WEBVTT
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I'd love to help you get vulnerable.
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Let's get naked.
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Hey everyone, I'm Ann.
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Welcome to the let's Get Naked podcast, where we dive deep into vulnerability.
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In this space, we'll explore what triggers us, uncover the patterns holding us back and discover how to take charge of our own growth.
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If you're ready to dig in, be vulnerable and face the tough stuff, then buckle up.
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It's time to get naked.
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Today, we're going to be speaking about cancer.
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Cancer is one of the most brutal, unforgiving and devastating diseases that robs people of their health, their time and sometimes their very essence.
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It doesn't care about age, gender, their very essence.
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It doesn't care about age, gender or dreams.
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It doesn't discriminate.
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One day you're going about your life and the next you're staring down the terrifying reality of an illness that feels like it's slowly eating away at everything you thought you knew about your body, your future and your world.
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It starts with that moment of diagnosis when your world comes crashing down, a single word that sends you spiraling into a whirlwind of confusion, fear and disbelief.
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No one is ever prepared for that moment.
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It's like everything you've worked for, everything you've built up in your life, doesn't matter anymore, because suddenly your fight isn't about career or family or future plans.
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It's about surviving, about getting through the next day, hour, minute.
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And then it becomes a full-time job Doctor's appointments, treatments, endless tests and a constant battle with your own body as it either succumbs or fights back.
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The physical toll is gut-wrenching.
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Chemotherapy, radiation surgeries these treatments don't just try to kill the cancer.
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They obliterate your health in ways that leave you feeling like a shell of the person you once were.
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Your body becomes a battlefield ravaged by the very things meant to save you.
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You lose your hair, your energy, your sense of self.
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Sometimes you lose parts of your body or your ability to do things that once felt so simple.
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You're constantly fighting against something that feels both inside of you and entirely out of your control.
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But it's not just the physical destruction.
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It's the mental and emotional strain that no one talks about enough, the loneliness, the isolation, the crushing weight of wondering if you're going to survive or, worse, how you're going to survive after treatment ends, because cancer doesn't just stop hurting you once the chemo is over.
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There's the fear of recurrence that haunts your every day.
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There's the grief of what you've lost, not just your health, but sometimes relationships, opportunities and pieces of yourself, and that can feel like a second wave of trauma, one that no one warned you about.
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Cancer doesn't just affect the people diagnosed.
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It affects everyone around them Families become caregivers, friends become strangers as they struggle to find the right words to offer support, and loved ones are often forced to face the uncomfortable reality of mortality.
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It doesn't just disrupt your life.
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It changes the very fabric of your relationships, your social circle, your community.
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People may try to comfort you, but no one truly understands what it feels like unless they've lived through it.
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And let's not even get started on the financial devastation Medical bills pile up, insurance doesn't cover everything, you lose time at work, you struggle to stay afloat, and on top of the emotional toll, there's this crushing weight of debt and uncertainty about the future, which can feel even more suffocating than the illness itself.
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Cancer is a thief.
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It steals from you in ways that no one fully realizes until it's happening.
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It steals your peace of mind, it steals your plans for the future, it steals parts of your body, your identity, your sense of security.
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But most cruelly, it steals time, the time you thought you had, time with family, time to chase dreams, time to live the life you imagined.
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And yet, in the midst of all this.
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Survivors rise, they fight, they pick up the pieces, even when everything feels shattered.
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But that doesn't mean the scars physical, emotional and psychological go away.
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They stay.
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They change you.
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Cancer may take a lot, but survivors are living proof that it doesn't take everything.
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We hold on, fight back and keep going.
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But it's a journey filled with suffering that shouldn't have to be this way.
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Cancer is messed up, it's ruthless and it hurts in ways that can't be quantified.
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It's a war no one should have to fight.
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Yet it is fought every day by so many who deserve a world without it.
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Today we are stripping it all off with Mel June.
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Mel is a breast cancer survivor, author of the book Live Anyway and founder of a woman's business network called the Burkana.
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She also helps young women embark on their business journeys and started a nonprofit also named Live Anyway.
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Welcome to the show, mel, thank you.
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Thank you Absolutely.
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I'd love to just dive in and start talking about kind of what your journey with breast cancer was, talk about how old you were and kind of a little bit of the overview of how that went down.
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Yeah, I would love to.
