All good things start in Italy, right?

I was in a deep winter during my initial treatment, literally and figuratively. It was February in Vermont, I was balder than the day I was born, heartbroken, and dissociating was a survival skill I became intimately familiar with. It was a dark night of the soul time.

As I patiently weathered the storms, inside and out, I dreamt of Italy — a place I’ve wanted to go since high school. The vision of me drinking a spritz on an Italian beach got me through a lot of dark days.

Anyone trying to heal from anything should just get on a plane to Italy. If it can bring my wearied heart and post-treatment body back to life, it can heal anyone. Very Eat, Pray, Love of me, I know.

I filled my cup with incredible food and wine, delicious ocean swimming, Italian babes, stunning vistas, and spontaneous side quests — stories for another post.

I was alone in a foreign country. I didn’t speak the language or know anyone for weeks. And I absolutely loved it. The thrill of a place that I have yet to be explore, wondering for miles but energized by a constant awe, and most importantly: the quiet confidence of solo travel.

It inherently is a practice of following your intuition. The only assignment is to follow where your desires lead you … and how fucking delicious is that daily agenda?

It is truly my favorite way to connect with myself. The prolonged quiet whilst indulging your desires breeds fertile ground for expansion.

Whispers of new ideas, fresh dreams, and reorientations all get aroused when I wander alone.

And in this Italian quiet, I heard art show.

I didn’t even have any art to show at the time so I couldn’t really tell you where this idea came from. It struck my consciousness out of nowhere and felt energizing, like a secret my future self was letting me in on. And I’ve learned that those are the whispers to hold with reverence.

Fast forward 12 months later… After my reoccurrence, a second surgery, 12 more weeks of different chemotherapy drugs, 6 weeks of radiation, and in the midst of transitioning to a new, expansive season of life, I hosted my first art show inspired by own cancer journey.

Stage III Transmutation

Navigating the darkness of my reoccurrence, I was desperate for other avenues to hold the heaviness. I spent hours journaling, in therapy, and in nature — essential tools for surviving hard times but I craved for more.

The pieces I created were birthed from a need to integrate and process. My creative process has helped me hold and alchemize the intensity of my fear, grief, and heartbreak.

And since I quit my job to become full time cancer patient, I was able to spend hours in my art lab (aka basement). With so much spaciousness and free time, I allowed myself to create without expectation. I semi-jokingly call this time my “unconventional artist in residency program.”

I steadily created regardless of not having a clear vision for the show. It wasn’t until the last few weeks, after sending out the invite blast, did the vision became crystal clear. Nothing like a deadline to get you across the finish line!

There was no road map or plan I was following. And that may be my favorite thing about this collection of work. It was truly created in the process.

Every. Single. Step. came through me.

Slowly, each idea was built off the last to create these installations.

My intention was to integrate my two worlds — an attempt to solve for the dissonance cancer creates. And to give my audience an immersive glimpse into my experiences in the darkness.

What is transmutation?

Transmutation is the process of alchemy: changing one substance into another. Alchemy is an ancient tradition that spans across continents and religions. Simply put, alchemists aimed to transmute base metals into noble metals; turn lead into gold. A process is also an analogy for spiritual and personal growth.

Alchemy is a spiritual quest to transmute darkness, stagnant feelings into light, constructive, life affirming energy.

(The Alchemist is one of my favorite books. I read it for the first time while in Italy — an incredible synchronicity that is not lost on me in the slightest.)

Here is a glimpse of my alchemy—

Fear is a Portal: A threshold of my fears

Cyanotype on trace paper, oil, thread.

I built a literal threshold of everything I was afraid of. The overwhelm, the medical system, the toxic drugs, the paralyzing uncertainty all poured and built into this installation. It is a physical representation of my portal of fear.

Stitched Together: An altar of my grief

Cyanotype on watercolor paper, thread.

Documenting the two opposing worlds of my physical body. All my medical imaging: CT scans, MRIs, biopsies, bone scans, surgical pathology reports — the reminders that the systems that make up this physical body are mine. And that the cancer is also mine.

Stitched together with the portraits from my photoshoot before my double mastectomy. Capturing the mind and body I lost while traveling through the other world.

A Window In: A gallery of my darkest nights

Pen on paper.

Being back in treatment was devastating. As I walked back the process, I used my drawing pad like an unprecious journal. I sketched freely allowing everything to flow out of me and through my pen.

It was a stream of consciousness and unconsciousness, raw emotion, creative concepts in their infancy, transmissions from my higher self. An unedited translation of my emotional state into other forms.

Turning myself inside out

This show was my largest and longest creative project I’ve ever completed. I described it as turning myself inside out… literally, my insides were on display. But it was also my most vulnerable endeavor I’ve ever done — baring my dark nights of the soul to the sunlight.

I found myself repeating “I’ve never done anything like this before” to my friends and family. It was an exploration, like solo-traveling, through a new place with my desires as my guide, trusting the process.

While my outsides are still in treatment, my insides have gone through an evolution.

It feels like integration. Which after an extended period of disconnect and dissonance, a step towards integrating is relieving. It is both softening and freeing.

And turning myself inside out was the essential catalyst to get here. A step required for the alchemy.

It turned lead into gold.

I am still riding the creative energy wave from the show. It has motivated me to continue living in this “I have never done before” state because I have learned that I thrive there.

So, I am very excited to announce TWO new things! For the first time, I am selling my art online and specifically, selling prints from the show. And, I am also launching my personal website (I am still building it out but Stage III Transmutation needed a home in the meantime).

