I grew up in a household of abuse and sadness. With a mother running desperately after the next ticket to happiness, while discarding her children when their burden was to heavy for her to carry any longer. Through the years, she methodically wove a web of lies about the world that made her the victim. Lies of friends, of family, of ex-husbands, of children.

My second call wasn’t to her.

It was to dad and step-mom Linda.

I grew up believing they didn’t want me. They had their new family, with their own child, and I was the mistake, the inconvenience. Through the years, the warped perception of my worth became less askew and I started to see a world that was more in tune with the truth. They loved me. The distortion though, never fully goes away. You always walk your journey with this ugly rock in your shoe, reminding you of the past and what you were told. You can shake the rock out, and it just comes right on back, never giving you a moments of rest of comfort. You always second guess. Do they really love me?

They were an hour behind us, dad was in his sleeping slumber of Mountain time. Linda answered. We don’t talk very often on the phone. We had been lately.

“The results from my biopsy are back.” I mustered everything that I could to deliver the next words with clarity and without emotion. “It is breast cancer.”

I’ve never heard her cry before.

I started the year going to Barcelona, my first international trip with a short layover in Munich Germany.

I ended the year in Munich, Germany, having transferred to the WordPress.com team and attended our division meetup.

Bookends to a year that was anything but uneventful.

We are 11 hours and 55 minutes away from the start of 2024. There are so many parts of me that want to forget what happened this year and so many other parts that know there were beautiful moments in the drama and chaos that cancer brings into your life.

I’m unsure if I’m qualified to say I am a Swifty, but I’m on that journey. As I write this, a playlist of Taylor’s uncomplicated music plays on the speaker.

157 days ago, I received a phone call that will change my life forever.

In the last 157 days, I had to come to terms with the fact that I had breast cancer. I had to tell my husband, my children, my family. I have felt a level of fear that you only read about in stories and you can’t relate to because it’s so primal and deep.

I have offered my body to surgeons to remove parts of me that I thought made me female. I have laid on an operating table and handed my life over to them to take away something that was trying to kill me.

We thought we were done after the surgery, free to re-start this new life with uncertainty and minor relief, only to be confronted with a scarier reality of the type of cancer I had and the words “chemo”.

I have sat in a chair 4 times and allowed them to insert a needle into the port in my chest and slowly drip, drip, drip, poison into my veins. I have slipped on iced booties and mittens that were so cold they hurt. I have looked around a room full of people, just like me, trying to live their lives the best way they can.

I have seen the concern in my children’s eyes. I have felt the sadness of watching them navigate this journey and knowing that there is little I can do to make it better, because cancer sucks and you can’t fix that level of suck.

I had to see my grandmother for the last time. She doesn’t remember things like she used to, and the trauma of my cancer would be something that would be repeated over and over and over again, and in the grand scheme of things, the pain that would inflict was to much. She doesn’t remember my last visit. She knows I love her. She is proud of me even without this knowledge.

I have seen the exhaustion in my husband’s face, his body. Trying so hard to keep the whole world together with duct tape and super glue. When he reached the stage of running out of the tools needed to care for me, the children, himself, dealing with a work place he has given 17 years to treat him like he was trying to take advantage of them.

And through all of this, we have drank the lemonade.

I have felt deep love. I have had random text messages, and surprise meals (and sooooo many cookies). I have had boob parties and porch dinners. I have had dinner and forgiveness. I have “I love yous” and support and I have laughed. I have laughed so hard, and so often. In a weird way, I don’t believe I have ever been this happy before. Weird kind of dynamic.

To everyone who has been here over the last 157 days, or even 30 days, thank you. Thank you from the very bottom of my soul. I can’t imagine how lonely it would have been without you.

I don’t know what the future holds. It’s still scary, and thought the chemo is over, the “cancer” isn’t. There is no graduating out of this club. I will live with the destruction that chemo has done to my body, going to physical and occupational therapy. Seeing my oncologist every 3 months. Getting scans and tests for the next 5 years. Always living with a fear of recurrence.

I do know that coming out on this side of chemo, my life is better.

