This is the last email in the Six Fundamentals of Active Healing series, and it is about the one thing that holds the others together: community. Not the forced-circle kind. The real kind. The kind where you are seen as a person first, not a patient. If support groups have never felt like your thing, this one is for you. (Plus: what to do instead, and how to find your people.)

When a networking contact shouted "Where is your pink ribbon?!" across a crowded room, I learned something loud and clear about who gets to tell my story. This week we explore Identity as the fifth fundamental of active healing: what it looks like to reclaim your own narrative when the world insists on wrapping you in pink, and how the As You Are Now program creates space for that inner work without the usual pink-ribbon script.

Years before I built my program, I watched a client coordinate lymphatic therapists across four states just to manage her lymphedema while traveling. That exhaustion sparked a question: what if she could care for herself, safely and effectively, without needing a professional every time?

The third Fundamental of Active Healing: why unattended scars keep tightening underneath, what radiation fibrosis actually does to your tissue, and how to find professional care that fits the body you have now — not the one you had before.

We're taught that knowledge is power, but no one hands you much of it after a breast cancer diagnosis. In the second letter of my Six Fundamentals of Active Healing series, I share the exam-room moment that showed me how early the survivorship gap really starts, and why Context and Education is what stops every ache and twinge from spiraling into fear. Because when you understand what's happening in your body, a sensation stops being a threat and becomes information.

This week's letter went out on a Tuesday, and that's the whole point. In the first of my Six Fundamentals of Active Healing series, I get honest about the difference between passive recovery and active healing, and why time and space are the place everything else begins.

My client asked her nurse about a painful condition. The nurse, also a breast cancer survivor, told her to be happy to be alive and go watch some YouTube videos. Here’s what I have to say about that.

I opened an email from my former cancer center expecting real survivorship support. What I found instead, and what I wish it had said, is the subject of this week's letter.

Last week ABMP published a full feature article about my work — and asked me the question I get asked more than any other: what does self-care actually mean after breast cancer? Here's what I told them, and what it has to do with something I've been building for you.

A solstice reflection on how the same ordinary moment can mean something completely different depending on where you are in your healing.

After 2 and ½ months abroad, I really believe that my body and I are in this together. And that I can live my life to the fullest, in my skin, even as I am now.

We rarely get to focus on one thing — not in life, not in survivorship. A reflection on bubbles, the sharp objects that pop them, and not letting your own self-care be the first thing you cut.

Nine years cancer-free, and of everything my diagnosis left behind, the risk of lymphedema is still the one that sticks with me most. Here's what living free alongside it actually looks like from a hotel room an ocean away from home — and why I believe your version of that freedom is just as attainable as mine, with the right context and education.

I feel braver than ever after deciding to bear my scars — literally — inside of As You Are Now: A Breast Cancer Self-Care Program for Real Life. This week’s email is all about realizing that brave is not a platitude in cancer land when you see it for what it really means.

After an accidental all-nighter in Paris, I found myself thinking about recovery — and how unfair it is that we expect our bodies to bounce back quickly from anything, including breast cancer treatment. Healing isn't linear. Here's what I mean by that.

I've been in Italy for four weeks now, and I spent the first one more conscious of my body — my weight specifically — than I have in a long time. It had nothing to do with cancer.

My foot recovered from the Gladiator Walk incident — but what stuck with me wasn't the ankle. It was how un-scared I was. And how much I want that for you too. I'm building something, and before I go any further, I need to know where you are.

I twisted my foot on a walk through the Tuscan hills where they filmed Gladiator — which turned out to be a pretty perfect entry point for something I've wanted to say for a while about battle language, breast cancer, and the words we're handed that don't always fit.

I'm writing this from a poolside chair in Tuscany — week one of almost three months abroad — and it took me until nearly midweek to actually exhale. This week I'm talking about why that happens, what the deer in the headlights can teach us about fight or flight, and what I've learned from years of helping people feel safe in their own bodies again.

I just turned 50 and I’m reflecting on the fear I carried at 19, the diagnosis I received at 41, and the life I wasn't sure I’d be around to see. I’m in Italy now. I made it. And I want you to know you can too.