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I was diagnosed just about three years ago last month actually, okay and I found a lump on my underneath my left breast, really actually far into my side, underneath my left breast, really actually far into my side and as soon as I found the lump I just had this gut feeling that it was cancer.
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I had lost my aunt to breast cancer.
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So I already kind of had that on my radar and I went to the doctor, got tests just the week after Thanksgiving and it was confirmed that it was a stage 2 triple negative breast cancer.
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So about a month later I had a bilateral mastectomy.
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A couple weeks after that I had my first reconstruction surgery and then I went through eight rounds of chemo, another reconstruction surgery, a whole host of things in the year following.
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Wow, yeah.
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What does that you?
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May I ask, how old you are?
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I'm 41.
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Okay, so in your 30s.
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Okay, 38.
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Wow, that's young.
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Yeah, was your aunt young when she also was diagnosed, or was that she was?
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Okay, yeah in her 40s.
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Okay, yeah, my mom was diagnosed for the first time when she was in her early 40s and then she's had it a couple of times since then.
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But I think when you're so young, it's almost like how can this even be a thing?
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38 is really really young to have cancer.
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For sure.
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I mean, I actually found my first lump was a swollen lymph node on my right side at 37.
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And I had to really fight to get my first mammogram that young, and so when I went and we found out that it wasn't cancer, it was a swollen lymph node, it still kind of introduced me to the whole experience of what that was, and it is just a scary process.
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We've all known somebody who had breast cancer.
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I think the hardest part since is that there's always a story that I'm getting, probably daily, of either somebody who had it and then passed, somebody who had it and then it recurred, you know.
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So it really is one of those things that it really just doesn't ever go away.
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Right, right, it will be something that you deal with forever, Because do you feel like you know in my intro a little bit we're talking about, then you worry about that all the time.
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You know it's's like is that going to come back?
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Is that something that that you deal with pretty heavy?
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Yeah, I mean my first.
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Every time I go in to get blood work, it feels like the very first time after finishing chemo.
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It just never feels comfortable, but it it's more than that.
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It's almost like after I was done with treatment.
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I became so zealous like I was running out of time, like, okay, I've done with treatment.
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I became so zealous Like I was running out of time, like okay, I've got this next shot.
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Before it comes back, I've got to get this done.
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To get this done, you know really like hitting life extra hard in order to get it all done before I died.
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And that really just hit me in the last few months where it was like I can't.
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I can't keep living that way because I'm actually going to kill myself doing that.
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Right, exactly Like pump the brakes a little bit yeah just take a pause.
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Yeah, and I think, remembering the pause that I took during chemo, I mean so often that was the first time I ever rested.
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That was the first time I ever took my phone off.
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Yeah, that was the first time I ever asked for help.
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Right, that was the first time I ever rested.
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That was the first time I ever took my phone off.
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Yeah, that was the first time I ever asked for help.
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Right, that was the first time I ever really reached out to my community and and expressed that I was struggling.
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Yeah, and so really it was a reminder over the last couple of months that while I'm building a new business and a nonprofit and trying to sell a book and trying to get out there in the world and give my message, it was like why, all of a sudden, am I going back to what I was doing before I was diagnosed and trying to tackle all of this stuff on my own again?
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Right, so it's always.
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It can be a beautiful reminder also that we're not in this alone, right, we don't have to be, that we can work with one another and support one another in meaningful ways if we just are vulnerable about saying what we need.
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It is.
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It is all about vulnerability and as soon as you were talking about asking for help, that was something that I was dealing with recently, where it's like why is it so hard for us to ask for help?
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It shouldn't, especially in the moment where you're diagnosed with cancer and really should be able to lean on people.
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Why is it still something that we struggle with so much to be able to ask?
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for that I agree.
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I mean, I think, for so many women especially and I can only speak for women as a woman but I think that we're doing a lot of what our grandmothers weren't allowed to do, but also not relinquishing control about what they were obligated to do and be, and so, because we're carrying so many roles, we're not really empowering ourselves with letting go and releasing the things that don't energize us and that don't fulfill us and that, you know, getting help around the house, getting help with work, getting help in all these different aspects of our lives feels in some way like we're failing if we're not doing it on our own.
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It does.
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It does and it's so funny because I've looked back and thought where does that come from?
