How is YOUR Heart Doing?
An update of my breast cancer journey
How is YOUR heart doing?
Whoa.
How does that settle with you when you hear that question? Let’s take a moment, ask the question “How are you doing? Pause, and settle into how that resonates with you. It seems rather surface, it is sweet and well received.
Now, ask the question “How is your Heart doing? How does that resonate with you?
For me, I experienced this with two different friends of mine. They both greeted me with hugs at different times this summer. Checking in with love and compassion and proceeded to look deeply at me and ask
“How is your Heart doing?”
It took my breath away, and I became a bit speechless for a few seconds. With both of these beautiful humans, my heart grew 10 fold and I was so incredibly grateful for that question. I felt the love and compassion in a completely different and supportive way. I found it hard to articulate and even now I have a hard time putting it into words. So, I am going to fumble in this post to share with you how my Heart is doing these days….
That question is now present in me daily.
These last 6 months have brought on a lot of ups and downs, struggles, surrenders, laughter, love, hugs, help, and so much more. My Heart has been challenged and at times forgotten about. My cancer journey has been a ride (you can read my initial writing here, and the second update here if you have missed out on the initial writings).
Since my last writing I have completed two major surgeries. August 22 I went through a bilateral mastectomy which was hands down the BIGGEST surgery I have ever experienced. I have only had two surgeries in my life prior to this, an appendectomy at 17 and a cyst removed from my right wrist in 2022, so to say that this was a big deal was real. This surgery was a 4 hour surgery and all went very well, but due to the tumor being closer to the surface of my skin we had to wait on putting in my expanders for a few days…which meant I would go back into surgery a week later. Not what I was hoping for.
I will direct you to our updates here, Michael has done an amazing job documenting this journey and sharing the details with our community. So I invite you to go and read, he is quite an incredible writer! I am so grateful for him!
The surgeries were a complete success. That part is incredibly settling and I can not tell you how amazing I feel right now. Of course, the last 7 weeks have been incredibly challenging with weight restrictions of less than 10 pounds and no weight bearing exercises…so NO intense yoga for this girl. Acceptance is a real thing when honoring my body and practicing loads of patience for not being able to do all the things I have been able to do before the surgery. It had its ups and downs. The expanders are in place and I have little to no pain now. They feel incredibly strange but I feel good.
That being said, my pathology results did show that one of my lymph nodes had cancer and that I did have LCIS markers in both my breasts tissue. So, in the end, the bilateral mastectomy was a very good decision and it also means radiation.
5 weeks, 5 days a week for a total of 25 treatments of radiation.
Yup. You read that right. Not what I was aiming for, not what my heart was planning on. This one is a tough one to swallow and it is still taking me time to find acceptance around it.
It has caused me to settle in these last few weeks to this question that is presented to me.
“How is my Heart doing?
Honestly, it feels really sad. I wish I could find the fluffy bunny answer and make it all seem like I have found strength and adversity and I have it all figured out. Alas, I can not. It is where I am at, the sadness is real. I have been trying to sit quietly, and sadly the white noise in my mind returns and I can't really hear anything. It sometimes takes over the voice of my heart.
I listen deeply and I can now begin to softly hear it telling me to love myself. To spend time loving my body. This may not be the path that I chose for myself or my body, but I do have the ability to give my heart space to love me and to give love and healing to the rest of my body, including my left chest and lymph that will experience radiation 25 times in a row.
I can hear it and then moments later it can disappear and my mind takes over and sadness returns, fear returns, overwhelm returns ... .and it is a do over again and again.
So, I wake up each morning, and give myself the gift of asking this same question. I try to sit and write. Sometimes the writing just can not happen, I am giving permission for the heart to speak louder than my mind. It slowly seeps in and I feel a bit better.
It's about the practice I guess. Showing up to give my heart space to breathe, to speak, and to give me what I need to maneuver through this journey that I NEVER in my wildest dreams thought I would be on.
I had a mentorship call a few weeks with one of my yoga mentors, and sometimes I believe deeply that people and moments happen intentionally in our lives and she shared a poem that seemed to capture my heart. Very appropriately captured my heart.
As I work through these treatments, I continue to work with my heart. Spending time with her and seeing what she offers me.
Deep listening and loving is all I can do through the turbulence, and when I do that I can access my whole self.
I am making a home inside myself. A shelter
of kindness where everything
is forgiven, everything allowed—a quiet patch
of sunlight to stretch out without hurry,
where all that has been banished
and buried is welcomed, spoken, listened to—released.
A fiercely friendly place I can claim as my very own.
I am throwing arms open
to the whole of myself—especially the fearful,
fault-finding, falling apart, unfinished parts, knowing
every seed and weed, every drop
of rain has made the soil richer.
I will light a candle, pour a hot cup of tea, gather
around the warmth of my own blazing fire. I will howl
if I want to, knowing this flame can burn through
any perceived problem, any prescribed
perfectionism, any lying limitation, every heavy thing.
I am making a home inside myself
where grace blooms in grand and glorious
abundance, a shelter of kindness that grows
all the truest things.
I whisper hallelujah to the friendly sky.
Watch now as I burst into blossom.
Julia Fehrenbacher
Namate my dear friends,
I wanted to take a moment to thank my community from the bottom of my heart. Your support during my journey has meant the world to me and my family. Whether it was your encouraging words, the time you spent with me, providing meals, or simply knowing you were there, it made a huge difference and has impacted my life forever.
This experience has taught me so much about the power of love and community, and I’m incredibly grateful to have you all by my side. Thank you all for being light and love in my life.