I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me. 

I’m hanging in my climbing harness a few hundred feet up Half Dome, a vertical face of granite rock in Yosemite National Park, and I can’t breathe. It is not because of the exposure or a fear of heights or the epic view. The sensation of my climbing harness pushing against my left rib cage feels wrong. I try to relax, focus on where I am and the climbing ahead of me. My breaths are frequent, but shallow, and the more I try to breathe, the less satisfying my breaths feel, and the more lightheaded I get. I’m trying to direct my fight-or-flight reaction, but I’ve lost control. My inner dialogue has taken off on its own. 

There is no way this is normal, you have to get to the hospital. Maybe I have cancer again, maybe it is in my lungs, maybe it’s just been hiding all of these years. 

My mind takes off, and I’m imagining the moment the doctor tells me the cancer returned. I imagine telling my boyfriend, Kale, who at that moment is perched 60 meters above me, belaying me up the climb, with no idea as to what is taking me so long. I imagine telling my sister and my brother and my parents. I imagine it all, from diagnosis to my funeral. I am weeping now, having given up on clinging to the rock. Now I truly can’t breathe. 

There was a time that this make-believe scenario was my reality, but back then, I did not have the capacity to express the emotion I feel now. 

My tears are cathartic. Consciously, I reign myself back in and start climbing again. The climb is hard, and I have to focus on my movement and my foot placements, trusting my body. It’s distracting, and by the time I make it up to Kale, I’ve forgotten that I couldn’t breathe. 

Cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared.

These episodes of difficulty breathing began when I was young, but have become more frequent and debilitating over the past few years. Sometimes they are triggered by something obvious, like a trip to the hospital or an illness, and sometimes they come out of nowhere. The anxiety stays for days or sometimes even weeks. It has taken me a long time and several rounds of tests and trips to Urgent Care to accept that these symptoms might be anxiety. I now understand the mind’s power over the body.   

Growing up, I never felt like an anxious person. I was never particularly scared of death, or failure, or what tomorrow would bring. I’ve pushed myself to live in the moment, to challenge myself both physically and emotionally, and to find happiness and joy wherever I can.  To some extent, the cliché is on point; cancer has helped me live my life to its fullest. Cancer has also left me feeling alone, anxious, undeserving, and downright scared. 

In some ways, having been so young when I got sick allowed me to thrive in remission, to take back my life, to pursue the dreams of a seven-year-old—like having a horse for a best friend and building forts in the woods with my siblings. My survival instincts forced me to bury my experiences deep inside me, because that is what I needed to do at the time. 

Days went by and then years, and now here I am, 23 years in remission, and I’m just now starting to unpack the deeply buried trauma of my childhood. I am reconnecting with myself, that little girl, in a language only the two of us share. I’m telling her that she is brave and so strong. That this body we share is still the same body it was all those years ago. It has grown and strengthened and changed, but it still holds that trauma. Instead of running away or ignoring her, I’m listening. I’m drawing my own roadmap, and I’m inviting my anxiety to ride along with me.