Episode Overview

Fourteen years ago, I received a diagnosis that changed my life: breast cancer.

It wasn’t just a medical moment—it was a wake-up call. And today, I don’t celebrate a “cancerversary.”

I honor my Awakening Day—the day my life began shifting toward deeper healing, stronger purpose, and more intentional living.

In this episode, I share what post-traumatic growth has looked like for me, how I’ve evolved over the last 14 years, and 14 life-changing lessons that have helped me build a life that’s better than before breast cancer™.

If you’ve ever felt like cancer took something from you that you can’t get back… this episode is for you. Because healing is not just about your body—it’s about your heart, your spirit, and your future.

🎧 In this episode, you’ll hear:

• What “Awakening Day” means and why I stopped calling it a cancerversary
• The real definition of post-traumatic growth (and how it shows up after cancer)
• 14 lessons I’ve learned in the 14 years since my diagnosis
• How to reframe a diagnosis as an invitation to wake up—not give up
• A message for anyone in the middle of the pain, fear, or confusion right now

🕒 Episode Highlights:

• 00:00 – My story: from diagnosis to awakening
• 04:35 – What post-traumatic growth really means
• 08:15 – 14 lessons that changed my healing journey
• 17:40 – How cancer helped me rebuild my life with intention
• 22:00 – Words for anyone still in the middle of their healing
• 25:45 – Final thoughts on honoring your own awakening

🌱 Ready to build a life that feels better than before cancer?

Inside the Better Than Before Breast Cancer™ Life Coaching Membership, I support women just like you in creating healing routines, self-compassionate mindsets, and a lifestyle that supports your body and soul—without overwhelm.

✨ Join the membership here

💖 Pay What You Want: now through July 31
Choose your price for any of these self-guided programs:

• Becoming You 2.0

• 90 Days of Wellness

• Create a Life You Love in 168 Hours

• The Five-Day Sugar Challenge

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🎙 Subscribe & leave a review on Apple Podcasts.

Read the full transcript:

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 on the insides 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.

