Conversations on Cancer is a 6-part mini-series on the Relationship Matters podcast focusing on finding Right Relationship with life-threatening illness. Across the 6 episodes, Faith Fuller and Katie Churchman talk with survivors & caregivers from around the world about their relationship with life-threatening illness. In this episode, Faith and Katie talk with Linda Berlot about finding Right Relationship with the body during the journey of cancer
Linda Berlot is Director of Faculty Development at CRR Global and ORSC Partner for the UAE. She is a human development specialist with more than 19 years of experience in the fields of learning and development, strategic organizational change and team dynamics with a focus on creating alignment in the organizations she works with. She is of Italian origin and has been living in the United Arab Emirates and working in the Middle East since 2004. She was diagnosed with breast cancer 10 years ago and has had a radical mastectomy and reconstruction.
Conversations on Cancer is a 6-part mini-series on the Relationship Matters podcast focusing on finding Right Relationship with life-threatening illness. Across the 6 episodes, Faith Fuller and Katie Churchman talk with survivors & caregivers from around the world about their relationship with life-threatening illness. In this episode, Faith and Katie talk with Linda Berlot about finding Right Relationship with the body during the journey of cancer
Linda Berlot is Director of Faculty Development at CRR Global and ORSC Partner for the UAE. She is a human development specialist with more than 19 years of experience in the fields of learning and development, strategic organizational change and team dynamics with a focus on creating alignment in the organizations she works with. She is of Italian origin and has been living in the United Arab Emirates and working in the Middle East since 2004. She was diagnosed with breast cancer 10 years ago and has had a radical mastectomy and reconstruction.
Key
KC – Katie Churchman
FF – Faith Fuller
LB – Linda Berlot
[Musical intro 00:00 – 02:22]
FF – Welcome to Conversations on Cancer. My name is Faith Fuller and I’m one of the founders of CRR Global, along with Marita Frijon. The following is a season of podcasts with different cancer survivors about creating right relationship with a life threatening illness. We want to acknowledge right off the bat that this topic can naturally bring up a wide variety of feelings for all of us. For this reason we want to give a trigger warning about the content of these podcasts before you continue. We’re going to be presenting interviews with cancer survivors or their caretakers and each podcast is a very personal story about one journey with a life threatening illness. Everyone’s story is different and the speaker’s experience may be very dissimilar to any health journey of your own. In the spirit of deep democracy, please honor this person’s experience and also honor your own. Every voice is one voice of the system. Honor what right relationship with illness means to you. Medical disclaimer: these podcasts are meant to share the personal stories of cancer survivors. The stories are not intended to provide medical advice of any kind. Any questions regarding a user’s personal medical condition or their medical care should be directed to their medical care physician. Thank you.
KC – In this episode Faith and I are talking with Linda Berlot. Linda is director of faculty development at CRR Global and is the ORSC partner for the UAE. She was diagnosed with breast cancer 10 years ago and has had a radical mastectomy and reconstruction. In this episode we talk about finding right relationship with the body during the journey of cancer. My name is Katie Churchman and you’re listening to Conversations on Cancer.
KC – Linda, welcome to the show, and Faith, hi!
FF – Glad to be here!
LB – Thank you for asking us here.
KC – So, Linda, I wonder if we can start with a background to your breast cancer story as it stands?
LB – Well, thank you for asking. I am intimately acquainted with the impacts of breast cancer on a woman and on a family. My mum fought breast cancer for 15 years, before she passed away, and my sister had breast cancer five years before I did. I was 43 when I had cancer so this is my 10thyear anniversary and I had breast cancer and a radical bilateral mastectomy and reconstruction.
FF – Congratulations on your 10 year mark! That’s an important one!
LB – It so is, you start to find that the longer it goes the more you start to breathe.
FF – I bet.
