#181: What I Want You To Know (Breast Cancer Lessons – Rewind)

Hey there, this is Heather Moulder, your host. Wow, we’re at 100 episodes. I’m super excited to be here with you today. I teased this a couple weeks ago, but I have a special episode for you today.

A little bit of background for those of you who don’t know by now – I am a breast cancer survivor. I was diagnosed 11 years ago in January of 2012. Just recently, last year, I received the news that I am not just considered cancer free, but considered cured. So super exciting, very excited about that.

Every January, the day comes and goes, the day that I found out I had cancer. I wake up remembering it. I woke up this month and thought there was a lot of good that came from it. There was some not so good obviously, but there was a lot of good that came from it. I’ve written about it a lot and I’ve talked about it a little, but I really haven’t talked about it a lot here – just piecemeal little bits and pieces.

So on my 100th episode, I wanted to share with you some of the big life lessons that I learned through my cancer journey and how you might be able to take that for yourself. I think that those of us who go through these really tough circumstances, where we think we might die, where we almost die and have to recover, where we have to go through hell and back – we learn something through it.

I don’t personally believe that you should have to go through that to learn these lessons. I think those of us who have gone before you and had to go through these types of things are meant to share it with you so that you can think through these deeper issues and how to potentially apply it to your life.

Although I was a glass is half full, pretty positive person pre-cancer, I became a much more truly positive person post-cancer. I think sometimes we tend to try to find silver linings that don’t exist. That was definitely me before cancer.
I learned how I did that and how to really have a mindset shift – to see life differently, to see how I can show up in a better way, in a more positive way even when things aren’t going so well, and how to get through those tough times better. So I wanted to share some of these lessons with you today. I really hope that you enjoy today’s episode. Let’s get to it.

Lesson #1: Why – & How – To Let Go

One of the biggest lessons that I learned is how and why to let go. I remember some years ago, I was talking to somebody and the concept of letting go came up. This woman I was talking to said “I wish I knew how. I don’t even know what it really means.”

It got me thinking. I remember I wrote an article about it not long after and I think a newsletter about it. But it’s something that I learned when I went through my cancer treatment.

So a little bit of a backstory – I fought being vulnerable for a little while when I first started treatment. Treatment was hard as it is for many people. I was sick. I felt terrible, but I didn’t want to show it. I’m the oldest in my family. I’ve always been the person people go to for answers. And I frankly relished that.

It put me in my place. I had to be the patient. I had to be the person other people helped. I was no longer the helper. And that was really hard for me to accept. So I pretended I was fine. I pretended everything was fine. No matter what happened, I still had a positive mentality even when I didn’t.

For a long while, I did not at all. A large part of that was because I was pretending, because faking it – you know you hear this, “fake it till you make it.” I don’t believe in that. I think when you completely fake it, you know on the inside it’s not real. And so your brain rebels and it’s exhausting. Because it’s so exhausting, it makes you feel even worse than you would if you were just honest with yourself.

When I finally got to the point where I was like, “I can’t do this anymore, I am physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually exhausted and going to be broken if I don’t stop faking it,” I had to let go. To let go of trying to control my circumstances and how other people viewed me. To let go of holding in my emotions and how I felt and trying to pretend they were something they weren’t. To let go of having to find a silver lining in every single thing that happened to and around me.

What I realized is that letting go is really about accepting what is. That’s it. It’s acceptance. It’s acceptance of this is what it is. And it’s okay that it’s not perfect, it’s okay that it even sucks. It’s just accepting what is. There is something so powerful in that – it helped me to realize I could actually feel a lot better than I did purely by accepting and letting go.

To control only the things I could control and let go of all of the rest and to give myself permission to feel whatever it was I felt. I felt how I felt. My body was going through what I felt. I was scared. I was mad because I was 38 years old with a 2 and a 6 year old at home. And I was angry. I was angry that I was sick and I was frankly angry with God. And I didn’t like admitting that.

But it was how it was. And only when I accepted that’s how I felt and acknowledged it and let it be there, could I work through it and get around it and move on. But I didn’t figure that out until I let go, until I accepted. That’s when I started to figure out – oh, that’s what processing emotions is all about. That’s how you get to the other side. You allow yourself to go there. You allow yourself to feel it. You allow yourself to be angry, sad, terrified, mad, whatever.

Let me be clear about something. Feeling those things and accepting those things doesn’t mean wallowing in them and pulling everybody else into it and taking it out on everybody else. But it’s being honest, first and foremost with yourself and then admitting it to those around you who ask, “How are you really? How can I help?” Talking to them about how you feel. That’s how they can help the most – somebody to listen, somebody to be there to make you feel heard.