0:33
Hey friends, welcome to this very special 419th episode of Better than before breast cancer. I'm your host, Laura Lummer, and the reason this episode is special is because it will come out on Friday, July 11, and that is the day that will mark 14 years since I was first told I had breast cancer. Wow, 14 years. Sometimes that feels like a lifetime ago. Sometimes it feels like just yesterday. Because if you listen to the show, you know, I had a stage four recurrence in 2020 and I work daily to support the healing of my body. So it is something that's always there, even though it's not always where my mind is. So lots of mixed feelings that come up on a day like this, and one of those mixed feelings, I think, is around the thought of, what do you call that day? I gave this a lot of thought, and I think I often give this a lot of thought, and nothing has really served, or I think, encompassed the meaning of that day for me. You know, I think sometimes I've called it my survivorversary, sometimes a cancer Versary, but it's like I didn't really fit what I feel or what's happened to my life since the day of that diagnosis. I look at that day and I think that was a day that's literally a before and after day, right? There's like life before and life after, and not in necessarily a bad way, life after in a way that I regrouped and reorganized and changed my life in ways that I didn't even know I could or ways I didn't even know I needed. And so I decided that I will call this day my awakening day, because it really was a day that awakened me to a different perspective of life to the reality that there was a new way of living for me, that I saw things differently, and that over that amount of time, everything has changed, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, everything that I do in life is different. And in this episode, I want to share some things that are just really close to my heart, that aren't really just the pain of diagnosis. That's never my focus. I don't like to focus on just pain. I like to acknowledge pain and suffering, because it's a part of this journey, but it's not what I like to focus on. I like to focus on the growth that can come from it, and I realized that that in itself, can land kind of hard for some people, depending on where you're at in your journey. But stay with me, and hopefully you'll hear something in this episode that resonates with you, whether you are newly diagnosed, many years out, and disease free, dealing with a recurrence, in pain, whatever, right? There's so many phases and so many different places that you can be after a breast cancer diagnosis, but no matter where you are, I think that we can always use more hope. We can always use a reframing perspective, and I hope that that's what this episode will bring to you, because I can truly say that 14 years to the day, since that diagnosis, I would not trade the person I've become. And that was kind of a hard way. I thought about, how do you state that? Because it was, is it I wouldn't trade what's happened to me for anything? Hell no. If I could trade never having cancer but still be the person I become, I do it in a hot second, but could I be the person I am doing what I do, if not for that diagnosis? And I think that answer is no. Now, is that better, worse, different? Who knows? We'll never know what never happened. But I wouldn't trade who I've become as a result of what happened on that day 14 years ago, or that day four and a half years ago? Because, Boy, I tell you it, the growth has intensified in the last four and a half years. That's for darn sure. So, you know, I just want to address again that I realized that this can be difficult, right, depending on where people are at in their journey. Because sometimes we hear people talk about their experience and like it's a blessing, or they have gratitude for it, and you're not in a place where you're feeling that right now, and that's okay, you can always come back to this. And I don't think that this episode necessarily just speaks to just that one kind of phase in the journey, right? We know that post traumatic stress. Syndrome is a part of breast cancer diagnosis. Many women, I think it's like 35 40% of women who get a breast cancer diagnosis suffer some form of PTSD. And what PTSD is when something really hard or really scary happens that your brain and your body have a really hard time recovering from right, the brain, it's a trauma, and so the brain is traumatized, but the body gets traumatized too. Right? The Body Keeps the Score, and it feels it, and it's very real, and some of us experience it on a very deep, deep level. But there's another side to trauma that we don't really hear about, and I don't think we talk about often enough, and sometimes I wonder about that, do we not talk about this? Because there's this thought that if I talk about this in a way that sounds positive, people who are suffering might feel worse, and we have to be careful to realize that everybody's in their own place, as I've just talked about, and where we are is valid in our own experience, and it's okay to share our experience. Doesn't minimize or devalue or dismiss anyone else's experience, right? Life is a journey. Healing is a journey. And so this other aspect of trauma is post traumatic growth. And post traumatic growth is also when something very difficult happens, and it cracks US Open, right through that struggle, and we come out changed, but we come out changed in a good way. We gain a deeper appreciation for life. We might shift our priorities, we might connect with others more deeply, rearrange our relationships, or just find a stronger sense of meaning or purpose or spirituality or connection in our life and in our world. And I'm absolutely not saying that that happens overnight, and I'm also not saying that trauma is a blessing, but I am saying that growth is possible after devastation. It's happened in my life. I'm a witness to it, having happened in many, many women's lives who I've worked with, who have rediscovered themselves and recreated their lives in a very different way over time after this diagnosis. So if you are still in a place where you feel like cancer has taken so much from you and your life, I want you to know that maybe at some point you'll see that it has also given you something unexpected, but where you are right now is okay, right? I believe that there can be a new version of yourself that's more wise and more grounded and more in touch with what really matters to you, but I also think that going through those painful periods where you feel robbed, lost, angry, resentful, it's a part of it. It was absolutely a part of my journey, right when, after that first diagnosis 12 years ago, I think I spent that first three, three and a half years in frustration and anger and, you know, all kinds of there was positive. It was, well, there was a lot of positive, but really, I was in a fight mode, and so I want to share with you some of the lessons that I've learned that I think are so valuable. And I could literally talk for hours. I could do a whole weekend retreat about the things we learned from breast cancer, and in just talking about my life, the changes I've made, when I look back and the things I've learned and the things I've done and the things I've accomplished, along with the perspective I've adopted, is I could talk for hours about it's amazing, but here today, I want to offer you what I think is one valuable insight for every year since my original diagnosis. So I'm going to have to use my fingers, because I don't want to lose count on this. I have an outline, but I should have numbered it, right? But the first one is my body was never the enemy, and like I just said a minute ago, how much I fought my body, right? My body was never my enemy. It was my partner, and it was trying to do things to protect me, even though I did not understand that I thought it was betraying me. I thought I did all the right things for it, and it didn't do what I wanted it to do. But the fact was I wasn't working with my body. I wasn't partnering with it, and I was the one pushing it. I was the one telling it to do what I wanted it to do. I was the one ignoring when it was sending me signals saying, This doesn't feel right, this doesn't feel good. You need to make some changes. And I was the one who wasn't listening to my body that was telling me this ain't working for me. My body was never my enemy. Number two, healing is not a destination. Healing isn't something that's just done. I think it's a life long relationship for yourself, and it reminds me of that Shrek saying, right? Like Ogres are like onions. We have layers. Healing has so many layers. Healing doesn't just mean that. I have no evidence of disease, no, no. And honestly, honestly, I think that healing sometimes doesn't even mean that you're cured from disease. Healing is much deeper than that. So can it mean, and do we all want it to mean that we're cured from disease? Yes, and that's awesome, wonderful. The healing is so much deeper, and it's letting go of things, and it's changing the perception, and it's allowing yourself to be who you are and be okay with who you are. It's allowing yourself to feel what you feel and not judge it. There's so much healing. And every time you get to one place, I think there's another place, and you just start to see, oh, here's another one, and here's another one. And this is why it's called growth, right? It's not stagnant. Growth doesn't just end Well, I guess it does. Like bodies grow certain amount and then they stop. But you know what I'm saying on the on this higher level, like, growth continues, personal development, personal growth, it doesn't just stop. I don't think we ever want it to stop, right? I think number three that slowing down is not unproductive. It's not being lazy, it's not being a failure. Slowing down and resting and holding space and creating space for yourself is so productive. In fact, it's 100%