KC – And it’s such a relevant one too because I think so many people are either touched or know someone who have been touched by breast cancer, my mum went through diagnosis and that’s why we’re having this conversation, isn’t it? Because there’s so many pieces that feel edgy, that can’t be talked about and hopefully today we can open up some of those conversations that may help.
LB – Absolutely, I love, love, love what you’re saying Katie. For me there are so many taboos around breast cancer so the word cancer in itself strikes terror in many people’s hearts. The word breast is very often not… it’s a taboo word, you know, I live in an environment where we can’t speak about either of those things and I truly believe that the more conversations such as these that we have, the more information we put into our collective system, the more we lower fear. And then women start to feel more and more empowered, less afraid of going for their mammograms and their checkups and start to save lives.
FF – Beautifully said, yeah. And, you know, I haven’t thought about, just for people who may not know, you live in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. Well you can speak to it, about how it’s a culture that’s reticent about talking about, certainly body parts.
LB – Absolutely Faith, so it’s a very modest culture. So we don’t talk about, you know, breasts in particular. But also there’s a tendency to deal with things internally, so internal to the family, internal to the members of the clan, and so very often if somebody is sick we keep it quiet, we don’t talk about it and as a result it becomes like this mystique. It’s also a country which very mysteriously has got the highest rate of breast cancer is young women. So women in their 20s and 30s, yeah, very high. And we don’t know why. There’s a lot of research happening here to find out why.
KC – You said something on a former podcast Linda, curiosity is the antidote to fear. And I feel like this is another example of being curious around this whole topic of cancer, and specifically today breast cancer, and how actually just having that conversation, asking those questions, how that in itself can be a remedy to fear.
LB – Yeah. Absolutely. Well yes, and also, why I love that you’ve invited me to speak about coming into right relationship with your body post something like breast cancer, is because when you go through the journey you, you know, you’ve got professionals helping you with your mind and professionals helping you with the actual physicality of it, your health, but very seldom can we say to someone I am scarred. I feel ugly or I feel ashamed. And I found in my journey, when I did that to my closest friends, they would say don’t be ridiculous, you’re alive. Or you’re so beautiful. And all of those might be true but it doesn’t take away from my need that I had at that time to talk about my scars and how I felt about my scars. And if you think the cancer is happening, well every woman’s journey is different but it’s happening to women who are younger and so may not have partners or they may live in cultures where if you’re sick your partner leaves you, so the physicality of that has a huge impact on a woman’s life.
FF – The other thing I just wanted to make sure we register is just that Linda, you’re single.
LB – I am.
FF – And so that’s different from, just cause you mentioned, a woman who is already in a marriage or with a family has a different probably support than somebody who’s going out on a lot of dates or are trying new lovers and you have a whole edge to cross around that and I’m hoping you’ll talk a little bit about that too.
LB – Absolutely. I’m more than happy to talk about it because it was a real journey for me. I make up the story and it may not be the truth, that somebody who’s safe and in a loving relationship has more acceptance about her body and the scars. That may not always be the truth, unfortunately, I think a married woman faces issues just the same. But my journey, when I… I mean I have scars 360 degrees around me and initially I was deeply ashamed about them, I wouldn’t go on the beach without covering them up and especially earlier, soon after my operation. And the thought of taking my clothes off in front of a new man was unthinkable for a very long time. And then I noticed, it was all stages, right? Then I noticed that if I did meet a potential I would kind of prepare them. I would talk to them about my cancer and my biggest nightmare that I can imagine was getting into bed with somebody and they would lose their erection when they saw my breasts, and that, I was terrified of that for some reason. I never had that happen to me, by the way, but it was a journey. It was definitely a journey.
FF – Wow. Yeah. When you would speak to people about it how would that go?
