Doing things that change you
Email originally sent on Wednesday, November 12, 2025
Ahoy!
As I type this, I am sitting in the waiting room of the oncologist office — waiting to be called for labs.
I was struggling a little this morning as I drove to the post office. I had to have a small chat with myself where I told myself to pull myself together and realize all is okay.
Because despite the fact that 15 years ago it was all not okay. Like really not okay. It is now.
At this point in my life, I’m at the gym with a trainer, and the neuropathy is getting better. I am eating so healthy.
This is just my annual “you’re healthy and alive!” appointment.
I do have one concern, but it has nothing to do with what I am currently at the doctor’s office to have checked. I have been finding some weird cramping in my abdomen around the areas where I had gallbladder surgery a year ago. I have an ultrasound in a few weeks just to make sure all is doing okay in there.
One of the things my Team reminded me of is that I know what being sick feels like. I know. I know the weakness. I know the tiredness. I know the inability to get anything done. I know it too too well.
This is not that. Not at all.
But for the other people in the waiting room? They don’t have the 15 years separation that I do.
I look healthy. In fact, with my hair, my style, and how much I’ve transformed in the past year? I am not the same. But when I look at who I was when I was sick and in treatment? Even the person that went into treatment? I am not even close to who that person was.
If I can point to one thing that has changed me the most? Well, Isabelle sessions for sure. But when I went into treatment for Hodgkins, I was teaching and actively involved in a church. I was on the prophetic team and I was, in many ways, super judgy. After Hodgkins, I found a way to get out of teaching. I found my way, though it was a bumpy road; I enrolled in a Masters in Social Work degree at West Chester University in Pennsylvania. In that program, I bumped into ideas and ideals that were so different from the way I saw the world prior to this program. I understood how my privilege shaped how I saw the world. I learned how others experienced the world was vastly different from my own experience. I learned so much from others and I allowed myself to be curious and open.
Hodgkin’s opened the door to that curiosity. Before being sick, I didn’t understand what being sick meant. After being sick, my compassion grew. It grew to such proportions that my compassion bled into curiosity about other’s experiences.
Hodgkin’s transformed me.
Do I want to ever want to go through anything like treatment again? Nope. Nope. Nope.
But it set off a course of events that I don’t ever want to go back and change. It showed me things I couldn’t unlearn.
The point I want to press home at this moment is that you might be finding yourself in circumstances that suck and you don’t understand. You might be questioning why you were experiencing the circumstances this life on earth is throwing at you.
You might be questioning all the things you are experiencing, but if you allow the experience to be full and embodied and all that it is meant to be — the transition it is creating will be easier for you. If you fight your circumstances, you are making it harder on yourself. If you roll with it, know that it’s terrible, but there are bigger things than you going on? You allow the terrible circumstances to change you, transform the way you see the world, and help you to become all that you are meant to be.
Did I hate every moment of Hodgkin’s and how it affected my body? Yes. For sure. But I am so grateful for who I became as a result of those terrible circumstances. Who I am now is more loving, compassionate, kind, and understanding. I listen better to other’s opinions and experiences. I look to understand what I don’t know.
I am better for the Hodgkin’s. I couldn’t see it at the time and I really didn’t want anything to do with it. But now, it’s one of the most transformative moments in my life and for that I am grateful.
This email was originally sent on November 12, 2025. Visit my website where you can sign up for these emails in direct time, sign up for a private session, sign up to be on my podcast, or find out where I will be live. I look forward to finding out how I can support you on your journey.
Big Love xxx,