11:25
necessary. We busy ourselves so much throughout our lives that we often don't even know ourselves, because we don't take the time to slow down and listen and slowing down. Sometimes it can mean you want to binge on something on Netflix, but I mean just being with yourself in silence for a few minutes a day, checking in on what you need, allowing yourself to slow down without judgment, without guilt, and just feeling good in the moment of saying, Wow, I'm here and I can slow down today. And it's a gift. It really is. Number four, you do not have to prove your self and your strength to anyone, right? I think in that first diagnosis 14 years ago, I was thrown into the pink world, right? And it was about survival and warrior and pink and show up for work bald and sick, and, you know, try to just not take any sick days and show up and show up. And all of the women, not all of them, let me take that back. A lot of the women I work with have that same mentality. I never took a day off a story I've shared, I know, many times on this podcast, and I laugh with one of my clients about it is doing radiation at lunchtime, so you don't have to be a burden to anybody else, so nobody else has to pick up the slack at work because you have freaking cancer, right or not missing a day of work because you're having chemotherapy. My God, what are we thinking? Right? We don't have to prove anything to anybody. Cancer is a time to stop and say, who hold on? What the f is going on here? I need to stop. Give myself space. And healing is our job, right? Not being strong, understanding what healing means. It's it's huge. This I could do on a whole series of podcasts on, but it's a powerful lesson. Number five, Food Matters, but joy matters too. And when it comes to food, we get so hung up. We can get so hung up on food. We can have the fear of food. We can have the denial of food, right? We can look at food in a way that we resent it and say, Why should I have to change this? Why should I have to do that? Why can't I eat those things? We could look at it another way and say, Oh, my God, no, I can't have any of that stuff that might bring back cancer, right? Food is important. It totally matters. You know, I'm all about the nutrition, but food can also be joyful, and joy is important. So it matters who you eat with how you eat, how you nourish yourself, and how you feel. When you nourish yourself is nourishing your body. Is feeding your body, also feeding your spirit. When I think about the connection with food. I love to think of it from the Ayurvedic perspective. In Ayurveda, consuming food is like a ritual, like a ceremony. It's deeply spiritual. It's very mindful, and it's taking in this thought of this food is sitting in front of me. Where did it come from? How did it get here? What a miracle, right? That you could put a seed in dirt and expose it to water and sun and it becomes food. I mean, how freaking awesome is that, right? It becomes all different kinds of food. And we think about what, what is the energy in this food? How did this food get. To me who touched it, who harvested it, how did it travel to me, who prepared it? How did he get on my plate? Well, there was a movie, oh my God, just popped into my head. There was a movie years ago, and I loved it. I think it's called, Like Water for Chocolate, but it's about this family, and there are several daughters, but the one daughter is in love with someone, but the mom is going to have the older sister marry that person, and the young daughter is a chef, and she's the one that cooks for the family, or she like the family chef. She's a professional chef, but she's the one that does the cooking for the family, and her emotions go into the food. So when she's heartbroken because her mom won't let her marry the person that she loves. Everybody who eats her food literally gets food poisoning, right? When she's joyous and happy and over the moon everything she does and how she repairs that food, people feel like they're just like on some kind of ecstasy when they eat it, right? So, who prepared the food? What went into the food? What energy, what thoughts went into the food? And then when you look at it and you think this is about to become a part of me? Do I want this to become a part of me, right? Is this food beautiful? Is it going to nourish me and nourish my soul? Or maybe not? Are there some things you might look at and say, Do I really want that to be what I build my cells on right now. Do I really want this thing in front of me to become a part of me and I find for myself, following that train of thought, connecting to your food and that way can help bring so much joy, right? Because it's not good or bad, it's what does this mean to me right now? So whether it is a beautiful, organic salad or lovely piece of cheesecake, right? Is this going to nourish your your body and your spirit? And I think that's a really important lesson that we can pay a lot of attention to, and we can give a lot of energy and insight, where we can gain a lot of insight from thinking about all right? I think we're on number six. I may have lost count, but I think we're on number six. Letting go is healing. Letting go of shit, and that includes people, habits, expectation, thoughts about you, right parts of who you used to be that don't serve you, like letting go, dropping the baggage, the conditioned beliefs, the thoughts you were trained to think, even though they don't feel right to you, letting go. We think about the terminology like, wow, that person was a lot of baggage. What's baggage? Thoughts about what used to be right, resentments or sadness or grief, and we go back to the process of healing, letting go of that is a part of this journey of healing. Sometimes we let stuff we go. We think, Wow, I did a lot of work on that, and I let that go. Let's say it's with a person, a relationship, maybe a relationship where people have wronged you, or you believe that they have wronged you. And you do a lot of work on you think, Okay, I've made peace with that. Now I'm at peace with it. And then you see that person, maybe that's a person you don't have to see in your life all the time. But then you see them, and you feel stuff come up. You're like, Ah, I thought I let that go. But there is something even deeper, I tell you, 100% I know I deal with that 100% and letting go is that process of just continually healing, right? We get to let go. Number seven,