So I learned. I learned what letting go really is. Allowing myself to just be. No more pretending that I felt differently than I did, or trying to ignore my feelings or my fears or my worries or my anger or my embarrassment. Just be.

So that was lesson number one, and it was huge. I think, personally, it was the number one lesson that I needed to learn to finally figure out what happiness meant for me, what contentedness meant for me. Because it doesn’t always mean being up, smiling, laughing. It means allowing yourself to be where you are, to feel what you do and to be content and okay with it so that you can move through it and get to that other side. That’s what letting go is, and that’s what happiness, to me actually is.

And I actually think that lesson was the necessary lesson that ultimately led me into coaching. So obviously very necessary for being here with you now and sharing this with you.

Lesson #2: Vulnerability Isn’t A Weakness, It’s A Strength

Okay, lesson number two was around vulnerability. I think I’ve talked about this before, but I don’t know if I’ve talked about it this specifically before. I know I’ve written about it a lot. I’ve got articles on it, I’ve got newsletters, letters I’ve written on it. But not everybody who listens to this has read my blog or subscribes to my newsletter.

Although little plug – if you don’t, I highly recommend you do. I will have a link for you to connect with me through a free resource that I call 5 Minute Stress Solutions. It’s actually not just about stress management. It’s about helping you make mindset shifts, learning how to reframe even when things don’t go right – not in a glass is always half full, silver lining, fake way, but in a real way where the bad still exists and you acknowledge it, but you can live with it because you know how to deal with it properly.

It’s about training your mind to be happier and more content. It’s about knowing how to be more present. It’s about knowing how to manage your mind and control the things that you can control. It’s kind of your starting point. So I will put a link to that in the show notes. And if you sign up to receive that, you will also get my weekly newsletter.

So, vulnerability. As the oldest, I really hated showing vulnerability. Didn’t like it. It’s why I faked it so long, because I didn’t like seeming weak. Weakness was bad, right? And vulnerability was weak. At least that’s what I thought before I got cancer and in those early days.

But what cancer taught me was that vulnerability, it just is. We’re all vulnerable. It’s just that there are times when it’s more obvious than others. Vulnerability is a fact of life. It’s a fact of being human. I had to deal with that. I had to come to terms with that because it was so obvious.

During my cancer battle, what I realized was that allowing yourself to be human, which means being vulnerable, enables you to connect more deeply with others and actually makes you stronger, a stronger human being, a more resilient person.

I talked recently about resilience and what it really is and how so many people get it wrong. Going through bad times is necessary to create true resilience. And we all go through bad times, but you got to be open to it and you got to deal with it appropriately to actually become resilient. Just going through bad times is not what creates the resilience. It’s your mentality around it. It’s your acceptance of it. It’s your willingness to be vulnerable and open up to it.

And I learned that during this journey. And I learned that the reason it makes you more resilient when you do go there, at least one of them, is it allows you to connect on a much deeper level with other people and enables them to utilize their gifts, their skills, their strengths for your benefit.

We high achievers, we lawyers, love to help others. A lot of us go into the law to serve other people. That’s one of the biggest reasons I became a lawyer. It’s why I’m now a coach. It’s to serve others, to help others. You probably have some level of that within you as well.

The problem we have is we think that we shouldn’t have to be served ourselves. We shouldn’t need it. We should always go it alone. That’s not true. We all have different strengths, we all have different gifts, and we all have different moments of vulnerability, of being more human, of needing help from other people.

What this whole experience taught me was by opening myself up to being vulnerable as I was, and letting go and accepting what was, enabled those around me to help me through their unique gifts, which created a deeper connection and really strengthened friendships and relationships in ways I could never have imagined.

It was, frankly, magical and enabled me to then be real about being human and about what I learned from those experiences and what I wanted to take from it, which is what made me more resilient, which is what made me even stronger mentally. That’s where mental strength comes from. That’s what resilience really is.

That’s also how you can find little pieces, little slices, little moments of contentedness, of happiness, even when things aren’t going so well, even when you know you’re dying.

I had a conversation – this was probably about six or seven months after my cancer battle. I was done with treatment. I had had surgery, all of it was done, but I had a scare, and I had to go back in for some scans. And while I was waiting for those scans, I met this amazing woman.

She never said her age, but I would guess her age was somewhere in her late 60s or early 70s. She also was a breast cancer survivor, but she was 99.999% certain it was back. It was pretty clear it was back, and yet she was still pretty content. We had an amazing conversation. She knew she was, if it was back, going to die from it, it had likely spread, and that she had a limited amount of time, but that she’d had a good life, and she learned so much from her own cancer battle that she shared kind of some of her lessons at the time.

