we are there and we hear talk or language, we're talking to ourselves with that kind of language that promotes that kind of fear, that kind of limiting beliefs. Then we have to ask ourselves: Is that the identity I want? Do I want to identify with a person who thinks like thinks like that and creates that energy and belief system in their life? Because everything is energy: our words, our thoughts, our beliefs, our bodies-everything is energy. And when we're making a decision to have an identity that is thriving and growing and full of energy, and no matter what the circumstances we're going through, we're willing to deal with the truth of it. But then we're also willing to say, at this stage in life, how can I invite joy, and how much energy am I directing towards the identity of the happy, joyful, fulfilled person I want to be, even when I'm dealing with this? So when we catch ourselves with fear-based food rules, I can't have that because I might get cancer.

Laura Lummer 16:59
Versus, you know, what I'm really choosing not to put that in my body because it doesn't feel good and it doesn't promote the kind of healing that I'm after. If we want to create something in our life and we say, "Well, I'll think about that after I have the next scan, we'll see what's going to happen. If we're living our life always waiting for the other shoe to drop, putting off things that we believe we want, right? That we believe we want, but we're telling ourselves, "I have to wait to see if something goes wrong first. Then we're slipping into the identity of a person who's not in charge of their life, but who's waiting for life to take control of them, right? Waiting to see what's life going to do that I'm going to have to deal with, versus saying what am I going to create in my life? Am I going to adopt the identity of a person who creates life and also deals with what life throws my way as I'm in this creative process? Because everything's not going to be easy, nothing's going to be linear. Healing isn't linear. I certainly know that healing isn't easy. And then also being in that creative process and choosing to be that person who's creating their life while we're going through difficult things is not easy. So can we also adopt that identity of a person who shows up for themselves and cares for themselves, even in the most challenging times. So, I'm going to leave you with a couple of journal prompts to think about, because I think journaling is a wonderful practice that really helps us bring out the language we use and how we look at ourselves. And ask yourself if cancer has left your body, has it also left your identity? And if cancer has not left your body, does it occupy your identity? And if so, how much does it occupy your identity? Is it more than what you want? Are you in balance with it? Like, where does it play a role in your identity because that has a big influence on the life that you're creating, and I think I speak pretty confidently from personal experience. Cancer can be something that you're managing without becoming the identity that you're actually living from. So do some journaling on that, and then come to my free community on my website, Living Well After Breast Cancer, and let's talk about it. I'd love to hear what you think about how you've healed your identity, how your identity has transformed over your life, and what identity you're choosing or nurturing in your life now, and how that's serving you. All right, friends. I'll talk to you again next week. Until then, be good to yourself. Come over to my website, thebreastcancerrecoverycoach.com. Join me in the Better Than Before Breast Cancer Life Coaching Membership, where we work on all kinds of stuff like this. Join me in the Five Day Sugar Challenge, which starts this podcast will come out on a Friday that following Monday, september 14, and. We'll learn a new way of looking at ourselves and becoming that person who makes choices from love when it comes to nourishing our body. All right, be good to yourself. Expect others to be good to you, and I'll

Speaker 1 20:12
talk to you soon. mind is clearer than before. Your heart is full and wanting more. Your future's at the door. Give it all you got. No hesitating. You've been waiting all your life. your moment. This is your

Unknown Speaker 20:50
moment in time. This is your moment. This is your moment to shine, to shine, to shine.