LB – Err, I picked my people well. It’s really weird, you meet people and you think hmm, can this person take it or can they not? And maybe they all could of and it was more about me, myself, because now I don’t introduce it as an issue at all and I just … it is who I am now and some people don’t notice. Because mainly they’re looking at other things and actually I, one of the things that really helped me was I had a very, very good male friend and before throwing myself out there in the wider world I really needed to show myself to somebody I felt safe with and trusted. And I asked him if he would please look at me and tuck away his love for me and just tell me what he described, what he saw. And of course he saw my scars but he also saw my clavicle and the curve of my neck and the curve of my shoulders – all things that I did not even think about which really was a lesson for me, it’s that when we look at each other we look at each other in our entirety, we don’t focus on three centimeters of skin like we do about ourselves.
KC – But I guess that three centimeters or whatever you said of skin was a big focus of your life for some time, so then that for you was probably hugely important and was that in itself a barrier, the fact that it’s been a focus for so long?
LB – 100%. It became, I became my scar. You know, everything was about my scar. I wouldn’t wear a backless t-shirt because of my scars or… in my operation they removed everything, inclusive of my nipples and the muscle tissue inside, everything. What they had to do to reconstruct was to take my lats and detach them and reattach them on my sternum so that it could hold the prosthetic bag that they put in. Now they do it very differently but what that meant was that when I was in the gym exercising my back I had to work with that, I had to be able to five that voice, I had to be able to talk about my shame at what I looked like and the more I talked about it the more my narrative started to change. You know. The more I started to think wow, actually scars don’t grow on dead people.
FF – Yes.
LB – So my scar, from being this thing of shame, started to become like my wounds. I’m a warrior and I have scars. I have scars to prove it. And that mind-shift really helped me.
FF – You know, I’m thinking of other, many women who do an elaborate tattoo over their scars. Not necessarily to hide it, but actually, sometimes to celebrate it like an amazon. So I’ve always thought it’s so beautiful watching people go through the stages of their journey of acceptance and to a place of feeling like it’s a place of power, you know. There was some famous person who said that the final stage of healing was when you can use your painful experience to help others. And I just think that you have done that journey all the way.
LB – It’s true. I did feel… I never asked myself why me? Never. I very quickly started to think wow, why not me? I mean so many other women have it too but I think I’m the perfect person. I’m Western in a world where people don’t speak about it. I stand on a public stage for my work. I’m the perfect person to be a spokesperson about this and spark conversations that make me uncomfortable or maybe taboo. So for me I agree with you Faith, I truly believe when you’re ready to learn a lesson you pull the teacher into your life. Those lessons are for you to learn and also for you to share. You know, none of us, as an island, we… Faith, you walked my journey right with me and so it’s a way to give back for, to the universe for giving to me.
FF – You know, I wanted to just briefly expand the conversation because I think breast cancer is the most sensitive of the cancers for women because it involves our female identity, you know, and my cancer is uterine cancer so, of course, they took everything out, the girly bits were all taken out so to speak but they don’t show! So I haven’t had to deal with the vanity issues and especially since I got it done laparoscopy, so I don’t have massive scars of any kind and yet, you know, I’m just sensitive to the fact that for me, you know, I’m 70 years old. I’ve had my children. But for a woman who’s struggling with uterine cancer who hasn’t, there’s a different issue of what does it mean to be a woman and not have a uterus or ovaries and that’s a stab at the heart if you wanted to have a family, plus such difficult decisions about well do I have this removed or not, very complicated. And I’m already post-menopausal so there isn’t anything that I’m missing but I am aware that there are places in me that are hollow, are empty. It doesn’t have a bad association for me, but that’s because I had already grieved those parts. But for a younger woman, it’s a whole different thing.
LB – I think so Faith, and you know, every woman’s journey is different. Even if you have the same cancer, every woman’s journey is different. I know women who have never had a reconstruction and they’re quite ok with that, it’s like you know, it’s just boobs. But for me that was not the case. I was young, I was vital, I was a sexual being and part of your, well it’s not just what you look like that changes, I had to mourn the loss of my beautiful breasts, but also the loss of some parts of my sexuality in a way because you know, they removed my nipples and whenever they cut you don’t have any more sensation. And so it’s changed and change is an emotional journey, there was real mourning I had to go through to just accept that my, I had lost that part of myself and I wasn’t going to get it back.