In the grand tapestry of existence, there are no accidents, only hidden threads of purpose weaving the fabric of our lives. And in retrospect, we find solace in knowing that we wouldn’t undo the past, for it is the intricate mosaic of our experiences that has shaped us into who we are today. – Love, me.

I sat at my desk, gazing at the knickknacks arranged before my monitor, attempting to dispel the relentless roar of crashing waves echoing in my ears. Those waves rolled and thundered, obscuring my doctor’s words on the other end of the phone call. Her initial words seemed to hover just beyond reach, tantalizingly close, yet continually slipping through my grasp as the waves surged, pulling me deeper into their tumultuous grip.

A desperate need to ask questions clawed at me, the urge to form coherent sentences growing more urgent. Closing my eyes, I embarked on a journey of mindful breathing, the gentle rise and fall of my breath providing a fleeting respite, just long enough for me to inquire:

“Do you have any information about the cancer’s stage?”

She responded with uncertainty, “I’m afraid not.”

“And do you know the type of breast cancer it is?”

Once more, her reply conveyed her lack of knowledge.

Her voice broke through the chaos to inform me that she had already initiated referrals to an oncologist and breast cancer surgery, assuring me that they would contact me later today. She apologized profusely for the distressing news.

Aware that she couldn’t provide any further answers, I mustered the strength to end the call, the weight of the situation pressing heavily upon me.

As I disconnected, a rush of air left my lungs, and the sensation of buoyancy vanished. The waves crashed over me again, forcing me deeper into a swirling abyss, like an underground tornado, words and emotions swirling chaotically around me. The thunderous waves, the surging water, and the screams in my mind grew louder and more frenetic until, finally, a fragile calm descended.

My first call was to my husband. I can’t recall whether he picked up on the first attempt or if I had to dial again. He was at work, immersed in the banalities of his day, fixing someone’s computer.

He answered.

“You need to come home.” With those words, the entire world seemed to crumble beneath me, the floor disappearing from beneath my chair as the sobs echoing in my mind finally found their way to my lips. “You need to come home. It’s cancer.”

On July 20, 2023, we finally saw my oncologist for the Oncotype numbers. The results of the Oncotype DX test are given as a recurrence score. The recurrence score predicts the chance of the cancer coming back. Your results will include a recurrence score from 0 to 100. A low recurrence score is 25 or lower. A high recurrence score is 26 or higher.

We went in with zero worries. My cancer was incredibly small, to the point that the biopsy removed all of the invasive ductal carcinoma and only left traces of ductal carcinoma. I had no lymph node involvement, I had no genetic markers, and I started with an ER/PR number, though low. I was expecting a low number, maybe 4.

My doctor pulled out the paperwork and placed it in front of me. I don’t remember what she said. All I could comprehend was the number that was inside a giant circle. 34. Thirty-four. I started to skim the rest of the page and fell to the bottom, right as the doctor explained that I was not ER/PR positive. I was triple negative. My throat was tight, and I barely got out the question, “I’m triple negative?”

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) accounts for about 10-15% of all breast cancers. The term triple-negative breast cancer refers to the fact that the cancer cells don’t have estrogen or progesterone receptors (ER or PR) and also don’t make any or too much of the protein called HER2. (The cells test “negative” on all 3 tests.) These cancers tend to be more common in women younger than age 40, who are Black, or who have a BRCA1 mutation.

TNBC differs from other types of invasive breast cancer in that it tends to grow and spread faster, has fewer treatment options, and tends to have a worse prognosis (outlook). [Source]

I am devastated. I am angry, and I am sad. This wasn’t the result we were waiting for. We were waiting to hear how hormone therapy would get me through the next 5-15 years, go through menopause, deal with the complications, and live my life. We were planning on scheduling my exchange surgery with the plastic surgeon. We were ready to get started. I was supposed to go to Berlin, Spain, and Washington DC. Now. Now? Now I sit in a coffee shop with two fresh stitched incisions where they implanted a port-cath to run chemo through it. Now I have appointments to educate me and the family on what will happen during chemotherapy. Now, I am waiting for July 31, my first round of chemo.

