Cancer changes everything—including who you become.

Whether you’re newly diagnosed, years out from treatment, or somewhere quietly in the middle, cancer reshapes your relationship with your body, your future, your identity, and the people you love.

Many survivors describe a similar paradox:

Treatment was brutal, but the emotional work afterward was even harder.

When the appointments end, when the support slows down, and when everyone else assumes you’re “back to normal,” a new terrain begins. The world moves forward. Your nervous system remains braced. The fear lingers in the background of everyday life.

This is not failure.
This is survivorship.

My Story

I was 32 when I was diagnosed with stage IIIC breast cancer. My children were 7, 5, and 3. I had no family history, no screening tool available to me, and no sense that anything was wrong until I found a lump myself.

I went through months of aggressive treatment believing it would save my life. When it ended, I was told I had a 50% chance of recurrence.

That number lived inside me for years.

I share this so you know I understand the emotional terrain from the inside: the vigilance, the grief, the disorientation, the identity shifts, the way the body remembers long after the world has moved on.

I eventually became a 20-year survivor, but the path between those years was anything but simple. It was filled with meaning-making, fear, hope, rebuilding, and learning how to inhabit a life that had been fundamentally altered.

This is the space I hold for survivors now.

The Emotional Realities of Cancer Survivorship

Cancer affects everyone differently, but many people describe:

• struggling to trust their own body again
• feeling changed in ways others can’t see
• a sense that plans, identity, and the future now feel conditional
• a quiet fear that shows up unexpectedly: at the dentist, on a walk, in the shower
• exhaustion from being “the strong one”
• frustration or guilt about the expectation to feel grateful
• loneliness, even with loving people around
• difficulty carrying death anxiety because others can’t bear to hear it
• navigating meaning and purpose after everything cracks open
• changes in sexuality, desire, or connection, especially when your body no longer feels like your own
• difficulty feeling at home in a body affected by treatment, surgery, numbness, scars, or hormonal shifts
• specific medical moments that still feel sharp: needles, scans, smells, rooms, procedures

Cancer also reshapes sexuality in ways people rarely talk about.
Desire, pleasure, embodiment, and intimacy can all shift. For some, the body feels unfamiliar or unsafe. For others, connection feels different or frightening. Many survivors don’t know how to bring this up — or fear overwhelming their partner or even their therapist.

You don’t have to hide any of this with me.
You don’t have to protect me from the difficult parts.

I can hold the hardest worries: the recurrence fears, the grief of who you were before, the shifts in sexuality and identity, the moments of medical trauma that still live in your body, the parts of you still bracing for impact.

This is a space where nothing is “too dark,” nothing needs to be softened, and nothing is off-limits.

How I Work With Survivors

I work with people who want a therapist who:

• understands cancer from lived experience
• can tolerate and hold death anxiety without minimizing it
• welcomes grief, fear, confusion, and uncertainty without rushing them away
• supports the identity reconstruction that survivorship demands
• understands the shifts in sexuality, desire, and embodiment that treatment often creates
• can work with the acute medical trauma moments that still feel raw
• offers warmth, anchor, presence, and depth
• works gently and without urgency, at the pace of your nervous system

My primary modality is NARM (NeuroAffective Relational Model), a gentle, present-moment, attachment-focused approach that helps people reconnect with agency, presence, and internal safety after overwhelming experiences.

I also use ART (Accelerated Resolution Therapy) for survivors carrying specific medical trauma—frightening moments in the hospital, disturbing images, needle phobia, invasive procedures, or sensory imprints that remain long after treatment. ART is often surprisingly effective at easing the emotional charge around these memories without requiring you to retell them in detail.

And I offer Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP) for survivors navigating existential distress, medical trauma, spiritual crisis, or identity shifts. KAP can open new pathways into meaning, connection, and emotional flexibility that are often inaccessible through talk therapy alone, especially when grief or fear feel frozen.

You don’t have to be brave here.
You don’t have to be inspiring.
You don’t have to hold anything together.

You get to have a place where you can fall apart, question everything, talk honestly about sexuality and embodiment, process medical trauma, and rebuild slowly — with someone who isn’t afraid of what you carry.

Advocacy & Writing

My survivorship experience led me to write about the gaps in early detection for young women and the limitations in our current systems. You can read my recent op-ed on KevinMD:

Early-onset breast cancer: A survivor’s story

You can also read a personal reflection on my 20-year survivorship milestone on my blog:

Twenty Years Later: What Cancer Taught Me

I continue to advocate for better research, better tools, and better support for survivors, especially younger ones, whose needs are often overlooked.

If you’re looking for a therapist who understands the emotional, sexual, medical, and existential realities of cancer — someone who can hold the hardest truths with you—you’re in the right place.