18:37
not everyone will understand your path, and that's okay, because it's your path. We don't need them to understand they don't need to understand that that job doesn't serve you. They don't need to understand that you choose this way of eating. They don't need to understand that you choose this way of treatment. Right? You have to do what's right for you, and people are not in your shoes, and they will not understand all the time. Can we ask them to be supportive Absolutely? Can we hope that they will be supportive? And can we say, even if you're not supportive, please don't bring your negativity about this to me, because this is my path, and it feels right to me, right? We get to choose our own path, we get to choose our treatments, we get to choose our food, we get to choose our relationships, our work, our life, our joy. It's up to you, and if someone else doesn't understand it, I always do this. So somebody says, Well, I wouldn't do that if I were you. And I think, okay, couldn't I look at that person's life, or almost any other person's life in the world, and say, Well, I wouldn't do that if I were you, but I'm not you, and so it's you and it's your path, and it's your journey. And this is ours, right? This is ours. So the only person who needs to understand the choices you. Make is you and we can just be okay with that. Allow ourselves to be okay with that. Number eight? Is it eight? Number eight, your intuition is so powerful trust the little voices, and that's another reason why we need to hold space for ourself. So we hear the little voices, the little nudges, the little feelings, if you get them in your throat, in your chest, in your gut, wherever it is, the tingling in your skin, there's something that's telling you this is right. This is not right. Where you can be solid with you trust yourself. Learning to trust yourself is so powerful. And I know trusting your intuition is one of the healing factors in radical remission and in the nine, well now 10 factors of healing, because exercise has been added. But I cannot emphasize enough how we feel something and it feels right and it feels true, and then we let it go to our brain and we overthink it, and we talk ourselves out of it, and we judge it, and we say, well, what will somebody else think? And maybe I'm not a nice person, and is that the right thing to do? And we've got to get out of the head and come back down to the feeling, the intuition. It's powerful, and you get to trust yourself. A lot of people say to me, Well, I don't want to make the wrong decision. And I'll say, how will you know if it's the wrong decision? How could a decision be the wrong one? Is it the right one? Is it the wrong one? At the end of the day, the only question is, will it work out the way you want it to work out? Maybe it will. Maybe it won't. We don't know because we never know, because we live in the unknown, and the best we can do is trust ourselves now, and if it doesn't work out the way that we wanted it to work out, then we can still have our own back and say, Okay, I believed with everything in me that this was the right thing. It didn't go the way I had hoped, what I learned, and how do I move forward? And that's it. There's no right or wrong, because there's nothing to compare it to, right? It's like I said at the beginning of this podcast, would I change the person I I've become? Would I be the person I am if I hadn't had that diagnosis? I have no idea, and I will never know, and so I will not put energy into wondering about it. Right? All we can do is keep moving forward and trusting ourselves. And with that said, you're allowed to say no, I think that's number eight. You're allowed to say no. You're allowed to say no, that anything that drains your peace. If you look at your life, you're like I have always been the person that everybody comes to to fix things, and it is exhausting. You gotta say no, then your mind will go to well, what would they think, and what will they say? And who will I be if I say no? I don't know, but let's find out. Maybe you'll be amazing. Maybe you'll love it. Maybe everybody else will grow, because you don't have to fix everything for them. You're allowed to say no to the people, the situations, and if it feels right for you, I think I have to be careful here, when we when I say that, I think a lot of people go to isn't that selfish, and I want to remind you that selfish by definition, means you doing something that causes harm to someone else, right? You taking something for you that causes harm to someone else. So when we're caring for ourself in a compassionate way with healthy boundaries, we're not doing harm. And in fact, let's say that. I say, Yeah, I'm not going to be the person to fix all of the things, because you keep making dumb decisions, or you don't stop and think for yourself to even try to figure out where you're at, and I'm gonna leave you to it this time, because, my friend, you gotta figure shit out, right? I can't use all my energy figuring it out for you. Will that potentially be a struggle for someone? Yes, but is that to their detriment, or is that for their growth? You think about it, because you're allowed to say no number, whatever number it is, I don't know. Laughter is medicine. Happiness is medicine. Never, never, never. Underestimate the power of joy and laughter. And this is so important, and and this is why it goes back to saying no to things that drain your peace, right, holding space for yourself, but intentionally inviting joy into your life every day. What makes you happy, what causes you to left? When was the last time you left like when was the last time you had tears in your eyes because you were laughing so hard? Laughter is medicine, my friend, don't forget it and invite it into your life. Make a point of it. My friends sometimes will say to me, oh, every time we say we want to get together, you break out the phone and have us put it on the calendar, and that's it. Keeps making it happen. You got to make shit happen if that's what you really want. You know there's. People you say, Oh yeah, we should get together. And you really don't want to. There's people who say, Oh yeah, we should get together, and you really want to take the next step and put it on the calendar, get together with the people you enjoy.

