“What would Amy do?”
From the Sunday Self-Care Chronicles | 8/9/26
Hey, sweet friend.
The idea of self-care after cancer is everywhere. But what does that actually mean?
You're told to do it constantly - by pamphlets, by well-meaning friends, by social media posts with soft lighting and herbal tea. But nobody tells you how to care for a body that has been through treatment.
Nobody tells you what is actually safe, what actually helps, or what to do when the thing that used to work for you doesn't work anymore.
Following influencers on Instagram or signing up for the latest wellness blog is an easy place to start but most of what you end up with are generic wellness trends, that may or may not be appropriate for your needs, and likely won’t address the unique challenges you’re living with as a breast cancer survivor.
You can try to figure it out yourself, but odds are you’ll end up on YouTube at 11pm, watching a 45-second clip of someone doing lymphatic drainage in fast-forward, wondering if you're doing it wrong because when you try it nothing changes.
We've already walked through the first three fundamentals of active healing: Time and Space, Context and Education, and Professional Care. And now we land on the one that might be the most misunderstood of all: Self-Care.
Not the fluffy kind. The kind that actually works.
Years ago, I had a client who lived in another state but came home to Buffalo regularly to visit family. She had lymphedema, and she managed it with diligence.
She had a regular lymphatic drainage therapist at home and set up times to see me whenever she was in town. Because she also traveled for work, she had manual therapists in a couple of other states too. She planned her trips around her appointments, mapping out where she could get in for a session so she wouldn't flare up.
It was smart planning. It was also absolutely crushing to watch.
The amount of time, energy, and money she spent just managing her lymphedema while on the go was staggering. And I remember thinking - what about vacations? What about the first time you go somewhere new and don't have a person there yet? What about all the days and nights in between?
She deserved to be able to take care of herself.
Not instead of her professional care team. Alongside them.
In the gaps. When she couldn't get in. When she was too tired to drive to the next town. When she was in a hotel room in a random town and her arm felt tight and she didn't know what to do.
That's honestly what sparked the idea of turning my hands-on work into self-care education. Teaching people the skills they could use on their own bodies - safely, effectively, and with context - so they weren't completely dependent on someone else’s calendar.
But it wasn’t just an idea or theory. I was already using these techniques myself, on my own body, as self care.
Right after surgery I gave myself lymphatic drainage to reduce swelling and prevent early-onset lymphedema, and self-massage for the painful scar tissue that formed above my implant where my drain tube had been.
I used self-MLD when I broke my wrist on my cancer side a few years later and they wrapped it tightly in a cast and I couldn’t move my arm to help the flow of lymph.
I still use these same methods now for managing heaviness or aching whenever I travel, and for the ongoing tightness through my shoulder and chest that comes and goes even nine years out.
I knew this work was necessary because of my client with the travel story. But it was realizing that I could do all of this for myself - and that it worked - that made me know I could teach others to do it too.
For a long time I wasn’t exactly sure what that teaching should look like. I tried different versions of it along the way:
One-on-one sessions, sometimes online, sometimes in person.
Teaching self-massage for painful scar tissue.
Teaching self-MLD for managing swelling or reducing the onset of a flare-up.
But regardless of the format what I learned was this:
The people who learned these skills and used them between our appointments - not just relying on me once a month - had better physical outcomes.
But more than that, they felt more capable in their bodies. More confident. Less at the mercy of someone else's schedule or their own lack of skills.
One of my favorite examples is a client who has been living with chronic lymphedema for quite a while.
She works with me, she works with a CLT named Bea, she has a pneumatic compression pump, she wears her daytime sleeves and her nighttime garments with diligence.
But last year she wanted more. So I taught her detailed self-MLD for when she really needed extra attention but didn't have the time or the funds to get in to see someone, or when her support team simply wasn’t available.
This spring, while I was away in Italy and her other CLT was in between practices, she had an unexpected flare-up after a mammogram. And she wrote me this:
"After the most recent flare-up following a mammogram, my initial reaction was panic! Then, after some deep breaths, I looked around and thought... What would Amy do? ... What would Bea do? So now, what am I going to do? So, I went on the pump for an hour, did some self MLD, and put on a snug compression garment. By nighttime, the swelling was down significantly! Hey, I've got this! Thank you for giving me 'tools' and the confidence to deal with this!"
Friend. Friend!
"Hey, I've got this."
Tools and confidence? That is everything I ever hoped to hear. That is the whole point.
But here's the thing. I want to be really honest about what "self-care" actually means in this context.
There's a lot of self-MLD and self-massage content out there that is taught as a stripped-down version - so basic that it doesn't actually do much. And then people think they're doing something wrong when they don't get the results they need.
Or they find a fast clip on social media without the context and education that grounds what they're learning. They don't know why they're doing what they're doing, what to watch for, or when to stop.
I recently read a beautiful piece from Tad Hargrave, a business mentor in the ethical marketing space, about attracting butterflies.
The message is about what you need to do to actually bring the butterflies and get them to stay. You decide to build a garden that will draw them in. And you've seen flower gardens your whole life so how hard can it be? You get seeds. You get dirty. But you also start to feel lost. You overwater some and underwater others. The soil isn't right. It looks ugly. Your neighbors look at you with pity. You wonder if you should give up.
Then you realize that doing it yourself doesn’t have to mean doing it alone.
You call the local butterfly sanctuary and ask for help. You learn about the right kinds of soil and what kinds of flowers do best in your ecosystem. You work hard to build a proper flower garden with the guidance of a few mentors who come by and inspect your work. They gently point out the mistakes you are making and also show you which flowers the butterflies love best. It takes longer than you thought. It costs more. But spring arrives. The flowers bloom. The butterflies come. They stay.
Self-care is exactly like that.
The fastest, safest path to self-sufficiency is not trying to piece it together from scattered clips and guesswork.
It is learning from someone who knows what they're doing - who has trained in this work, used it on hundreds of bodies, and can teach you not just the motions but the context that makes them work.
I have used these same techniques on people for years. I have used them on myself for years. I have taught others to use them with repeatedly successful results. And now they are available in a guided pathway for anyone who wants to learn them.
That's why I built As You Are Now - not to replace your care team, but to give you the skills to stand beside them, confident and capable.
If you've been reading this series and thinking, I wish I knew how to do this for myself, I'd love for you to see what the program actually looks like.
It is a guided, body-based program built around all Six Fundamentals, including the self-care skills I mentioned here. The founding member rate is $495 through the end of August, and there are five spots remaining. The next Welcome Call is on August 20th at 11:30am, and the Intro and full Mind-Body module are already open and waiting.
You can read all of the details in this Google Doc. No pressure. Just the real picture, so you can decide if it fits your body and your life.
P.S. There are two fundamentals left and I think you might find them to be the most surprising and impactful. See you next Sunday.
P.P.S. Not sure if a group program is the right fit yet? Come hang out with me at the free Ask Me Anything call on August 20th at 12:30pm - same day, right after the Welcome Call. Just a casual space to ask questions, meet others, and get a feel for this work. Register here.