Shit Happens. Breathe Through It. (Yes, That's My Book And My Whole Philosophy)

I wrote a book called Shit Happens, Breathe Through It (you can purchase it on AMAZON). People sometimes laugh at the title before they read a word of it. Good. Laugh. Then let's actually talk about it, because I mean every word of it literally.

I'm Not Interested in the Nice Version of This Story

There's a version of the "beat cancer" story that gets told at galas and in pamphlets, the brave, graceful, grateful version. I'm not that version, and I stopped pretending to be a long time ago.

Shit happened. A lot of it, actually long before cancer, and plenty of it since. Anxiety that put me on a bathroom floor for three days. A marriage that ended. An assault I'm not going to unpack for your comfort. A cancer diagnosis stacked on top of all of it, like the universe wanted to see what I was actually made of.

I didn't handle any of it gracefully the first time around. I white-knuckled it, medicated it, drank at it, and tried to out-study it with a psychology degree. None of that worked the way I needed it to.

"Breathe Through It" Isn't a Metaphor

Here's the part people miss: the second half of my book title isn't a cute rhyme. It's the actual instruction. When I finally found HypnoBreathwork, it wasn't because breathing sounded pleasant. It's because I'd exhausted every method that tried to fix my pain by thinking about it harder, and none of them worked, because the pain wasn't living in my thoughts. It was living in my body.

Breath is the one thing that talks directly to your nervous system without needing your permission first. You can't think your way into calming down a body that's convinced it's under attack. You have to work with it directly. That's the whole philosophy, condensed into five words on a book cover.

I Don't Sugarcoat This Work, and I'm Not Going to Start Now

If you're looking for someone to tell you that healing is linear, or that gratitude should override every other feeling, or that six sessions in you'll be "all better"  that's not me, and this isn't that kind of work. Healing is messy. It circles back on itself. Some days breathwork brings you to tears you didn't see coming. Some days it's quiet and you don't feel much of anything until three days later.

I'm not selling you a fairy tale. I'm offering you the thing that actually worked when nothing else did for thirty years of my own life, and for the unspoken hell that came after breast cancer treatment specifically.

If This Is Landing for You

If you're tired of the polished version of "getting through it," and you want someone who's actually been on the floor and found her way back up, not through positivity, through breath, I'd like to work with you.

Coaching is not a substitute for therapy, medical care, or mental health treatment. If you're navigating significant distress, please pair this work with support from a licensed therapist or your medical care team.