25:12
The next one,

25:14
this may be, I don't know they're all important, but this one, I think, is the foundation self compassion changes everything. Do you live with self compassion? Or are you proud of the statement? No one's harder on me than I am on myself? Do you beat yourself up for every little thing? Because beating yourself up never creates positive change. Kindness does non judgment, does curiosity, does self compassion will change the way you perceive everything. Decide to be easy on yourself. I lived my life hard on myself. I'm proud of being hard on myself, and that went for everything, everything. I happen to be clumsy, and I drop a lot of stuff. And with the neuropathy in my hands, I drop even more things. Now, in the hand and foot syndrome, I drop even more things. Now I try to get rubber cups if something's really important, and one of my sisters are around, they would say, let let me pick it up, Laura. And I let them, because I can laugh at myself, because I know I drop stuff okay. There was a time in my life where that wasn't okay. There are times in my life where I say I'm gonna go to a restorative yoga class where I just literally lay on this mat and stay on a bolster or a block or a blanket and allow my body to open for five minutes at a time and don't break a sweat. No way would that have happened 14 years ago. Wait, we're going to yoga class. Is there a level three? That's where I'll start pushing ourself right, just being hard on ourselves, emotionally, physically, in every way. I should do more. I have to do more that wasn't good enough, that's never, ever going to serve us in healing, self compassion, forgiveness. Not only is it good for you to forgive yourself and love yourself, but it sets the standard to the expectation of how you want other people to treat you. You beat yourself up, then other people criticize you and whatever it is, demean you and you're like, I deserve that bullshit. No, you don't deserve that ever kindness, compassion. None of us are perfect, none of us are perfect, so why not just laugh off the imperfections, accept them for who we are and treat ourselves with some freaking compassion. Okay, here's a big one too. There is no such thing as going back to normal after a breast cancer diagnosis. There is only moving forward into a life that fits who you are now. Period. Let go of that idea. Work through it. We've got to work through it. We've got to look at our thoughts about going back, going back, going back, life only goes forward. Things change, and we have to work on acceptance with self compassion. We have to work on self judgment with self compassion. And we have to embrace who we are now and learn how to live in the present moment, without our mind creating all kinds of Netflix original horror series about the future, about the past, judgments, condemnations. No. What is normal anyway? What even what is normal mean? I want to go back to the way I used to be. Well, a lot of people say that, and we start coaching and talking about it, and it turns out there was a lot of things going on in the way. Some people used to be