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Where does it come from where we do feel like we're failing, because when you help someone else or when you allow someone to help you, it feels so good in being able to just be in community with someone else.
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Being able to have that opportunity to help someone else feel so good.
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So why are we robbing other people of the opportunity to help us?
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Right.
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I mean, I think expectations play a big role in this in a massive way, and one of the things I talk about in the book is caregiving, and I say, instead of putting all the expectation on one person to be your caregiver, identify a few different ones and I identify at least six different caregiver roles and ask different people or organizations or volunteers to maybe assume that role with you and support you in a very specific way.
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It empowers people to show up in a really meaningful way and exactly the way that you need them to, and also it it negates the the chances that you're really imposing a lot of grief and hardship and responsibility on any one person, just one person.
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Yeah, I've.
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I've watched that in my in my life actually, and some other people that are close to me that have dealt with cancer in their family and they really had to step up and take that role.
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And you look at what the devastation is for that person.
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You know, you're just going along one day and and you find out, you know that someone has cancer and then all of a sudden your whole life is twisted upside down because obviously that's the most important thing for you to do, but in doing that, like what's the cost?
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So that's genius of you to have it spread that out a little bit so that it's not any one person Exactly it's getting.
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Help is the number one, yeah, and the first thing is also learning what it is that you need to receive as help, you know, and then communicating that, because there's also another.
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I probably had a one delivery every three or four days of soup.
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Right, it was so beautiful and so kind, but, like there's so many other ways to support and to get involved in, maybe just asking yeah, how can I support?
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you is a really powerful question.
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It is.
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It is I've found that in my life of what does support look like for you, you know, for me to be able to bring to you, because I don't know what that is and I'm tired of guessing.
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I'm a shitty guesser and sometimes, and sometimes even as the patient, we're figuring that out too.
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I mean, I spent months watching my family fall and trip all over themselves trying to figure out how to support me because I didn't know what to ask for and they didn't know what to do.
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And even around the office, you know, nobody knew how to support me in a really meaningful way.
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And I also didn't know how to ask for help, because I was the one in the office that was tasked with the person that would do those things.
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Right, right, so it really did shift the dynamic on its head, but that really forced me to take, you know, a toll, like really to fix that yeah, to say okay, I just have to take one giant step back and figure out what it is that I need.
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And then, slowly, it started to transform.
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Yeah, I think also, you know, being able to take that step back and allow other people to come in.
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There was something that I heard recently where it was talking about the bigger the issue, the less you need to say as the person that's bringing support Let me just come sit, let me just come sit and be with you.
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You know, I think a lot of times people don't get involved when other people need help because they think I don't know what to say.
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I don't want to say the wrong thing, I don't want to whatever.
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But if someone just came to you and said, mel, can I just come over and let's just snuggle up and watch a movie, or can I just be with you, you know, or whatever that looks like, don't have to.
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It doesn't matter that you don't know what to say.
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You don't have to just hold space for someone, totally.
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So I have one of the caregiver roles is actually the awkward avoider, which is that person that doesn't know what to do with your diagnosis and is a little bit awkward and uncomfortable around it, and they're actually tasked with the responsibility of just pretending like it doesn't exist.
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When I ask for us to go out, let's just do it.
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Another big way was being supportive to my family.
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I tasked certain people in my friend group and at work and my family to support my older daughter, to support my younger kids, to support my husband, to support, you know, meet my role in the office, and that relinquished a lot of stress on my end because I knew there was somebody checking in every day with my kids, you know, and with my system of support, so I didn't feel as bad when I needed something.
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Yeah, and then you can just focus on healing you Exactly.
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Yeah, what does that look like when you do get that diagnosis, when you're sitting in the doctor's office?
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Because I have a huge history of breast cancer in my family and I've never dealt with it personally.
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But I am the same where I started getting mammograms when I was 35, because when my mom got it she was so young and so they say get it 10 years before.
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You know, blah, blah, blah.
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So I've been sitting in that doctor's office waiting for those results and I know what the wait feels like.
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But I can't even imagine what that feels like when they come in and they say you do have cancer.
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I mean, what was that like for you?
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So mine, was a phone call and I was on my weekly executive board team meeting when it happened on Zoom, and I was in this private small office and I got the call and I saw it coming in as I was literally speaking on my Zoom and I just took my laptop and closed it.
