What Happens When You Do (Almost) Nothing But Focus On Your Cancer Recovery

I’m not so good at sitting around “resting”.

And yet rest was pretty much the primary prescription by both surgeons and my oncologist—bookended by a series of stretches (3X/daily) and walks to keep the blood flowing.

I’m nothing if not a motivated patient, so I made recovery my primary job (while playing with fashion choices for my new bod which you can read about here).

I’d planned to take a month—A MONTH—off from my business for what the medicos said should be a 6-8 week recovery. That was radical: I hadn’t allowed myself more than a 10-day break since I started working at 15.

Not gonna lie—it was weird, especially in the beginning. I had so little energy that I was just happy not to have to deal with an in-box on top of everything else. Plus, I was traveling back to LA pretty often for appointments which was exhausting all on its own.

I started thinking about my energy like an electric car—there was only so much available and there wasn’t always a charging station nearby. I needed to be hyper-vigilant about how I spent my recovery time—what added to and what subtracted from my energy tank.

And that’s when I noticed something the breast cancer thrivers had warned me about: things that may have generated energy before all of a sudden felt like drains on it.

I started paying very close attention and asking myself some big questions…

Who do I want to be going into my next chapter—how much of my old identity am I ready to let go? Still pondering this one, as I’m betting the answer unfolds a bit more as I take each step. The enforced recovery period was such a gift in retrospect to have real time to mull this over.

Who/what do I value most and how do I best show up for that? How much of a shift am I willing to make along what timeframe? I’ve always been wired first for action (ready, fire, aim is not uncommon 🙄), but I’m finding a slower, meandering pace feels right this time.

What can I create now that has meaning and purpose?

So I kept surfing the breast cancer forums, listening closely to what women were saying: the good, the bad and the truly heinous things they’ve experienced.

It made me realize how very lucky I was to discover not only Aesthetic Flat Closure early on, but a series of strong, educated voices showing a path away from the surgical roulette wheel. Away from patriarchal expectations of what women’s bodies should look like—and don’t even get me started on flat deniers.

But always moving toward joy.

Joy is everything—hoping for it, working towards it, even demanding it gets us out of bed in the morning and through some pretty horrendous life experiences.

It pointed me—like a big ole neon sign—to my own next chapter. I started writing in Substack about Loving Flat as an experiment—and instead of getting it out of my system, it’s dug in even deeper.

Going forward, I want to share the many stories and paths to joy that are possible after breast cancer treatment. Because loving yourself flat is so much better than passively tolerating (or actively hating) the body you’re in.

Seizing joy is always a worthy pursuit.