to create inspired healing, wellness & live out loud joy beyond cancer
Thank you to CureClick for sponsoring this post. All opinions are 100% my own. A fundamental right we have as patients is that of health literacy, which the Department of Health and Human Services defines as “the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed [...]
The emotional fallout of cancer takes a heavy toll. Experiencing your feelings in your own way, at your own pace, can be a challenge.
Hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul - and sings the tunes without the words - and never stops at all. Emily Dickinson Every once in a while, I find a quiet place and dial a phone number given to me by the good people at Cancer Hope Network. The person [...]
A few months after my mastectomy and TRAM flap reconstruction, I had it out with the light fixture in my walk-in closet. Like me, the bulb was burnt out. Removing the cover to replace it was easy, but I couldn’t get the cover back on for the life of me. As I struggled, I got [...]
Cancer hit me with guilt the moment it came into my life. Even now, six years later, it's still part of my cancer experience.
"[W]e need never be ashamed of our tears ..." - Charles Dickens One of the things I've come to accept about myself is that I cry easily. What hasn’t come easily is crying in front of other people. During the diagnostic and treatment phases of cancer, I usually clamped down my tears. As a mother, [...]
Getting a cancer diagnosis pulls the rug out from under your life. It's a struggle to give up expectations and learn to accept the unknown.
I just stumbled upon this poem, which I wrote about a year after I had my mastectomy. Part of the struggle of having breast cancer is accepting the damage done to our breasts, which mean so much to us as women, lovers and mothers. Now four years later, although I can't forget the price cancer [...]
Someone finally said it out loud. I’ve been thinking it since my diagnosis and, finally, someone actually said it. She was an older woman, who was obviously upset and angry about her battle with ovarian cancer. We came together while I was manning a table in the lobby of the cancer center with Sarah Mandel. We [...]
What does it take to walk through the fire of cancer emotions? Courage. The courage to show up authentically to our grief, our pain, our fear and our loss. And, never, never, never doubting our right to say "fuck off" to positivity when that's the way we feel. As Psychologist Susan David says, "(B)eing positive [...]
Today I want to share my first downloadable eBook with you: The WhereWeGoNow Gratitude Gems Series; Your 30-Day Guide to Jump Starting a Lifetime Gratitude Practice. Writing this book was a labor of love. I firmly believe gratitude is the single most important building block for reinventing life beyond cancer. Without gratitude, there is no [...]
It's easy to hate change, especially when it barges in frightening and unwanted. Usually, the first instinct is to fight it every step of the way. But if it's serenity you seek, you're only going to get there by accepting the changes you cannot change.
I recently received an email from Dr.Fang Fang Zhang, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor, Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University asking for my help getting the word out about her research. Dr. Zhang is a cancer epidemiologist studying the role of nutrition in cancer prevention and control. A recently published study co-written by Dr. Zhang showed that [...]
Where We Go Now 