And I just remember thinking, man, what an amazing person. She was one of the most mentally tough women I think I’ve ever met. Her and one other woman who I met early in my treatment. It was my first treatment with my husband. We were both in there, and there was this woman sitting across from me who also had breast cancer, but it had metastasized throughout her body. So she was on a very different treatment.

And somebody asked her, “Well, what does that mean for you?” And she said, “Well, it means I don’t know exactly when I’m going to die, but it will be sooner than I would like, and I will most likely die from breast cancer.”

She had an interesting conversation, mostly with a woman next to her that I overheard a lot of. And she also was one of the most mentally strong, tough, resilient people I’ve ever met. Did she sometimes cry? Yes. Did it suck? Yes. Did she say it sucked? Yes. And yet she found ways to be content in the moment and enjoy the life that she had because she and this other woman I talked about were fully open, were fully vulnerable, connected with people on a deep level, truly connected, opened themselves up to receiving the gifts of others.

Through that, they also then helped others themselves through the stories that they shared, through their own strength and their own lessons. Vulnerability isn’t an evil, horrible thing. It’s part and parcel of being a human being. If you accept that, you can become much stronger. You can connect more with others. They will help lift you up and you’ll learn that you’re courageous. It takes courage to be vulnerable.

Lesson #3: There’s Always Something To Be Grateful For.

There’s always something you can be grateful for. Now, gratitude for something, regardless of what’s going on in your life, is not about finding a silver lining that does not exist. Something I think a lot of people falsely believe.

It’s about finding the things, the moments, the slices, even the smallest, tiniest things that you can celebrate that you can be grateful for. Because there’s always something to be grateful for. It might be something small and simple, it might be about a lesson learned through a difficult situation, but you can find something.

This is how people learn to be content and happy most of the time, even when things don’t go as they wish. They find ways to enjoy the moments they have. They find ways to enjoy being with other people. They find ways to enjoy the simple pleasures in life like a hot cup of coffee or the smell of baked bread.

As I did when I was in my bed curled up in a ball in massive pain for several days after one of my second to last chemo treatments – it was probably the worst I felt through this whole thing – when I heard the amazing belly laugh of my then 2 year old and it put a smile on my face. I thanked God in that moment for that laugh that gave me a smile that reminded me why I was going through all of that and why it was worth it.

There’s always something to be grateful for. It’s up to you to find it. Now that’s key. You must figure out what there is to be grateful for. Other people telling you doesn’t work so well. That’s something else I learned. It does not work for other people to tell you all the reasons to be happy or grateful or thankful or whatever you want to call it.

You must look at it, at the situation, whatever’s going on realistically and find something to be grateful for that you’re truly grateful for. There were mornings I was grateful to be able to just get up and make it into the shower and get a 10 minute hot shower because that made me feel even 5% better than I did before, or because I just enjoyed the feeling of warm water on me even in those moments. I could find that. But if somebody like my husband said, “Well, be grateful for this,” it wouldn’t work.

So it is up to you to find those small, simple things or the lessons learned. There’s always something to be grateful for. My hope for you is that you figure that out and find it every single day. And I’ve got some episodes, two episodes to be precise, around gratitude where I’ve covered this more fully. I will put links to both of those in the show notes so that you can find them if you would like to go even deeper.

All right, so…

Lesson #4: Forgiveness Is For Your Benefit (Not Someone Else’s)

Forgiveness has nothing to do with the person you are forgiving and everything to do with you.

So unfortunately, there were people who definitely let me down when I had cancer. People who I trusted, people who I loved, people who had a very hard time being there for me. Unfortunately, a lot of people steer clear of people who are terminally ill or who have issues. Right? We all do this. It’s not just with cancer. I’m sure I’ve done this to others. It’s a human tendency.

What happens is we make something that’s about somebody else, about us. We put ourselves in that place. Our brain likes to go there and imagines, “Well, what would happen if this happened to me or this happened to my spouse or if this happened to my child or whatever?” And it makes us feel so uncomfortable. We don’t want to think about it. We don’t want to go there. And so we start to detach ourselves from these people and we don’t show up the way we hoped we would and probably should if we’re going to be a good friend or family member.

And so of course there was some of that with me and I was angry with them for the entirety of my battle. I was mad. And a couple of months after I was done with it all, I remember reviewing kind of some of the people who let me down. One was a mentor, others were friends, and there was a family member even. And I felt like, “Yeah, no, I can’t let them off the hook. That’s too easy. I can’t forgive them. That would be letting them off and they don’t deserve it.”

The person who actually I felt most angry with and had the biggest thoughts like this going around in my head was a former mentor. And that went on for probably about a year. But over time, I realized, you know what? I’m not hurting them so much by harboring this anger. They’ve moved on. I’m hurting me because I’ve got all these negative emotions that keep showing up, and they’re tearing me apart. They don’t make me feel very good, and they impact how I show up for the people I love. So then I’m taking this out on them.

