Greetings friends,
I hope you each enjoyed a peaceful Thanksgiving (if you are in the US at least) in some way. While this holiday has questionable roots in history, I always appreciate an opportunity to focus on what I’m grateful for… especially now.
I have been wanting to share with you for some time now what I’ve been through this past year. This is my story about what happened to me and how my life is forever changed.
I want to share this with you partly as a form of catharsis for me, and partly in the hopes that my story may help others who are facing something similar.
In April 2025, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had been aware of some lumps there since 2023, but was told in medical appointments then that they were just cysts. In February 2025, I scheduled an ultrasound for myself – a biopsy later determined cancer that had spread to a few lymph nodes.
In that moment I got the call, I was driving my son to jiu-jitsu practice. We landed in the parking lot and turned around and went back home – he didn’t want to go anymore, clearly.
The next few hours were like a waking nightmare. I thought that for sure something must be wrong. I was in denial – this can’t be happening to me. This can’t be my life. This is the sort of thing that happens to other people, not to me!
I eventually faced reality and started to take action.
The next 8 months were all about my healing – like it was my job. I spent almost every waking moment reading about what to do to heal, going to appointments, getting treatments and just staring off into space in disbelief.
My good health had always been a source of pride for me. I was often the only one in my family who wouldn’t get sick when there were colds. I thought I was doing everything right and that I was invincible. I was so careful to eat organic, I meditated regularly, exercised, did things to release emotions, had a strong spiritual practice and have done everything I could to protect myself from pesticides, EMFs, etc.
But I still got f#%^ing cancer. It is a genetic disposition I had on the paternal line (my grandmother had breast cancer at my age and my dad has had cancer a few times) that likely was turned on by stress, by using birth control in my 20s, and who knows what else from our environment. I believe that it started in 2022, right during Covid times when I was speaking out against the narrative and got punished for that by losing a number of so-called friends and having family members get very angry at me. I also was working too much, trying to homeschool my kids while running a business and putting myself last.
After my diagnosis, I wanted so badly to heal naturally. I started doing a Keto diet, which works for many people with cancer as it eliminates sugar and carbs (which cancer feeds on). In addition to the fact that I really don’t like eating animals so much, Keto didn’t work for me. In fact, the tumor grew bigger. I later learned that estrogen-positive breast cancer needs a plant-based diet, as animal hormones naturally fuel estrogen.
Then, I tried a water fast under the guidance of a holistic oncologist. Yep, I didn’t eat ANYTHING for 7 days. Just water. It was very challenging, to put it mildly. I took my blood pressure and pulse every day as the oncologist tracked my symptoms. In addition to not being able to use toothpaste or soap as we were trying to create a closed system, I had pain and nausea the entire time. I could barely walk up the stairs in our house toward the end. I tried to meditate and have it be a spiritual experience but I was so miserable, hungry and irritable that I would just lie around all day. I was just suffering. I lost 20 pounds, which made me quite thin. I was originally going to go for 30 days (how in the hell anyone does this is beyond me – but a few women in our group did do it). I stopped after 7 days as the tumor was growing bigger – clearly it was not working. At the end of the fast, I had to gradually eat soup for a few days, as the re-feeding period is the most dangerous, but I was fine.
I do think that fasting does work for many types of cancer, as fasting puts cells into autophagy, which means the diseased cells get “eaten” by the body as food first. A few women in our group had their tumors shrink. This is an interesting approach that I think we’ll be hearing more about as a treatment for cancer in the coming years. I did continue to fast on and off for a few days here and there in the following months on my own through chemotherapy to encourage autophagy.
Right after the fast, I went to one surgeon I didn’t like at all. Then, I found another place recommended by a few people as having the best breast cancer care in Maine.
The new surgeon and oncologist, in consultation with a board, recommended chemotherapy to shrink the tumor so it could be more easily removed in surgery, and to get it out of the lymph nodes before it spread further (which would not be good). I really really really didn’t want to get chemo. But, after lots of research and meditation, and because I wanted to live a long life for my family and my kids, I knew it was what I had to do.
I did 8 sessions of chemotherapy with a cold cap, which meant I kept some hair throughout the entire time. Wearing a cold cap was like some form of torture. I tried doing hypnotherapy for myself and meditation and not taking any pain medication, but after I started losing some hair, it was just too hard. It was like sticking your head in ice for 5 hours, which is how long the treatment lasted (literally there would be ice on my head at the end). Eventually, I took medical cannabis during the infusions along with pain medication to tolerate it while listening to a hypnotherapy meditation on my phone. My mother and sister would take turns sitting with me, and my husband and my dad came along when they could.
Because I was very concerned about what chemotherapy would do to my body, I started working with a naturopath in Maine who specializes in breast cancer. She guided me with Chinese medicine and other supplements to take to help keep my immune system and blood cells as strong as possible. I also got acupuncture every week, and received energy healing, massage and other intuitive healing sessions, including a really interesting psilocybin mushroom trip, in which I connected with indigenous elders around a fire -they showed up a few different times in healing sessions.