Everyone keeps telling me that it will be over before I know it. Once every 3 weeks for 12 weeks total. Here is the problem with that. We don’t get to live in weeks or months. We live in days. Minutes. Seconds. 12 weeks is forever and never.

Things I hold onto is that we caught the cancer early. I am considered a low-risk TNBC. The chances of a random cancer cell sitting somewhere else in my body are slim to none. The chemo is preventative. It is only 12 weeks. After that, I wait a month and can get the exchange of my expanders to implants. 12 weeks is forever.

On June 22, 2023, I underwent a bilateral mastectomy to remove the cancer we knew about and to prevent the cancer that could come back in the future. I took a shower, got dressed in comfortable clothes, loaded my family into the car, and headed to the hospital. The kids sat in my prep room with me for a while and eventually asked to leave, which I had told them was ok to do. Eric stayed by my side and finally retired to the surgery waiting area after they wheeled me into the pre-op room.

The pre-op room is where I break. Always. It becomes so overwhelming and lonely, busy and hectic all circling itself. They are busy giving me this drug and that drug and then the heavy drugs, and I slightly float away to a semi-conscious plane of existence. Wheeled through the hallway, into a bright operating room, lots of noises, lots of people. My OB/GYN was there first. He had to perform the first surgery, which was to remove an IUD that had embedded itself in my uterine wall. He was so kind and said he was sorry that I had to be there. Said he would take good care of me. They spread out my arms, put the mask over my face, and said, “Here comes the sleepy medication,” and my eyes closed.

The next memory I have is Eric coming through my hospital room. Sweet Eric. At that moment, all is ok. I am alive. Eric is here. And nothing else matters.

Recovery has been easy. I stopped taking pain medication around day 2 or 3, as I had no pain. I had my first drains out after a week, and the second set out 19 days after surgery. I have had no infections or complications.

On day #6, I looked, really looked, at the warfare that had happened during those hours of sleep in the surgery room.

I stood before our bathroom mirror and looked at my reflection.

It wasn’t beautiful. It’s ugly. It was wounded and healing. It was void of parts of me that I’ve had my entire life. In its place was puckering skin, horrific incisions, unevenness, and remnants of the ink the plastics doctor put on before surgery.

It wasn’t beautiful, and yet, it was.

It is life. And I am grateful to be alive. And this, this ugly is now a part of who I am, and I can decide to hate it or love it. I can embrace the scars that will form and the imperfections that reconstruction brings, or I can wake up every day and find anger and sadness in the reflection in the mirror.

I went into liking who I was, with all my imperfections and perfections. Today isn’t the day to change that.

So, this is who I am now. Foobs and all.

At 8:35 am, Friday, April 28, 2023, I took a call from my primary care doctor. Several weeks before, during a routine mammogram, they found two suspicious spots on my right breast. More mammograms and ultrasounds followed until I had two biopsies on April 25.

She started with the good news. The first spot was a fibroid, with nothing to worry about.

She ended with the bad news. The second spot was cancerous.

I had breast cancer.

I called my husband. Crying, I choked out that he needed to come home. I had cancer. I told him to please drive carefully.

And I closed my bedroom door so I wouldn’t wake my daughter, and I cried, barely holding onto reality.

I had breast cancer.

By the end of the afternoon, I had an appointment with an oncologist for the next Monday and a breast cancer surgeon on Tuesday. That day started the beginning of the longest weekend of my life.

We told the kids (20 and 16). We sat them down and explained what we knew. That we wouldn’t keep secrets about what was happening. We cried. We sat in silence. So many words unsaid, but everyone knew what each person was saying.

I had a meltdown on Saturday. I sobbed on the bed with my husband, barely speaking, “I don’t want to die.” The kids must have heard me crying as soon I was surrounded by the three most important people in my world, hugging me, crying with me. Comforting me.

I didn’t sleep much. I didn’t eat much.

We learned what the cancer wasn’t on Monday, May 1, 2023. It wasn’t some rare form of cancer and didn’t appear aggressive. I had invasive ductal carcinoma, Grade 2. I had a low positive for Estrogen and a positive for Progesterone. HER2 was inconclusive, so a FISH test needed to be run.