Since the show, I am overflowing with whispers of more ideas and goals. And they inspire me to keep exploring new places, following my desires, and get good at being turned inside out.

And I can’t wait to continue to share them <3

BUY A PRINT

MY NEW WEBSITE

Selling prints is an effort to make my creative work more financially sustainable. If my writing or art has meant something to you, buying a print is a great opportunity to continue to support my creative work. You can also support my work by sharing my prints, Substack, or instagram page. Thank you for being here <3

Fear, I am learning, is a sneaky, sly little bitch.

It lurks beneath the surface of every decision and crossroad in our lives. It is at the root of almost everything we do: fear of change, fear of abandonment or loss, fear of the unknown. Yet, it is remarkably skilled at stirring up other emotions so it can remain in the shadows.

Fear takes the shape of darkness to me — of not knowing what is on the other side. That uncertainty is so physically and mentally uncomfortable that it triggers intense, instinctual reactions. Compartmentalizing, suppressing, dissociating, anxiety, doubt, all which typically lead to spiraling into a desperate grasp for some kind of control.

All cancer survivors know this darkness.

A cancer diagnosis heightens our sensitivity to our bodies. And once that sensitivity switches on, it doesn’t ever turn off. We become hyper-aware of not only our bodies, but everything else that makes up our lives; the good and the bad.

The fear rides right alongside that attunement. They are inherently tied together. You simply can’t be that tuned in without becoming intimately familiar with what you can lose.

And that is just fucking scary.

During the throes of the my reoccurrence, that darkness became profound. My anxiety ramped up so loud that I couldn’t hear anything else. I was in survival mode and it was instinctual to avoid the fear. I can’t feel afraid if I am too busy trying to solve it.

It usually goes like this: I sense one of my many fears related to cancer, my intrusive thoughts run wild and I chase them down the rabbit hole where then my mind, so creatively, invents every possible scenario. Then I perform gold medal worthy mental gymnastics, trying to solve each outcome before they even happen.

My brain works overtime to regain certainty. I search for solutions for problems that don’t exist yet — pretending as if I already know how life will unfold.

Sounds tiring, right?

It is! It was so exhausting that it actually wasn’t sustainable. My relationship with fear was depleting me.

And I’ve come to realize is that fear is exhausting if we aren’t practiced in trusting our future selves.

Somewhere along the way we have been conditioned to believe that controlling for uncertainty is easier than trusting our future selves to meet it. Out of pure exhaustion, I am calling bullshit on that.

Becoming a Night Traveler

In the midst of my second go at chemo last winter, and when my fears were most heightened, a friend and mentor1 led me on a journey that birthed a new perspective on fear; one that activates self-trust over anxiety.

Fear is a portal. A threshold that is designed specifically for us — to show us what we are capable of. It points in the direction we’re meant to go because crossing it requires courage and self-trust. And the result causes shape shifting into a more authentic, capable version of ourselves.

I received this fresh take on fear with skepticism at first. I responded in my head with, “ok maybe but try having cancer shaped threshold that induces panic attacks.”

Still, over the past year, I sat at the edge of my black hole. I slowly learned to turn towards it without spiraling or searching for an escape. As I learned to tolerate the intensity, the more I started to see it as a threshold.

And literally, my black hole metaphor is a portal in of itself. A doorway in space to the unknown.

To borrow from Rumi, I am a night traveler. All cancer survivors are night travelers.

With time (and therapy), I became more capable to withstand the intensity of my fears and the anxiety finally quieted.

Perhaps it was just the fatigue from a second cancer diagnosis, but I stopped fighting it. I got comfortable in the unknown. But honestly, just too tired to keep going down rabbit holes or grasping for certainty. I gave in to the darkness and let go of any expectations I had of myself while in it.

I quieted the anxiety long enough to be able to search the darkness.

Once I surrendered, I could sense the aspects of my portal — it’s shape, size, depths. I asked what it needed from me and listened to the insights of my higher self.

I started to feel the aliveness of the uncertainty and of the darkness.

To me, that is the life water Rumi refers to. The aliveness that only flows in the darkness, asking us to be watchful, patient, friendly, curious, compassionate.

Qualities that were required to surrender, and in turn activated self trust instead of anxiety in the face of so much uncertainty. The moon eventually appeared.

And on the other side? A new vantage point on life, with an incredible view. The most expansive season of my life. Life goals and plans finally bearing fruit after planting seeds in the darkness. All found by becoming a night traveler searching the darkness.

And it feels like true fucking freedom. Like I’ve stumbled into a new life hack.

When uncertainty no longer induces distress it can be fun. Playful. Energetic. Delicious. Invigorating. Expansive. Seducing. It feels like learning a new dance with life and intuitively knowing all the steps.

Each threshold we meet is an invitation from our most capable, confident future selves. Even the cancer shaped ones.

I still reside in this black hole, not because I am spiraling, but because it is ripe with self-trust — it is flowing with life’s waters.

Do you have a fear portal that needs tending to? What shape does it take? Can you sit, without an action, in the darkness of the unknown long enough to hear what it is asking of you?

Be brave enough to walk through it and you might just find life’s water flowing in it.

This physical end of treatment was consistently being reinforced by my loved ones and providers as the end goal. It was as if once I rang the bell, I would then get to press play on my life that had briefly paused for cancer. By ringing the bell, I would get to put this chapter behind me; move on with my life.

I held on to this goal and that assumption with a white knuckle grip.

And I did reach that finish line. I accomplished my goal, finished my recommended treatments and rang the bell. I got my port removed, threw a fun party to celebrate, my hair started to grow back. To everyone, it looked like the end.