As I ended up taking the strongest, most poisonous chemotherapy there is (in my veins, I didn’t use a port), it did knock me out for a day or two after some of the treatments. I would just lie on the Earth for hours to try to help the toxins leave my body. But a few days after, I was able to go for runs and even play soccer.
So much hair loss was the most difficult. I would cry and cry when clumps of hair would come out in the shower. Thankfully, I never lost all my hair – I was able to cover up the large bald spots with a head scarf, but toward the end it became more and more difficult until I had to wear a tiny ponytail. I would joke about looking like Gollum from Lord of the Rings (you have to have a sense of humor about these things). Thankfully, my hair started growing back at the end of the chemotherapy – so I eventually cut it all off.
While I took a month off from seeing clients, I did work part-time through all of this. Trying to look “normal” was not just about vanity, I was worried that people would think I was dying if they saw me looking like this, or that clients might think I was too sick or weak to help them in sessions. I told a few clients, as well as students in the Intuitive Guide and Hypnotherapy Certification Programs I was teaching. I had to cancel a few classes, and they all were amazingly understanding and even would lead prayer vigils for me.
I also had to get surgery. I’ll tell you that it is very strange to be lying on an operating table waiting to be cut into before you go out under anesthesia. The surgeon let me listen to a self-hypnosis meditation I recorded for myself during surgery (how cool is that!). I recovered pretty well from surgery, but I did get an infection that was scary. Thankfully, antibiotics helped it go away… and I took probiotics to save my gut.
After the surgery, I was declared cancer-free, as far as they can tell at least. There’s still a few more things I’ll be doing to keep the cancer at bay, hopefully for the rest of my life, but I wanted to share this journey with you all without keeping it a secret any longer.
I believe at some level I chose this experience to bring me into a heightened state of consciousness.
When you face your own mortality, it is freeing in a sense. I also feel a deeper sense of spiritual connection with God more than I ever have. Jesus and Mother Mary were with me every step, taking me on journeys and holding my hand as I closed my eyes to go inward for strength.
I really wanted to heal this naturally, and I know there are people who have done that successfully. I also know of people who tried to heal it naturally and died. I believe that other remedies such as Ivermectin and Mebendazole may be key parts of cancer healing, although these are not perfect as they are drugs that can be hard on the liver. I didn’t know of anyone who could guide me through these treatments, who could show me evidence that it would actually work.
After doing weeks of research, talking to real people and really tapping into my intuition, I chose the Western medicine approach, which ultimately saved my life. But, the Eastern medicine and complementary approach helped me heal my body with almost none of the nasty side effects that normally come with chemotherapy (aside from some hair loss). I had very little nausea and pain thanks to cannabis and acupuncture, and my immune system came back well through healthy eating and supplements. The chemotherapy shrunk the tumor down to almost nothing, thanks in part to the fact that I fasted the day before and after each chemotherapy session. The oncologist was surprised at how well I did through it all.
I am still processing what my life will look like now that I have made it to the other side and survived. I have started being more present in each moment, planning less of what I want to do in my business, and letting go of the pressure to post constantly on social media. I see the value in being quiet, which is who I naturally am anyway, rather than finding the need to preach a message. I feel like I have taught a lot of what I cared about in terms of intuition and spiritual awakening, and while I continue to share some of that, I am potentially being guided in a slightly different direction through this experience.
I have a deep faith in the light of the Source of All that Is, otherwise known as God, and the human embodiment of Jesus and his mother Mary, while maintaining a deep distrust of organized religion. This deep faith guides me every day in my life and will even more. I am lucky to be alive, and I will always give thanks for that every single day.
I have been raked through the ashes and dragged into the depths of hell. I felt depression knocking on my door but I wouldn’t let it in. While I cried a lot and wouldn’t get out of bed for a long time some days, I had to stay strong for my kids. I kept seeing clients and homeschooling the kids through it all. They did a lot of additional chores (they learned to cook and do laundry!) and said the whole time they knew I would be okay, which I will be.
I will never be the same and will always carry some kind of sorrow for what I felt I had to put my body through to stay alive. Yet, I feel stronger than ever and more grateful than ever for this beautiful Earth and her gifts, and the deep love of so many friends and my family who have supported me unconditionally through this. I know that this experience has made me a better, patient, kinder and more tolerant person. I look forward to seeing how I can support others who face this unbelievably difficult journey as best I can, while I take more time to tend to my own needs, to experience joy, to do nothing if I want to and to just be.
The first thing I want to do now that I am pretty much through this is to teach again. With the credentials and support of IACT (International Association of Counselors and Therapists and IMDHA (International Medical and Dental Hypnotherapy Association), I created a Hypnotherapy Certification Program that I am very proud of, and I will sharing more about the 2026 program soon. I am really excited to get back into this challenge for me, and and into teaching others who want to become hypnotherapists how to do so!
I appreciate your reading through all this, and I will inevitably be sharing more soon.
Sending you blessings on your journey in life as we all muddle through it together,
Rachel