KC – So I’m guessing that there was, and maybe still is, a lot of grieving in terms of those edges that you were forced over.
LB – There is still grieving. Just when I think I’m done with that. Up to my 10thyear anniversary I launched a workshop which had been burning in me since pretty soon after I was diagnosed, and it’s really how do we come into right relationship with our bodies despite the scars? And we carry those in a backpack with us but when I launched the pilot I realized I still had work to do before I could stand up without a lump in my throat and speak candidly about my journey.
FF – You know you mentioned earlier that you had to deal with a lot of shame. Do you know what the shame was saying or, you know, we all know that horrendous feeling but I’m not sure the way it’s unfolded in terms of what is the shame actually about and I’m wondering if you did and what you learned about that?
LB – It’s a really good question Faith. Well the shame, I think the shame was for some reason… for example, I remember sitting on a beach and for some reason being really attached to not wanting anybody to see my scars because I felt that if they saw my scars they would know that I had had a mastectomy and a reconstruction. That they’d know I had breast cancer. And it was, part of my shame was not feeling ready to share it with the world yet, but also maybe fearing judgement. Maybe fearing people would see me as less or broken somehow.
FF – Well said. Yeah. It’s a much more trivial thing but I have been on a journey with the bald head. So for those of you, people who knows somebody who’s having chemo or if you had chemo yourself, you inherit the bald fate. There’s a shine that comes off the top of your head that is blinding some days. But I just wanna say, and I’ve talked to many women who’ve said oh, I think you’re so good about the bald head because I wear it around, I don’t cover it up except professionally. But I know women who feel acute shame about having a bald head, that again, there’s something feminine about hair, you know, lush, and I wanna say, you guys can’t see it here, but Linda has this gorgeous, curly red hair and it is so beautiful and it is so feminine. You know. So I know many women who just feel like they can’t, you know, they need to wear a wig and thank god they can. And for me I think there’s a sense of there’s always been a secret self in me, a punk self that has always kind of wanted a bald head and so I’ve kinda rocked the look a little bit. But I know so many women who feel oh my god I could never do that. I could never do the bald head. And you know, the only think I want to say about that is the bald head sort of has its own power in that if I feel like I need to get help at a hardware store, all I gotta do is take off my hat and my bald head sends people rushing over to help me, you know. And there’s power in the pink and people are kind and concerned for you when you have a bald head, but it does always signal, for most people they can see that, what it does do is usually identify me, not always, but as a cancer patient, so you have to cross that edge. I am a cancer patient and I’m showing it out in the world. And that’s an edge.
KC – True.
LB – I can understand how, you know, having that bald head and maybe losing a body part, it can be somehow similar right, it’s a change and it somehow changes your identity.
FF – Yeah, it does change your identity. How did it change yours?
LB – My identity. Well I’ve got these bright and beautiful breasts that will never fall south. They’ve been stitched in so tight they’re going to be facing east and west forever. When the rest of my body is pointing very firmly south, these two are not. And I’m sure I’m going to have to have a coffin adjusted for that.
FF – Yeah. Did it take time to have confidence, well, yeah, about your next breasts. They are the same but different and that’s another right relationship, for better or worse, is with the new breasts.
LB – Yeah. It took a while for me to really identify with them because I don’t have much sensation there, they’re a little harder, you know, I feel them on my body rather than, the oddest thing is when I’m up in the mountains or it’s cold, the bags feel cold inside so I get cold. SO there’s a little bit of, well I always know that they’re new and pretty quickly I started to notice that they, maybe because I don’t associate with them so much, I have started to wear cleavage and maybe things that I didn’t do before and when people look at me as if to say don’t wear such a cleavage I’m like I paid the price, you know. I may as well show them off.