But navigating this end proved to be its own challenge. I emerged from treatment weary, physically drained, and emotionally overwhelmed. My heart was still raw from leaving my marriage and what I had dissociated from during treatment was patiently waiting for me.

By crossing one finish line, I found myself staring down a new and daunting path: how to “return to normal.”

I think all cancer survivors agree that there is no “returning to normal.” And, there is no finish line. Cancer marked a demarcation in my life — an intense and complete reorientation. “Time to evolve” would have been more apt.

So I did that too! I let this chapter change me, I got good at healing, and I slowly got my feet back under me. I took the following months post treatment to get myself to a baseline I could recognize.

And I started to make plans that I had put off because of cancer — like finally moving out of the house I shared with my ex. After the hardest season of my life, I was desperate for change. I eagerly wanted to put as much distance between me and this chapter.

But alas, life had other plans and pulled the rug out from under me… again.

Almost exactly like the first, a new lump appeared — a painless, marble sized lump affixed to my chest. It quietly came out of nowhere. It was so quick and quiet that I actually had the same response as the first: nah, couldn’t be. I had quite literally just crossed the finish line.

I was still recovering. There hadn’t been enough time to develop a fear of a recurrence.

I allowed the lump to be there for about week before my experience finally kicked into gear one night when I couldn’t sleep. I heard my doctor’s voice in my head telling me: you aren’t a normal patient anymore. Sobering advice that typically keeps me keenly attuned to my body. But this time, it instilled a sense of fear and panic as I realized I was getting pulled back to the starting line.

Instead of starting the new chapter I was planning, I walked every step of the trauma I thought I was leaving behind — appointments in the cancer center, an ultrasound, a biopsy, and then a shocking confirmation that it was, indeed, cancer again.

I was only four months out from completing treatment. I hadn’t even made it to my follow-up appointment with my oncologist yet. What should have been a routine, follow-up appointment reverted back to asking: how did I get here? And what are we doing about it?

I didn’t have any breast tissue and I went through intense chemotherapy, so how the fuck did I end up here, again? Unfortunately, similar to my first diagnosis, there is no clear answer. I’ve asked every doctor I’ve seen since to speculate on what they think what happened (something I’ve learned they don’t love doing. And some even ask me, as if I fucking know buddy).

Here is what we think happened: This new tumor was directly under my original biopsy scar so it’s possible that my original biopsy seeded cancer cells outside of the tumor. Apparently this can happen in other cancers, though less common in breast cancer. And those cells were not seen on imaging or removed at surgery.

CELLS.

There were CELLS that somehow survived chemo and continued to grow once I crossed the finish line. I don’t know about you but I’ve never really considered the individual cells that make up my body. Was it 10 cancer cells? 500 cancer cells?

Or could it have been just one cell that chartered this path for me?

My specific flavor of breast cancer, triple-negative, has a high recurrence rate, especially in the first 2 years. It is considered aggressive because it is not impacted by my hormones, which means there are less treatment options than hormone-driven breast cancers. I logically understood this fact but never really felt it.

After imaging, it was confirmed that this was a local recurrence. Meaning, it was still curable. But, in order to do that I would not only have to chemo again, but also immunotherapy for 1 full year, another surgery, and 4 weeks of radiation.

Basically, run it back and start all over again.

Imagine doing the hardest physical and emotional thing you’ve ever done, like running an ultra marathon or climbing a mountain, but with no preparation and totally against your will. But you do it! You reach the finish line and finally start to catch your breath and think, “wow, I can’t believe I did that! I am so resilient but thank god I get to do something else now.”

But then you turn the corner and there is another mountain to climb. Huge bummer, right?

Hello, Fear

This diagnosis hit different. It was a sobering realization that I had an aggressive cancer. I was heartbroken, devastated, and for the first time, afraid.

I have proudly never been a fearful person. I am someone who actively and consistently chooses the more challenging paths in life. I seek out adventure that will force me to grow — I travel alone, I’ve moved to new cities, I love trying new things, I even attempted to be in a married throuple. I have done hard shit but I have never been afraid.

But getting another cancer diagnosis, and what that means, has awoken some deep fears in me.

Getting a recurrence has been the scariest thing to ever happen to me. And frankly that is difficult to even write. In fact, that admission has kept me from working on this post for months. Acknowledging and sitting with fear is unnervingly uncomfortable for me.

Fear that my life will always be restrained by cancer treatment.

Fear of not getting to do all the things in life that I want.

Fear of a continued heartbreak from my own body.

Fear of the intensity of grief.

Fear of fear.

I am even afraid of writing down these fears. Afraid that by simply sharing these fears, I could somehow manifest them into existence.

These fears have an incredibly strong energetic pull. I compare them to a black hole — powerful, profoundly dark, capable of sucking me into an entirely new a dimension where I am instantly separated from myself.

It was so intense that I actively avoided acknowledging it. Even glancing in its direction could pull me into fear’s orbit. And once I was there, the anxiety was overwhelming, to the point of panic attacks. My body’s avoidance felt instinctual, like a survival reflex.

I felt powerless against my fears. That black hole followed me everywhere I went, and I could easily and quickly collapse into it. It felt slippery and precarious — one dark thought and suddenly I was free-falling in a paralyzed fear body.

When I become trapped in this fear body, my heart firmly closes. It suffocates my creativity, suppresses my positivity and ability to problem solve. It lets anxiety get into the driver seat of my life and she sucks at driving. Wildly desperate and grasping for any kind of control. Another on-ramp to become separated from myself.