We learned more about cancer on Tuesday, stage 1. For this number, we celebrated, which is weird to celebrate cancer. Celebrate we did, though.

Since then, I’ve had an MRI that showed three more suspicious areas and subsequent biopsies, which we await results.

This all sounds so clinical.

Stage 1. Grade 2. HER2, ER/PR. So many words. So much information.

What it all boils down to is… I have breast cancer.

99% of the time, I am ok. I try to stay positive because this is out of my control, and I am doing everything possible to fix it. That 1%, though, leaves me terrified. The kids will say something that references the future, and my mind immediately asks, “Will I be here for that?” I remember April 27, when I didn’t think about death and just lived like an immortal.

I cry in the shower. I cry because I look down at these flabby breasts and remember that in the near future, I am having them both removed with a bilateral mastectomy. I cry when I look in the mirror and see the bruises from the past five biopsies. I cry because I am just getting started, and I sure as hell am not ready to quit.

Dear Mr. Vernon. We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. What we did was wrong, but we think you’re crazy to make us to write an essay telling you who we think we are. What do you care? You see us as you want to see us: in the simplest terms, the most convenient definitions. You see us as a Brain, an Athlete, a Basketcase, Princess, and a Criminal. Correct? That’s the way we saw each other at 7 o’clock this morning. We were brainwashed.

As entrepreneurs, we’ve all been there, that moment when everything that could go wrong does. Someone just quit, reports are due, you’re getting 3 hours of sleep, you needed to hire two more people three weeks ago. The dread that keeps making our stomachs feel like it’s on a rollercoaster comes from knowing that you have to train the new employee the second you hire them. YOU have to teach them. You have to put that massive to-do list on hold and train the new hire. That dread breeds procrastination, which breeds anxiety, which eventually leads to a moment where something will snap and break.

When I came across a quote by John F. Kennedy that reads, “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining,” I saw the above scenario and processes.

Too often, we find ourselves in situations where there wouldn’t be this domino effect of dread, procrastination, and anxiety if we had a process in place. Unfortunately, the simple act of creating a process brings an entirely different level of the same emotions. It is a giant flaming ball of catch 22.

I can’t help you with the new hire, but I can help you get started on processes.

Step 1

Stop looking at processes as something that demands you to sit in a room for hours, and you can’t leave until it is done. Seriously, that is what nightmares look like!

Step 2

Start small. Block out 10 minutes on your calendar each day and be vicious about protecting the time before and after that 10-minute time frame. You start, and you finish in 10 minutes. Not a minute sooner or later.

Step 3

Grab the post-it notes or your trusty Trello board and write out one task. It doesn’t matter if it is at the beginning, middle or end. Write down another task and another. As you go, rearrange as needed.

Step 4

Rinse. Repeat.

There is no such thing as a coincidence. Notice how everything in your life somehow leads up to the next… it’s all connected. ~Unknown

The first “real” website I created in 1998 was webattitude. Using Microsoft FrontPage and HTML, I created a website dedicated to Micrografx Picture Publisher. That software made me realize how in tune I was with really understanding software. I could see a bug others missed. I could find easter eggs and ways to use features that no one ever intended. The site became a central hub for those seeking to learn how to use the software, and eventually, I caught the company’s attention and was hired as their lead development engineer. I was the first female to ever hold that role, and it was my introduction into a world I never fully understood existed.

It was also the starting of a ball rolling and building momentum. A desire to learn more and more and more. Everything was a learning opportunity; I digested it all in giant mouthfuls.

I launched my company, Gotta Pixel, in 2005, and with that venture, I fell in love with new software, especially WordPress. With the addition of it to the site, we implemented our number one return on investment. The designers who sold in the online store used the blog to post their new products, and through an RSS feed to Mailchimp, we pushed out a daily newsletter to over 75,000 users.

I fell in love with the WordPress community, a group of loyal, unselfish, and caring individuals who were just like me. Nerds, geeks, learners, givers. My people.

WordPress opened so many doors for me; speaking opportunities at WordCamps, financial income, and a full-time job working with one of their products.

Every change I made in my life led to the next, and each kept that ball rolling, faster and faster and bigger and bigger. There is no such thing as a coincidence.