FF – Celebrate them! They were costly, celebrate them! Yeah.
LB – Absolutely. Absolutely. And the most attraction I get is, this might not be very appropriate to say, but it’s in the lady’s bathrooms in the evening if I go out somewhere. Many ladies come up to me and say oh wow, are they real? And I’m like are you kidding? And I think, I think because there’s a, I don’t know, maybe a recognition of some vulnerability and also there’s something sparky, something vulnerable and sparky, I think. Cheeky or…
FF – Hmm, yeah, that’s so interesting. Katie, I think you had something.
KC – I was just reflecting on the fact that I’ve had this kind of conversation before but not at all. I think i’ve always come to conversations around cancer in quite a clinical way. You go and do the chemo, you go and do the surgery, and I’ve had friends who have had family members, as I’ve mentioned, and I don’t think I’ve ever really fully allowed for them to have that personal experience, because you are distinctly, it feels like you go over an edge whether you want too or not and you come out somewhat changed? And I don’t think I’ve ever allowed that into my conversations before, how personal that is, how deeply personal.
LB – Absolutely. When my mom was diagnosed, and of course it came back to haunt me when I was diagnosed, but I so wanted my mom to live and to fight and to be positive, I used to say to her mom, don’t worry, it’s just breasts. It’s just breasts, you know, before she had her operation. Well, honestly, it might be for some people. And it certainly wasn’t for me because it was something attached to how we perceive ourselves, our femininity and our self-image.
FF – What’s it been like to have your mother and your sister go through that journey too?
LB – Horrendous.
FF – Yeah.
LB – And frightening. And also my mom was a warrior. She lived and died, they kept giving her two years and two years and she lived 15 and then when she had enough she decided that’s it, no more and now’s time. So my mom was a real hero in my eyes. A warrior. And my sister too, she’s this tiny, fierce power house and I think when I watched them, because they went through the journey before me, when I watched them go through the journey I truly learnt what strength and courage is really all about. And it’s not necessarily sky diving, it’s really facing your biggest fear which is death and, you know, on the days where you need too it’s also knowing when to drop and say no, today I’m not getting out of bed. And then the next day knowing when to stand up again. I learnt that by watching my mom and my sister, but not only, I know belong to a community for breast cancer survivors and I look at strength in amongst survivors, every single one of these women and yourself included Faith. You’ve looked at death in the face and for some that episodes ends and for others it doesn’t, it’s an ongoing journey. But there’s something quite powerful about that because it energizes you to live or to look at the life you are leading and decide how you want to live.
FF – Yeah. I don’t know, Katie, do you feel like it’s time, I’d love to hear more about if you had a few learnings, Linda, that sort of core, the pith instructions that you learned from these, what would it be?
LB – My first lesson, as an a-type control freak personality were surrender. And this was not something you can control. So from the very beginning, that most terrifying moment was when you get diagnosed but you don’t get told what you’ve got and then there’s about three weeks of more tests and your heart is here and I’m sure Faith you would identify with that too right? Until the day they tell you this is what you have, this is what your treatment is, and then somehow you settle and you put one foot in front of the other. So you can’t ush that process, you can’t make anybody do what you want them to do so there’s a surrendering that’s needed. And surrendering doesn’t mean giving up. It’s about giving into. And to do that I learnt that you truly have to trust that you are infinitely resourceful and also trust that you are held, you are always held. That was a very powerful learning for me.
FF – Just to chime in with that, I do think that the worst part of the whole journey is the diagnostic part, it did feel like I was going down the Colorado River body surfing. You’re tumbled along with tests and sometimes misdiagnoses and a billion different doctors and you don’t know what’s going on, you don’t have any certainty and it’s incredibly difficult. And then there’s a kind of relief when they say this is what you’ve got and this is what you can do, as you said, you can settle in and it becomes more real, so thank you for that, yeah. What’s the next one?