In the weeks following my second diagnosis, I was undulating between spiraling out in fear’s orbit and then surprisingly, becoming most grounded I’ve ever been. It was like once I eventually came out of orbit, I returned firmly planted in my reality. The relief of being back on Earth gave birth to this vivid clarity that released my anxiety for control. It focused all my attention on what was directly in front of me, nothing beyond.

The realization that I had an aggressive cancer for a second time at 33, and what that could potentially means for my life, infused this radical acceptance into my being alongside my fears. It is a clarity for life and radical acceptance that feels divine. And it seemingly appeared opposite of my black hole — and maybe because of it.

It’s been about 8 months since I received my second diagnosis and I’ve slowly titrated the intensity of these fears with a significant amount of work and therapy. The black hole still follows me, because I’ve learned that is where it will permanently live, but I can acknowledge it without getting sucked in or trapped. I’ve befriended it.

My dark thoughts are no longer trigger an automatic panic attack… most of the time.

Hell, I can even write about it and put it on the internet now.

I don’t think we talk about fear enough. There is an impulse to try to fix it; to change the situation so we aren’t afraid anymore. Our most fundamental human instinct is to avoid fear at all costs. To be afraid to is be seen as weak and uncertain. It is physically uncomfortable to be afraid.

So uncomfortable that we try to protect ourselves and loved ones from feeling fear. Even I have held back sharing the fullness of my fears in an attempt to protect the people in my life. Because if I wasn’t afraid, maybe they wouldn’t be either.

But this recurrence has forced me to metabolize fear. Spiraling out in fear’s orbit was not sustainable. I couldn’t run or hide from it or change my situation to avoid fear. Running this entire process back again has forced me to look directly into my black hole.

And if I found a divine clarity and radical acceptance living inside this black hole, then what else might I find in there?

My next few posts are going to be a continuation of my exploration of fear. A small series on looking directly into the darkness and facing it head on.

Stay tuned~

It was one of those moments where I couldn’t believe this was my reality.

“What the fuck am I doing here? Am I really seeing a plastic surgeon discussing the future of my breasts?” I thought, as he dictated his notes to the nurse; analyzing my anatomy with a no frills, cold, medical observation.

At the end of this appointment I asked to see photos of his previous patients — a plastic surgeon’s portfolio, if you will. It was advice I found on the internet and blindly followed, unsure of the intended purpose at first.

I mindlessly flipped through this boob binder, a little numb, trying to decide if enough time had passed so I could politely leave. Until a photo of a woman jumped out at me. She was unlike all the others — a perfectly flat chest without breasts or nipples, just scars. Perhaps it was because we shared the same arm tattoo, but I saw myself in her.

And then a feeling of overwhelming confidence washed over me. A calm knowing that carried me out of that office with my surgical decision made.

For a time, I actually felt grateful that out of all the cancers, I got breast cancer. That feels hard to admit because what an odd thing to be grateful for. But in my defense, the treatment seemed straight forward. Breast cancer is common meaning well researched and funded, and most importantly, the cancer can often be removed with surgery.

My surgery was the first step of my treatment, and deciding what to do forward felt like an impossible decision. I was just handed a cancer diagnosis and now I am supposed to decide on this life-changing, significant body modification?

I knew it was going to be a decision that was always going bring me back to my diagnosis — a reminder of cancer every time I looked in the mirror. So I spent a lot of time trying to connect with my future self.

How do I want to physically wear this chapter for the rest of my life? What do I want to look like? How do I want to feel in my body? How important are breasts to me? To my gender? To my self-image?

There weren’t really any clear answers.

The only way to make a decision like that was to trust the overwhelming confidence I felt in that plastic surgeon’s office — to trust the feeling of my intuition guiding me.

Medically speaking, there is no survival benefit to a mastectomy versus a lumpectomy. The survival rates are the same. However, in my specific case at a stage 1, a lumpectomy would require radiation. But a mastectomy, with cancer free lymph nodes, would not.

I was adamant about reducing the amount of medical intervention in my life so I opted for the aggressive surgery approach and had a bilateral mastectomy with a flat closure.

I was foregoing any future reconstruction and would no longer have breasts.

Frankly, I hated all the options available to me. I wanted none of them but “going flat” felt the most uncomplicated. It meant less surgery, no future mammograms, no breast prosthetics, no reconstruction to consider, and no plastic surgeons.

It felt like ease amid the chaos, which at the time of initial diagnosis was a significant feeling.

I was still incredibly afraid for the surgery — for the radical change that was about occur. I was afraid of not recognizing myself in the mirror. Afraid of how it would change me. Afraid of a never ending grief now sewn into my body.

I loved my body with breasts but like all feminized people, it took a lot of work to get there. The work of building self-love and confidence happens over a lifetime, and having this surgery felt a little bit like having to start that process over.

I was going to have to learn how to love this new body as much as my pre-diagnosis body. But self-love is very strong value of mine and something I knew even cancer couldn’t take away or change.

Actually, in my experience, cancer has only strengthened my values and this one wasn’t any different.

Being forced to significantly change my physical appearance taught me that true self-love has to be fully unconditional, in its entirety. No exceptions.

So if I wanted to sincerely and genuinely stand firm in my value of self-love, then my expression of it could not change in form or frequency; regardless of my surgical decision.

By nature, self-love should be absolute and unwavering, right? Like a faucet of love flowing freeing a deep well.

But in practice, it isn’t. I didn’t practice unconditional self-love before my diagnosis. There was always a critical, nit-picking voice that disrupted the flow.