28:47
raising my hand,

28:49
and we really don't want that. We want something different, so we drop that. I gotta go back to normal. I just want to be normal again and learn to love ourselves for who we are and decide who it is we want to become. Now I know this number 13 because there's only one more after this number 13. Nature heals, sunlight, fresh air, quiet, peacefulness. These things are sacred. They're not just optional. They're not just when I can, if I can, I should haven't done it forever. They're therapeutic. They're sacred. Hold a sacred space for them. For getting outside, for being in nature, for having your hands in the dirt gardening, for having your feet on the grass, even if it's only in your backyard, for taking in sunshine and fresh air whenever you can, giving your brain a moment to disconnect from the wild, techy, busy lives that we live. Nature heals. Outdoors heal. Think about when you when was the last time you spent time in nature, and even if you're working a busy job, you. Telling yourself, at least go outside on your lunch break, get out from under the fluorescent lights and walk outside to take in a breath of fresh air and feel sunlight on your face. This is so important, make it a habit. And finally, lesson number 14, there is always more life to be lived. It's never too late. You're never too old. You know, I had somebody comment one time on a Facebook post of mine, and they said something to the affected, if you have metastatic breast cancer, there is no hope. There is no future. Mm, sorry, I call bullshit. I have metastatic breast cancer, and every single day is a new opportunity for me to live and be happy. Every day is a gift, right? So as long as I'm here, I can learn how to paint, I can travel more, I can start a new exercise routine. I can decide to do whatever it is I decide to do. There is always more life to be lived, and who cares if you don't finish? What if I decide to go take a class and learn how to do pottery and I never get the chance to finish a vase? Who cares? I decided I wanted to try, and I went out and I tried. I went out and I had the experience, there's always more life to be lived, as long as you are still breathing. Never give up on that. Never say, you know, this took my life away from me. Be in it, in the moment, and live it as much as you can. And sometimes I know very damn well that as much as you can means all I can do is lay there on that bed and stare at the ceiling right now. I have no energy. I am in extreme pain. I get it. And you know what holding space for yourself in those moments without judgment and asking yourself, what would bring me the most comfort right now? Do I want someone to lay in this bed next to me, not talk to me, not turn on anything, not read anything, just be here? Do I want to be with myself and just listen and understand what I need to heal? How do I create more peace for myself? I've been on every phase of this journey, friends. So I could tell you I know, from surgeries to radiation to IV chemo to oral chemo to excruciating pain to surgeries to crutches to being disabled. I've been through it all. I understand it is hard, but we can choose how we want to respond to it, and there's always more life to be lived, as long as we are breathing. That's 14. And I hope maybe something resonated with you, and I believe full heartedly that you've got your own lessons that you might want to add to this list. Maybe check some of mine out and put some of yours in. But think about what are some of those hard earned lessons that created post traumatic growth for you, these lessons that are so meaningful that maybe you need to write them down, and maybe you need to remember them and remind yourself of them and remind yourself how far you've come. Give yourself credit. We do not give ourselves enough credit. Gosh, I'm gonna have to wait to add that on number 15 next year. We don't give ourselves enough credit for the successes, for the things we do, for the wonderful things we do for ourselves. When I look back at the woman I was on July 3, 2011 when I woke up, I rolled over in bed, my forearm fell across my chest, and I felt a lump in my breast when I think about how far I've come since that day, it's pretty dang amazing. I'm no longer too busy, too tired, too disconnected from my own needs. I no longer don't listen to my body or pay attention. I speak to myself with love and compassion, so much gratitude, and I am intentionally practicing that on a daily basis. And I allow myself to slow down so that I can enjoy really, this gift of every single day. And it was that diagnosis that woke me up, but it didn't happen overnight. I can recall fear, exhaustion, anger, swirls of emotions that came with that diagnosis and the second one to follow, and dealing with it and processing it. So I want to tell you something that I wish someone had told me you do not have to have it all figured out right now. Growth does not always look like clarity or confidence. Growth is fuzzy. And in fact, I think most of the time growth is scary fuzzy. There's self