LB – The other next one that I learnt is not everything terrible that happens to you is actually bad. I mean, I would not ask for breast cancer back, touch wood, and it was the biggest give that I ever received, that the universe in her wisdom thought to give me because it changed my life 360-degrees. I mean I’ve climbed mountains, I’ve gone on expeditions to Antarctica, I’ve done 250-kilometer kayaks around Zanzibar, kayak expeditions around Zanzibar. You know, I’ve really crossed edges that I would never have even thought of before. So thank you for waking me up and making me see that it’s ok to live. You don’t have to stay in your comfort zone, you know?
FF – Yes, there’s nothing like the possibility of dying to make you want to live, live, you know, every second. Because you recognize it could all go away.
LB – At any moment. I think that was the hardest lesson, was that you can’t unknow what you now know. That your life could change in a heartbeat. That the rug can be pulled out from under you in a heartbeat. And so if you now know that, how do you chose to live this moment, because this the moment I know I have for sure.
KC – One of my friends who also has breast cancer, she said you realize you’re not afraid of dying, you’re afraid of living and actually it kind of wakes you up into doing all of these crazy things that you wouldn’t have otherwise done.
FF – Well said.
LB – It’s so true. We live in fear of so much. We don’t realize how afraid we are until something like this happens and electrifies you to live.
FF – Is there another one?
LB – Yes. Well there are many. But another one that comes to mind is you are always stronger than you know. In those first initial tumultuous moments I’d partner with women who’ve just been diagnosed but still don’t know what they have and what their treatment will be, those first three weeks. And I’m a fellow journey person with some skills and they often, the question they ask me is I don’t know how I’m going to get through this. And I find myself often saying you will learn that you are stronger than you know. You are stronger than you know. Someone once called me malleable steel…
FF – Malleable steel?
LB – Malleable steel. That was you.
FF – That’s amazing.
LB – Yeah, and I find myself using that same phrase for so many other women. You know, we blend and flow but we don’t break.
FF – Well I loved what you said a little while ago, that you’re stronger than you think but not every day. A part, that’s the malleable bit, there are times where you need to be able to blow over like a palm tree and just, you know, spend a day in bed. So a resilience is the nature of that malleable steel, that you do bounce back because when people say I don’t know if I can do this, I don’t say this but I often may think well, what choice do you have? You know? You will! You know, you will get through it. But if you feel that in one day, go over with it like you said. Let yourself just sob or cry or rage or beat the wall or do what you need to do but you will recover because the desire to live is a desire, even if you just have to pee! Suddenly you get up from your bed and go pee. You know, and something’s changed. So yeah, I love what you said, you’re stronger than you think.
LB – Beautiful Faith, and I love that you say, you know, sometimes when somebody is sick or has a cancer you get told be positive! Be positive! And I sometimes want to punch their noses when they say that because, you know, I don’t have to be positive and just because I’m not being positive, just because I want to spend the day on the couch doesn’t mean I’m negative. It takes strength to know the day I need to drop. It takes strength. It’s not strong to have the donkey mentality to keep going, I have to keep going, that’s not strength, that’s perhaps some lack of self-awareness. And when you know today is a bed day then that requires a lot of strength to be able to say that. And then also to know when to stand up again.
KC – Yeah, I mean, I’m in awe of you both. It’s been incredibly inspiring to hear this and I think what I’m coming away with is that there’s not a dimension that isn’t impacted by something like this, like physically, obviously you’re impacted, then intellectually, I’m sure so many things you’re thinking about what does this mean, and then emotionally. And I think that piece I probably neglected most of all and I’m certainly going to go away and give my mum a call after this because I just don’t think I really allowed for that. It was very much a doing tick box, let’s do this, that appointment but I didn’t think about that being experience that you’ve spoken to about together.
FF – And let’s just check also for one minute, were there any ORSCy things that were helpful for you in this journey that could be possibly helpful?