I can’t remember where I read this, but it has become a mantra for me. A mantra that I repeat to myself when I look in the mirror, or wear a shirt that I used to love but now doesn’t fit quite right. I am integrating it in deeply because I think it’s a really good one.

I am not saying there isn’t still grief around my surgery. There is. And I try not minimize it because I do still miss my pre-cancer body at times.

But really, beyond my physical body, I just miss the old me — the one who didn’t have a surgeon or an oncologist or know shit about cancer. My diagnosis is a demarcation in my life. There is a me pre-cancer and a me now. And my scars are a physical representation that. It is like my outsides match my insides.

When I looked in the mirror for the first time after the surgery, I was flooded with fear. It has taken over a year to really acclimate to the change. With a lot of exposure therapy and repetition of my mantra with my hand over my heart, I feel at home in my new body.

And those pre-surgery fears came true, but with entirely different meanings.

There is a new version of myself when I look in the mirror — one without breasts or nipples, just scars. A version of me that allowed intuition to be the guide. A version I am immensely proud of.

The grief is sewn into my body.

But so is my resilience. My unconditional self-love. My relentless zest for life.

And I can’t think of a better place to wear those parts of me than straight across my chest.

And for anyone considering going flat, I highly recommend using this website as a starting point. It helped me immensely. I am currently working on a cancer resource library of sorts — so stay tuned!

Sometimes, these worlds overlap each other perfectly. It feels like radical acceptance, integration, alignment, gratitude, ease, and full of glimmers.

And other times, it is like oil and water. My cancer life feels separate, limiting, entrapping. I struggle with a strong feeling of resistance. There is a persistent disbelief that this is one of my realities.

Moving between these microcosms, and all the gray area in between, makes my cancer feel abstract at times. It is a relentless presence in my thoughts, routine, and schedule yet it doesn’t always feel like it is happening in my body. It feels strangely distant from my physical body.

So I got curious and wanted to see it for myself.

I requested to have my medical imaging sent to me and I’ve been spending a lot of time looking over them. I’ve had various MRIs, CT scans, biopsies, and bone scans over the past year. Tools to examine my anatomy; to purely to look at my physical body without anything else that makes me ‘me’.

It feels eerily unfamiliar but I am wildly fascinated by all of it. There is so much happening underneath the surface. A machine made up of my own DNA, doing what is required to survive without ever having to think about it.

As I am looking over the cross sections of my organs, studying how they fit together, marveling at how well designed the body is, I have to remind myself that what I am looking at is my own body. My organs, my systems, my skeleton all quietly lurking below my consciousness but carrying me through all of it.

And then there is my tumor, the smallest little blip, just on the outside of my ribcage. Compared to everything inside of me, it appears extremely underwhelming. It isn’t intimidating or frightening, it doesn’t hold any visible heaviness. I didn’t expect it to look different, but it is simply there, among everything else. And like everything else, it also mine; made from my DNA.

It is almost disorienting getting to know my body in this way because it is so disconnected from my lived experience; to what is going on outside my body.

Since my original diagnosis in 2024, I have had 2 surgeries; 2 port placements; 15 rounds of chemotherapy; 6 different drugs injected into my veins; various biopsies; scans galore; and countless days where I felt like I was hit by a bus.

All this effort for a collection of my own cells that went rogue, evaded my immune system, and formed a mass smaller than 2cm — the size of a peanut. That math feels off, doesn’t it?

This tiny cluster of cells, that small blip on my scans, has upended my life. It has radically changed me — physically, mentally, emotionally. And the physical effort required to be cancer-free is so wildly disproportionate to what my tumor looks like on these images.

The physical toll on my body has been exhausting and truly humbling. It feels like I’ve been running a marathon but one I didn’t sign up or train for.

Enduring Chemotherapy

Last month, I finished my second go at chemo treatment.

Chemo is a wildly fucked experience, to put it mildly. The drugs are so toxic the nurses gown up to administer them. I am instructed not share a bathroom with anyone for a few days afterwards because of the risk of toxicity to others. I read somewhere that one of my drugs, colloquially called the red devil, could melt linoleum flooring if spilled.

And then I watch them connect these drugs to the port in my chest and I mainline that poison straight to my heart. Fucked, am I right?

Unlike other chemo drugs which are given through an IV pump, the red devil is administered by a nurse with the largest syringe I’ve ever seen. Because of the high risk of tissue damage, it requires a human touch.

During this three and half minute infusion, I’m advised to keep my mouth cold with ice or a popsicle to constrict the blood vessels to prevent mouth sores — a common side effect since mucus membranes are made up of the rapidly reproducing cells that chemo attacks.

I opted for a rocket pop on my first go, thinking that if I squint my eyes hard enough maybe this popsicle will make this experience ‘more fun’ …or something. It did not. It likely ruined rocket pops for life. Ice chips were the way forward.

The 5-6 days after a chemo infusion were always the lowest. And I mean, low. I call these life-saving drugs poisons because they are literally biohazards in every other scenario except when in my veins (a fact I still don’t quite understand). And because poisoning is the most accurate way to describe what it feels like.

Mouth sores, bone pain, nausea, brain fog, extreme fatigue and a full body ache that I can only describe as what shards of glass in my lymphatic system might feel like.

There wasn’t much I could do or take to make me feel better. I just had to muscle through it. Ride out the storm in what felt like an extreme test of patience and grit. And it humbled me. Chemo exhaustion was a new level of fatigue. I would get winded by seemingly simple tasks like walking a flight of stairs or standing in the a shower.