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And I knew, speaking on my Zoom, and I just took my laptop and closed it and I knew, and when I picked up the phone I walked around the building of my office and I was just listening to.
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Girl on Fire was the first song that came on and I just listened to it on repeat and I must have walked around that building a thousand times just in this sort of outer body experience.
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And so initially it was I wasn't going to let the cancer affect me.
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I wasn't going to.
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So initially it was I wasn't going to let the cancer affect me, I wasn't going to let it affect my job, it wasn't going to slow me down.
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This was just one more thing I was going to tackle and get over and through and all the things and truly that worked until I got a blood clot that actually almost killed me after my third round of chemo and my oncologist came into the office and said what is it going to take?
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You are literally killing yourself if you don't shift how you are living your life, and it was.
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I didn't want to let go of my career.
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I'd worked so hard to get to where I was.
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I didn't want to miss practice, I didn't want to miss, you know, vacations, and I didn't want to miss conferences, and I didn't want to miss meetings and all of this stuff in this life that I had built so perfectly for myself.
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All of a sudden, I couldn't keep up with it.
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I couldn't keep up with the very thing that I had dreamt of, and so that was a really just harsh reality.
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That hit me, you know, about halfway through chemo, and it forced me to just stop.
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I was, literally, I got the blood clot in my neck, in my jugular.
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Literally, I got the blood clot in my neck, in my jugular, and I tested positive for COVID as I was going into the OR to have an emergency surgery on my port, and that was when I was put into isolation, essentially in the hospital, for a week, and not being a movie watcher, not being an easily distracted human, I was forced to sit with myself in the reality.
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I was forced to learn how to meditate.
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I was forced to learn breath work because, purely for survival, I was going nuts in this four walls that not even the doctors could come visit me in Right.
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But that became the most massive gift because it shifted everything about how I lived my life that week.
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Isn't that crazy.
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You look back at something like that and you wouldn't change anything, obviously like, yes, it sucks, I hate that I've had to have breast cancer, but if you look at the things that came forward for you during that process, would you change?
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that I'm thankful for it every day, genuinely.
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I'm thankful for the cancer every day, because it did force me to see myself, hear myself.
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It forced me to really unlock what my core mission in this life is and really get down to my purpose.
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You know, I finished chemo in June, got a divorce in September, quit my job in December.
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By January I was in a full meltdown mode, freer than ever, but scared to death.
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At least the way I was living my life.
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Every project I picked up, every client I started working with, every meeting I went to.
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Everything I did every day was fulfilling and part of my mission or my purpose, even if I was struggling and scared.
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And part of my mission or my purpose, even if I was struggling and scared.
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I knew it was so right.
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Isn't that crazy?
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You think about all of the years that you go through life and you don't have anywhere near the stuff that you're talking about, right, chemo, a divorce, loss of a job, all of these things.
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These are huge, big events in life and you have big ones all smashed into just a few months.
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I mean, what does that even?
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look like it was a full, massive reset and honestly, an incredible identity crisis.
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Yeah, it was.
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Who am I outside of what I can do for others?
00:18:55.378 --> 00:18:56.320
Yes, it was.
00:18:56.320 --> 00:18:59.472
Who am I if I'm not this or that for this other person?
00:18:59.472 --> 00:19:00.335
It was why am I doing any of this?
00:19:00.335 --> 00:19:00.736
Yeah, it was.
00:19:00.736 --> 00:19:03.019
Why am I doing any of this?
00:19:03.019 --> 00:19:12.053
It was so many questions that we just assume answers to as we grow up or we set goals and then we just stick with it because we think that that's what we're supposed to do.
00:19:12.053 --> 00:19:18.419
That's commitment, that's right and, yes, it's bullshit, it is bullshit, it really is bullshit.
00:19:18.439 --> 00:19:21.049
It's like your vault your goals can change, you can evolve.
00:19:21.049 --> 00:19:28.622
How many people have come up to me or messaged me that have known me for 20 years, 30 years, that are like I feel like I don't know you anymore.
00:19:28.622 --> 00:19:31.917
I'm like you don't, yeah, right, but I'm here for you to get to know.
00:19:31.917 --> 00:19:35.211
Now you know, and I'm the better version, right, right.
00:19:35.211 --> 00:19:37.693
I mean, the version of me 10 years ago was great.