LB – I was so blessed to have an amazing coach and friend and mentor partner with me. And some of the most powerful tools that we used, for example, were the third entity. I had to speak to my new body a lot, you know, speak to my body before, when it was sick, and then speak to my body afterwards, I spoke to my body and really got into that right relationship with my body and I still do, by the way.
FF – Yeah.
LB – There were lands work, I had to step into the various lands of different Lindas that had popped up that I didn’t know I had, different aspects of me that were popping up, for example, around the shame or my sexual side or my inner child, there was a time where I just wanted to sit in a lumpy corner and cry, you know, just, there were different aspects of me and I needed to really give them voice so I could feel complete and heard. Paper constellation allowed me to see how wow, I remember delivering an ORSC course and we had run out of time so we were delivering it to the group as a whole and I was demonstrating the paper constellation on the flow chart – not telling anybody what I was doing, but actually I was drawing my family constellation. And I noticed that the breast cancer really engulfed the whole family and my sister has a daughter and that was so powerful for me because is what needs to change is let the breast cancer be out of the system as a memory or maybe even as a ghost, but not right in our system.
FF – Yes, you know, I so relate to all of those and just to add in for that, I think, I had to design my alliance and still do with my allies as well as my cancer, you know, so I did third, I have continued to do third entity work with my cancer but also with my treatment, you know, my chemo or with whatever. So those are really useful. And of course you’re always redesigning, like you said, with your family because it affects everybody, so you’ve got to have those conversations about their experience, they’re in a journey too.
LB – That’s beautiful Faith, I do remember that I had colleagues who were very involved and also they didn’t know how to be with me and I think that the best piece of advice I was given was you know, be clear and design with them. How do you want them to be with you? What are the things that you’re willing to talk about and then how do you want to spend your time together? And that was helpful for them and for me.
FF – Yeah, and to allow it to change! I mean, there’s some days where people really want to go deep with me about well what about this experience and it’s like well, I did that yesterday. Today I want to go have dinner and talk dirt about, you know, what happened at the Oscars. And other days it’s like yeah, I need to talk. So let it be flexible for you but redesign and redesign.
KC – It’s just all relationship isn’t it and you’re kind of forced into this work whether you want it or not, but there’s the relationship with the cancer, relationship with the body, relationship with the family and the friend systems – so many pieces.
LB – Absolutely and you know, Katie, I learnt that it’s a journey. I learn that we are fascinating as human beings. When it first happens there’s the consensus reality and the physicality that you need to deal with, right, and the emotional and the mental well, that’s there, but nothing I can do about there, I need to really focus on the consensus reality pieces of going through whatever I need to go through. Then when that’s done and you start to heal and your body starts to heal, then comes in perhaps the more mental and eventually the emotional and that’s a journey, it takes as long as it takes.
FF – Yeah, it goes on for a really long… it goes on for pretty much the rest of your life. You know? In one form or another it may, it may withdraw, particularly if you have a cure or you’re in good remission for a long time, but it’s always going to be a ghost there’s always there, for better and worse.
KC – I’m just wondering Linda, with that third entity piece between you and your body, what’s the third entity potentially saying now?
LB – My body is my friend. My body sends me messages that I’m sometimes too stubborn to hear but she has carried me from birth now, for 53 years. She only wants the best for me and she wants me to love myself as much as she loves me.
FF – Beautiful. Thank you Linda.
KC – Thank you so much for your vulnerability.
LB – Thank you for the conversation, it’s a really important conversation.
FF – It really is. Thank you for your vulnerability and your depth. And thanks Katie! Bye everybody.
[Music outro begins 35:03]
LB - Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Conversations on Cancer. We hope you’re finding these talks as meaningful as we do and, because every individual is unique, we know that every cancer journey is different. These podcasts may or may not reflect your own experience. We encourage you to honor whatever your own journey is with illness in your life.