By the time I started to ascend from the slump, I had a few days of feeling like myself before I had to go back in again. This cycle of physical highs and lows became a new rhythm in which I lived my life around; with large dips and steep peaks. The highs were high and the lows were low.

The days I felt good in my body — with mental clarity, energy, a desire to participate in my life again — felt like a full 180 degree turn from the chemo slump days. It was whiplash to have two drastically different, but similar in intensity, embodiments every other week.

Getting through months of chemo required a mind over matter approach. I dragged my body through this muck because I had to. There wasn’t an exit strategy or a clever solution I hadn’t thought of yet — only to bear down and get fucking through it.

It was survival mode and the goal was to just get through one day at time, even if it was a crawl.

That lack of control made me feel like my body was not mine. It was like my body was on temporary loan to the cancer treatment. It was to follow the treatment plan accordingly, regardless of how grueling because there was simply no other choice.

Dissociation became a powerful tool for me. It is quite a savvy biological response when you just need your body to make it through. The pace of all the information, treatments, and trauma to the body moved faster than I could process. Getting through it physically was enough — I wasn’t resourced enough to take impact of the freight train.

I would pass through my cancer life for treatment and appointments and then quickly try to return to my normal life. Keeping them separate made sense.

It wasn’t until the end of chemo when I was able to take stock of what I went through, physically and emotionally. I am just about a year out from my first round of treatment and I still feel like I am working on processing on everything (hence, this Substack!).

Glimmers of Alignment

Having to patiently ride the waves of a bad day taught me how to savor every minute of the good days. I was so eager to have my body returned back to me that I found myself noticing my body and feelings in a more meaningful way.

I cultivated an ability to witness their sensations and quality with a new founded embodied presence. A skill I’ve been practicing for years through yoga and meditation but apparently needed cancer and chemo to truly hone it. Life is such a bitch in that way, isn’t it?

I hate to be that stereotypical cancer girlie but every day I am not in chemo, feeling like shit and balder than the day I was born, is a day I am extremely grateful for.

In the moments when my two lives perfectly overlap, with an embodied presence, I am able to be fully steeped in that gratitude. There is no disbelief or resistance to my cancer life, just a calm ease and a radical acceptance for life’s unfolding.

Those moments are glimmers of alignment between my two lives. And that alignment feels like healing. It is as if my cancer life has actually nudged closer to how I’ve always desired to live — present, noticing, grateful, in my body, grounded, joyful.

There is a lot of contrast between my two lives. A tension between them that I am not trying to resolve. I am not aiming to collapse them into one because both are true. And the glimmers, the gratitude and healing live inside the tension.

And so, it is a learning how to hold my two radically different realities within my resilient body. And often times, just being here in this moment, inside the contrast, in this body with my organs and my skeleton, in this machine still quietly working, is enough.

I have been processing my grief and attempting to make sense of my two lives through art for awhile and am just now starting to document it all on my art page. You can follow along here if you are interested in seeing more of my ‘insides’…

As someone who is naturally inclined towards introspection, New Year’s is my super bowl. This portal and changing of calendar years is the ultimate invitation to reflect. I love looking back on how life has surprised me, taking stock of the triumphs, challenges, and joys that happened throughout the year.

It is a time for noticing how life unfolded in the past year — always unexpected and unpredictable but exactly how it was supposed to.

It is an chance to acknowledge the amount of growth and change that can happen in just one year. Even the messy and painful moments of life’s unfolding hold meaning, if only to remind us of our strength and resilience.

I’ve had a hell of a year. The litany of “hard things” I encountered in 2025 feels longer and heavier than years prior. And yet, I refuse to title it a hard or challenging year and just move on to 2026.

Because even though 2025 had its fair share of difficulty, it was also my most creative year. And my most resonant year. It was a year of:

Being held by community.

Building self-trust.

Attuning to my body.

Becoming deeply present.

Evolving.

And so it was a year full of stark contrasts. 2025 was year that showed me what I am capable of. A year that pushed me to my edges; molded me into a new shape; demanded that I grow into a stronger, truer version of myself.

My Year-End Ritual

I’ve never been a fan of resolutions (is anyone?), so instead I made my own year-end ritual. Every December, I make a “year in review” list in my journal.

I call it a highlights list but “highlights” is a loosely used here. There is no structure or requirements for what goes on the list. It can be anything; big or small, eventful, a prevalent feeling or theme. I list everything from the adventures, moments of joy or sadness, what I grieved, the wins and losses, accomplishments, lessons.

It is everything that filled my year — all the deliciousness of one year of life distilled into one list.

I start by letting it be a stream of consciousness. I let the memories and experiences from the year flow through me, noticing what comes to the surface when I think about my life within the calendar constraint. Then I will go through my photos or my calendar app to find the smaller and quieter moments.

Listing my year like this puts all my experiences on a level playing field. It gives me the distance to appreciate the highs and lows with the same reverence. I can recognize how much I endured, celebrated, loved, and grew.

This practice deepens self-trust.

I celebrate each bullet point with a yeah, I fucking did that. My lists always make me feel accomplished, grounded, and grateful — even in a “difficult” year. Or rather, especially in a difficult year.

My highlight lists reinforce my belief that life will always work out how its supposed to. They serve as beautiful reminders to walk into the unknowns of a new year trusting the path we are on.

So as I reflect and celebrate how 2025 shaped me, I look forward to the mysteries and veiled lessons held for me in 2026 — knowing they will be surprising but aligned with exactly what I need.

May 2026 be bursting with: more art, abundance of community, personal growth, following what is resonant, gratitude, self-trust, wild adventures, and unknown journeys towards what is true. And less cancer. Fuck cancer.