00:19:37.693 --> 00:19:39.355
Yeah, 20 years ago was great.
00:19:39.355 --> 00:19:40.798
It's just not who I am anymore.
00:19:40.817 --> 00:19:44.441
Yeah, yeah, how long were you married before you got the divorce?
00:19:44.441 --> 00:19:46.002
13 years, okay, wow.
00:19:46.663 --> 00:19:49.891
Yeah, and it shifted every relationship that way as well.
00:19:49.891 --> 00:19:56.896
I mean, what happened when I was going through treatment was again a lot of wise, you know, and really a lot of depth.
00:19:56.896 --> 00:20:05.962
So I think it exacerbated what didn't work in any relationship and every relationship I had, and it forced me to really reflect on that.
00:20:05.962 --> 00:20:15.580
And then time you know you mentioned time it's our most precious commodity, a gift, and I don't want to waste anyone else's time as much as I'm not going to waste my own.
00:20:16.112 --> 00:20:27.996
And I hit a really a revelation with my husband where I'm like I can't love him the way that he deserves to be loved, the way that he wants to be loved, the way that he deserves to be loved, the way that he wants to be loved, the way that he has expressed the need to be loved for 13 years.
00:20:27.996 --> 00:20:32.819
Right, if I can't provide that for him, why would I put him through this?
00:20:32.819 --> 00:20:33.540
Right?
00:20:33.540 --> 00:20:39.866
If he can't be what I am needing in this stage of my life, why would I put that expectation on him?
00:20:39.866 --> 00:20:40.346
Right?
00:20:40.346 --> 00:20:58.394
It's knowing the difference between obligation and expectation and really commitment, and to me that commitment is something that comes out from underneath and within us and not something that's obligated onto us or expected of us in some sort of existential way, right, right.
00:20:58.955 --> 00:21:02.871
Yeah, I think also the pressures from the outside of you know getting married and staying married and all of these things.
00:21:02.871 --> 00:21:13.377
I think also the pressures from the outside of you know getting married and staying married and all of these things, I think we put ourselves into situations where we don't really take a hard look and it may take a cancer diagnosis or something huge to happen in your life for you to really evaluate things.
00:21:13.377 --> 00:21:20.922
It sounds like, not only in your relationship with your husband but with other relationships in your circle of is this working for me?
00:21:20.922 --> 00:21:28.198
Because it does throw it right in your face how precious life is and how much of a gift it is, and live accordingly you know.
00:21:28.439 --> 00:21:29.701
Yeah, you definitely know.
00:21:29.701 --> 00:21:32.419
I mean you take a when your energy is depleted.
00:21:32.419 --> 00:21:39.377
It really does wake you up to what's working for you, because you don't have a lot of energy to waste.
00:21:39.377 --> 00:22:02.901
Yeah, and I really learned how much of my energy I was just leaking out of me to anything and everyone that just wanted something from me, and once I removed that, I found that I was so much more efficient and so much happier, well, and you can use that energy on things that matter to you instead of it just being not intentional, not being aware of it and just throwing that energy around.
00:22:02.961 --> 00:22:03.301
I have a.
00:22:03.301 --> 00:22:09.551
I have an analogy where I call energy Skittles because it quantifies it to me in a way that I can visualize it.
00:22:09.551 --> 00:22:25.541
You know, I got to this place where, eight years ago, I was at the bottom of you know, I was at kind of my point of just giving energy and shit to everybody that didn't necessarily deserve it and not really evaluating my relationships and all of those things, and I had to get very intentional about what am I?
00:22:25.541 --> 00:22:26.784
What the hell am I doing here?
00:22:26.784 --> 00:22:27.105
I was a.
00:22:27.105 --> 00:22:32.031
I was a young mom.
00:22:32.031 --> 00:22:37.371
I know that you were a young mom as well and I think when you do that, you kind of go into survival mode a little bit, where you're not figuring out who you are during that time.
00:22:37.371 --> 00:22:40.674
You know my, my late teens and my early twenties were not.
00:22:40.674 --> 00:22:43.778
Oh, let me, let me explore, let me be adventurous, let me.
00:22:43.778 --> 00:22:49.806
Whatever it was, I'm putting pampers on babies and making sure that I make enough money to keep formula in the kitchen.
00:22:50.550 --> 00:22:50.912
Oh for sure.
