The sun shines nearly every day in Denver. It’s what drew me here 13 years ago after losing my first husband, Brett, to brain cancer when our twins, Rebecca and Casey, weren’t even 3 years old. I needed the sunshine to heal then—and I need it now. The sun is more powerful than cancer, and…
Read more...I believe in the power of words. The written word and the spoken word. This why I write and speak and coach others to write for a living. Right now, amid all the uncertainty and fear surrounding COVID-19, the written word has the ability to offer a sense of relief and control. Ample research shows…
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In some ways, the sheer busyness of parenthood was a blessing because you have no choice but to be present when comforting a tiny baby. There’s no room for the merry-go-round of fear and projection that accompanies a cancer diagnosis in such moments; there is only the baby in the crook of your arm. Life must be lived now.
Read more...Cancer caregivers live in the already and not yet. We live in between joy and pain, remission and recurrence. We know any moment can shift us from one side to the other. May 21, 2001, began as the most joyous day of my life. That’s the day I became a mother. I had twins, a…
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When your loved one is diagnosed with cancer, and life seems to throw you one bad turn after the next, hope can seem elusive. For me, the randomness of my husband Brett’s medulloblastoma diagnosis, which typically affects children ages five and under, was devastating. We had no idea what to expect, how could we? There…
Read more...When a loved one is diagnosed with cancer, how do we as caregivers live? Seeking that elusive answer nearly leveled me in the early months of my husband Brett’s brain tumor diagnosiswhen he was diagnosed at 32 in 1998. The sheer volume of medical appointments both overwhelmed and saved us. We had so much to…
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It took a few more years of processing and distilling all that had happened until I made sense of it all. Life hadn’t actually ended, who I was had.
Read more...If transitions in leadership, careers, and organizations are inevitable, why do they test our resilience, causing the sturdiest among us to doubt and fear? This is true of any disruptive event, including a personal loss like my own, which, at the time, diminished my confidence, optimism, and ability to meet my goals. Being widowed young…
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