A Few of my 2025 Highlights —

• Starting this Substack!

• Traveling 3 weeks solo in Italy; an intuitive pilgrimage back to myself

• Surviving the hardest winter of my life; sitting in my dark nights of the soul

• Enduring 7 months of chemotherapy

• Hosting my entire family and closest friends in Vermont for an epic birthday/fuck cancer wig party

• Spending Thanksgiving in Hawaii with my family

• Experiencing being bald & watching my hair growing back

• Feeling deeply supported by my friends and family

• Ringing the bell

• All my time spent in nature; riding my bike, swimming, or being on the water — solo and with friends

• Selling my art for the first time

• Sharing unexpected, meaningful quality time with family and friends during treatment

• Facing recurrence and some really intense fears

• Staying grounded and true to myself through it all

• Still loving life

The day my life changed

My biopsy site was still tender and bruised as I sat down for work on that mid-October Friday morning. I went through the motions of getting settled in for work, but I was anxiously awaiting the results from the biopsy I had just two days earlier. It was 9am and I was just about to dive into work when I saw the automated and impersonal “new test results available” email come through to my inbox.

At this point, I still had an incredible amount of optimism that I would be fine because I am not a person that gets cancer. Ever since finding that small, firm, painless lump in the shower, I had spent weeks coming up with evidence as to why I would be spared. I was only 32, I had no family history of breast cancer, I took care of my body, I actively avoided things like teflon pans and aluminum based deodorant, I meditated regularly, I was a kind person – cancer surely couldn’t get someone like me!

At every step of the process, the consultations, irregular mammogram, biopsy, I doubled down on telling myself this evidence like it could shield me. I had fully convinced myself that I wouldn’t get cancer simply because I couldn’t be the type of person who gets cancer.

When I followed the link to see my test results in MyChart, my vision blurred as I was struck with words I knew were bad: Adenocarcinoma, invasive, ductal type, nuclear grade 3 and Ductal carcinoma in situ, solid and comedo patterns, nuclear grade 3. At first, it was like a dream and a punch to the gut at the same time – air left my lungs, my focus turned into tunnel vision, my body felt hollow, floaty and unfamiliar.

I knew carcinoma meant cancer, but this was just a test result report so there was no context or explanation until the doctors received my results and called me later that day. It isn’t a great system and I do not recommend anyone learning they have cancer from an email.

Left to my own devices alone in my office, I followed my most basic instincts. I googled it and then called my mom, in that order. Reality, and panic, started to settle in as I called my mom. It was 6am her time but I knew she would be up. She answered the phone like she already knew why I was calling, her voice cracking when she answered. There is nothing that prepares you for telling your mom you have cancer, it was shocking and heart breaking for both of us.

Later, after more tests and imaging, I was diagnosed with stage 1, triple negative breast cancer.

Flung onto a new path

Becoming a cancer patient immediately became a full time job that I didn’t apply for. There was suddenly a system in motion and I was now an unwilling participant. Appointments filled my schedule, I was getting calls for oncologists, surgeons, genetic counselors, and fertility specialists daily. It was simultaneously a flood of information and not fast enough.

Cancer isn’t really news that is digestible or rather, I do it in parts, and I’m still working on it. The weight of it fluctuates wildly from hour to hour; day to day. It is something that is too heavy to try to hold all at once.

So, since I was completely unsure what to do next, and being the well-trained capitalist that I am, I continued to show up for work because business as usual, I guess! And physically, I felt fine and like the same me I was before that email. My breast cancer was not found through being symptomatic so my body felt unchanged but actually my whole world just changed. And that dissonance was (and continues to be) incredibly disorienting.

I plan to write more about the loss of control that comes with a physical illness, but from the get go, having things in my life I could control became imperative. So continuing to go through the motions of my life, like showing up for work on Monday, kept me grounded.

At the same time, I was meeting with teams of surgeons, oncologists, and radiation oncologists to make a plan. I was to have surgery to remove the tumor, then 4 months of chemotherapy, and then radiation, if required. But the first step in this whole process was to decide if I wanted to freeze my eggs.

Chemo wreaks havoc on your reproductive organs so I’d be put into medical menopause throughout treatment to try to protect my ovaries. But it is not guaranteed they will ‘turn back on’ once I am finished. I had to make a sudden decision, within a few days, if adding this additional, medically invasive procedure to ensure I could have kids in the future was worth it to me.

It was. But it was a choice I had to make for solely myself. Because while all this was happening, I was actively dismantling my marriage and grieving the loss of plans to family plan with my partner. The weight of the diagnosis continued to mount.

I started processing my diagnosis in these bursts of brutal clarity. Out of nowhere, it was like I could feel the true weight of having cancer in its entirety. These moments always hit me like freight train — unexpected, powerful and overwhelming.

The first time that train hit me, I was sitting alone at my dining room table, staring at the $8,000 worth of hormones and syringes I had to inject myself with to stimulate egg production. The feelings of grief, sadness, and rage were so intense, I just froze. I was so enraged at those fucking hormones and what they meant.

I still have these freight train moments, even a year later. But I’ve learned that this is how I integrate what is too big to hold all at once.

As one of my favorite writers, Liz Gilbert, describes when grief hits you “…the posture that you take is you hit your knees in absolute humility and you let it rock you until it is done with you.”

So now, since I am better practiced, I ride those intense feelings of rage or grief, without resistance, and let them absolutely humble me. Easier said than done, of course.