doubt. People say to me all the time, I just want to know. I want to know. Well, we don't get to know. Is all unknown, and that's why we manifest it. That's why we decide to create it. And we make a decision, like, that's what I'm going to create. And then we go forward into the unknown, and shit comes at us, and we like, okay, pivot, okay. Pivot, okay. Me pivot again. So clarity, really, we don't have clarity for the future. If we did, man, I would open a palm reading station and I'd be raking in the books. There's no such thing as clarity. We don't know what's coming. So sometimes the only thing that growth is is breaking down and crying in the shower, crying, giving yourself the space to as the story I've shared before on one of the radiation treatments that I had to go into on crutches because I couldn't walk, and I was exhausted, and I couldn't make it like I could see the door that I needed to get into at the hospital, and I didn't have the energy to get to it, and I just stopped there, and I just cried. And sometimes we have to. Sometimes growth is canceling plans and saying no and saying that doesn't serve me right now. I need a moment. Or, you know what, I don't like the way, the lifestyle or the behaviors or the things that happen there, and what's going on with those people, and I don't want to expose myself to that, so we get a council right, and sometimes it's just giving yourself enough grace to get through the damn day right, to get through the day and just be like, I did everything I could to get here, and if you did that, then you're doing better than you think, and you gotta Get yourself credit for that. Right? You are growing. Sometimes it doesn't feel like it, but you are trust that every day that you show up for yourself, whether it's to nourish your body, whether it's to rest, whether it's to say no, whether it's to just let yourself feel you are creating something beautiful because you're becoming that future version of yourself that you can be even more proud of than the person you hopefully are already proud of today. Yeah, that brought up a lot of emotion there, thinking about that, that period where I couldn't walk, that was a tough one, right? But there's always a turning point. There's a doorway, and I believe that it was these diagnoses that really woke me up to that, and it woke me up to the fact, and it continues to wake me up to the fact, and I continue to remind myself that I get to choose the kind of life I want, that I get to choose to nourish myself, to rest, myself, to move, to breathe, but most importantly, I get to believe in what's possible. I I get to believe in my healing. I get to believe that I can create anything I want. I get to believe that just because I had a stage four cancer diagnosis doesn't mean I can't build a kick ass business that I love every single day. I get to believe that, and I hope that this episode gives you permission to believe in yourself and to believe that you get to choose those things too, right? I want to see you have your own awakening day where you get to stop looking back in fear, and you get to look forward with hope, even if you take fear along with you, right? We gotta embrace that and think we're human beings. We'll never be without fear. We'll never be without self doubt. It will pop up, and when it comes up, let it be there. Take it along with you. But choose to put more energy into hope. Choose to put more energy into belief. Okay, and I'll be here doing this podcast. Remind you of that, as long as the universe allows, if you would like more help with that. Guess what? For the month of July. This is coming out in July 11, 2025

38:24
I am running amazing specials on the programs I have created, the do it yourself programs. You can go you can download them, and you can do what works for you, find what you need to support yourself and make it happen for you. You'll find everything at the breast cancer recovery coach com. I hope you check it out, because I'm running a pay what you want special. And that means, if you've looked at one of my programs and said, Man, I'd really love to do that, but I don't have $67 then you do it with whatever you have and you do something good for yourself. All right, my friends, enjoy. Take care. Thank you for being a part of this journey. 419 episodes into this podcast, and so many of you have been a huge part of this journey, and you're why I do this, you're why I show up. It means the world to me to get to be a part of this community, and to get to have had the support from all of you that I have all the time. You know, it gives me hope and it gives me things to look forward to. And I think that looking forward to things is a part of healing, right? It's inspiring. We want to have things to look forward to. So thank you for always giving me something to look forward to, and I look forward to talking to you again next week. Take care.

39:38
You've put your courage to the test. Laid all your doubts to rest. Your mind is clearer than before, your heart is full and wanting more, your future's at the door.