So this whole idea of “Huh, they don’t deserve it” – well, I’m not hurting them. I’m hurting myself. I’m hurting the ones I love. That’s when I realized, ooh, forgiveness. Yeah, it’s time to forgive. Because it’s not so much about them. It’s more about me.

And by the way, yeah, forgiveness. Forgiveness is about healing. It’s about self healing. It’s about letting go of all that anger for yourself and moving on. Sometimes it means opening yourself back up to a relationship with those people.

I did that for several people, and I’m very happy I did. For others. I didn’t. I decided, you know what? I forgive them, but it’s not worth it to me anymore to be close to them. We’ll get along. I’ll talk nicely to them if they do. But I’m not opening myself up for a deeper relationship in the future. And that’s okay. You can do that and still forgive. It’s called setting standards for who you let in. Right. Creating boundaries in relationships.

Not the same thing. You can totally forgive and decide, yeah, I’m not going to open myself up to this again. Them in the future.

But you still gotta learn to forgive and let go and not be angry and not harbor such resentment, because all that’s gonna do is hurt you.

All right, final lesson.

Lesson #5: We All Have Scars (Don’t Be Ashamed Of Them)

And there are other lessons that I actually learned, but these are kind of the big five that I wanted to share with you today in this special episode.

So lesson number five relates to scars.

Scars.

We all have scars, right? We have external scars that show. Like the one that I still have where my port was.

And if you don’t know anything about cancer treatment, not all cancer patients have this, but many of us get a port placed close to the heart so that the chemo can go straight into there. It gets pumped into a vein that goes straight to your heart. But then quickly pumps it out to the rest of your body. And the point for it is so that the chemotherapy and the drugs that they’re giving you are quickly dispersed around the body. And so I had this port placed before I started chemo and was in there for six months, a little over six months. And then it was removed and there’s a huge scar where it was. And for a while I was embarrassed by it. I didn’t like it.

I also have shared with you before. If you haven’t heard it, then I will link to my welcome episode in the show Notes. I had an interesting childhood. My mom was an alcoholic. She had not the best taste in some of her. The men that she dated, not all of them, but a couple of them, were somewhat violent. And those are internal scars that were created. I was embarrassed by my mom. I was resentful at times.

I, you know, wasn’t very happy about her drinking. I’m happy to report now she is a recovering alcoholic. She has been on the recovery train for a long while now and I’m super proud of her. She is a hero to me at this point for having overcome so much. But growing up, it was hard. That’s an internal scar that was created by those experiences. We all have them, right? We all have trauma, we all have difficulties, and they create internal scars and we hide them. Just like that scar that I forever tried to cover up and didn’t want people to see.

Now, I don’t do that.

It took me about, if I’m being honest, probably about a year. So some of these lessons were not immediately obvious to me. It took me some time to really think on them and to learn from them and to figure out what life lesson did I learn from them? What do I want to take from this? So just a note to you. When you go through traumatic experiences, sometimes the lessons learned, the reframing, the what can you be grateful for? What did you learn from it doesn’t come until sometime after. And that’s okay.

I learned we all have scars, both internal and external, and they’re nothing to be ashamed of.

You don’t have to try to hide them. Not from yourself, not from other people.

Because here’s the thing, y’all, these scars are normal. They’re created through life experiences and we all have them. They’re not who you are, but they’re evidence that you’re still alive, that you’ve lived, that you’re battle tested. And they do help create who you are in a good way when you choose to learn from them.

When you choose to face the trauma that you’ve had to face, the experiences, the difficulties and look at them head on and go, you know what? Some of it sucked. But here’s what I learned. I’m embracing them. In that way, they make you a better person. They help you to be more content and again, happy in life.

They do help you to develop into a better who Scars are not anything to ever be ashamed of. All right, so that is it for today. In episode number 100, I wanted to share with you kind of the top five life lessons that I learned through my cancer journey. I hope that you’ve learned something from it too.

Here’s what I ask of you for today. If you are enjoying today’s show, would you please go to Apple Podcasts, if that’s where you listen to it, and give me both a rating and a review? A I would love to see what you like about the show and celebrate with you. B It helps the show to be found by more people. It helps with the algorithm for it to be suggested to people and found. And so I would really appreciate that from you.

And also, if anything specifically resonated with you today, I’d love to hear from you. I truly would love to hear from you.

I will put my email address into the show notes online@lifeandlawpodcast.com and I also have a contact sheet there so you can reach me that way. But reach out to me, let me know what you thought. I would absolutely love to hear from you. All right, that’s it for today. We’ll be talking again next week. Bye for now.