An awakening to attunement

My diagnosis arrived on the heels of an already challenging year. Just one week before receiving that email, I told my now ex-wife that I wanted to separate and move out. In the year leading up to that, I had moved across the country to a small town of 5,000 where I knew no one, left a job I loved, and watched my marriage unravel. I was inundated with changes that consistently exceeded my window of tolerance.

Because of all those swift changes, my stress and anxiety were at an all-time high. I was having regular panic attacks. And I was putting in a lot of work to suppress all those feelings. I tried medication, meditating, distractions of all and any form, 3 types of therapy – anything to get them to disappear.

My body was telling me that what I refused to admit — that even though we both tried our best, our marriage was over. But I was too afraid to face those feelings of anger, grief, failure and fear of loneliness. So I just kept shoving them down, all the way to the point of self-sacrificing, gas lighting myself, and erasing my own boundaries.

I had doubted my own knowing so much in that year that I had grown accustomed to ignoring the signals my body was giving me. And then I got cancer and it woke me the fuck up.

It felt like my body was saying, “can’t ignore me anymore, bitch!!!” Cancer became a gateway to prioritizing myself; to finally uphold my boundaries. It demanded that I stop self-sacrificing and start protecting myself. And once I did, I returned to myself.

For a long time, I really wrestled with whether that year of chronic stress and dysregulation had an impact on my diagnosis. I don’t believe that there is any one thing can cause or prevent cancer. But there is an instinct to ask, what did I do wrong?

I try not to waste too much emotional or mental energy on those questions because sometimes just shit happens in life and you get cancer. And shit happens is the only explanation I’ll ever get and the one I am forced to accept. Instead, I choose to focus on how it taught me to listen.

Cancer turned the volume up on my own intuition so loud that I can’t un-hear it. Now, I pay the fuck attention to my body, not only because I have to in order to advocate for my physical health, but because once you start, there isn’t a way back. Self-abandonment isn’t an option anymore. It has been a lesson in attuning to myself — something I clearly and desperately needed to learn.

Cancer continues to be an unfolding of a lot of life lessons wrapped up into one fucked up diagnosis and this was one I was grateful to learn.

‘You just have to start’ is the whisper I kept hearing. And so here I am, listening to the siren and starting! And wow, it is deeply uncomfortable! It is no wonder I just ignored this voice in the past. This feels like a form of exposure therapy; putting myself out there regardless of how uncomfortable it is.

As a Gemini, I have always felt like these two sides of myself, like the iconic Gemini twins, ruling my person. Together, they have created an internal duality with a push and pull force between them. There is one twin that is fun, adaptable, friendly, incredibly flexible, logical, good in social settings, and generally extroverted. It is the twin most people in my life are most familiar with because it is the one I am most comfortable with being seen by others. It is also the twin I have let be in the driver’s seat of my life for most of the time. She is so efficient!

The other twin is observant, sensitive, knowing, emotional, spiritual, but afraid to be truly seen, and extremely anxious to be judged or criticized. She fights for the driver’s seat, but I’ve never fully trusted her to take the wheel.

For the majority of my life, I have maintained a decent balance between these two identities. And by that I mean, totally separate from each other. They each had their perspective roles in my life and they were to stay put, never to change or shift. Somewhere along the way I learned that this dichotomy was safe. I allowed the tenacious, more extroverted, highly adaptable twin to handle everything life threw at me because she was so capable! Feelings? Who needs ‘em! Let’s work everything in life out with logic and that quiet, unpredictable twin can continue to just be along for the ride and chill the fuck out. Unfortunately for me, it was a life strategy that was inevitably precarious no matter how hard I worked hard to control it.

I don’t believe that this experience I am describing is unique to just me or Geminis for that matter. I am no expert but I am pretty sure this is basically the principle of shadow work. I believe everyone has a deep internal part that does not get enough sunlight. And mine is so ghostly and vitamin D deficient that she scares me when she emerges. Regardless of that discomfort, I am in a moment in life where this inner twin is demanding some sunlight; demanding the driver’s seat and I am giving in.

In the past year, I juggled a few intense overlapping traumas – the dissolution of my marriage, a cancer diagnosis, and then another cancer diagnosis. It all fucked me up real good and my strong, exterior-facing twin could no longer handle it all. Through the underbelly of survival mode, she had finally met her match and it was time to let the twin of my interior landscape take the wheel.

The past year was a crash course in how to hold, appreciate, and learn from both grief and joy equally. And though I am very much still in the messy middle of it all, it taught me how to ride the waves of life with openness and curiosity. These abrupt life turns showed me that our sirens are not mirages anymore. They come to us with a purpose and it is our job to decide what we do with them. They are calls to action from our innermost desires and they are ideas that can provide a framework on how to live.

And perhaps our best ideas come out of these unexpected transitions of life. Through these upheavals, I explored my inner landscape in new ways. And what I found was that my inner landscape is abundant and I want to play in it.

So, here I am starting the damn thing. I haven’t written anything more than an email since college 10+ years ago but I feel called to share my cancer journey (and, let’s be honest, probably more) because this is a resource I wish I had when I was going through the worst of it. Cancer is intense, demanding, and intimidating and the more resources, conversations, and community, the better we can heal. While I plan to start with reflections from my journey around cancer and everything in its orbit, I also am not sure what else might come up — stay tuned!

It took cancer and heartbreak to ignite my journey inward into myself, to finally start listening. And maybe this will help you on your own journey, wherever you’re at. Are there any inner whispers you have been ignoring? There are no bad ideas here so let’s step into the warmth of the sunlight and listen. Thanks for being here.