For a year, I was told it was nothing.
I had a swollen lymph node. I brought it up more than once. Each time, I was told the same thing: it's probably nothing. A year went by like that. Me, noticing something was wrong in my own body. A doctor, reassuring me it wasn't.
Finally, someone ordered an ultrasound. Then a biopsy.
I found out it was malignant on a regular Tuesday, in the middle of a full day of seeing my own therapy clients---not from a phone call, not from a doctor sitting across from me. From a text alert on my phone. A MyChart notification, the kind you'd get about a prescription refill, telling me I had Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma.
I finished my session. I don't remember how.
I share this not because it's a dramatic opening line, but because if you're reading this page, some version of that moment might already be yours. Maybe you were dismissed before someone finally listened. Maybe you found out something devastating in a way that felt utterly ordinary---a text, a phone call at work, a portal message you weren't braced for. Maybe you're mid-treatment right now, or maybe your scans are clear and you're standing in the strange, disorienting after that nobody warned you about.
I've been each of those women. And now, I'm a therapist for them.
What I know now that I didn't know before
I went through chemo. I lost the things chemo takes. And when it was over, when the scans came back clear, I expected to feel like myself again. Instead, I found a whole new kind of hard: a body that still doesn't feel like mine, a mind that flinches at every ache, a life that everyone else assumed had "gone back to normal" while I was still finding my footing inside it.
Nobody had prepared me for the after.
Who I work with
If you were just diagnosed:
The ground just shifted under you, and you don't have all the information yet. You don't need someone to promise you it'll be okay. You need someone who won't flinch while you figure out how to keep living your life inside the not-knowing.
If you're in treatment right now:
You're doing a full-time job your body didn't ask for. You might be exhausted, angry, and strangely guilty for not feeling grateful enough. All of that is allowed here and you don't have to resolve that contradiction before we can work together.
If your treatment has ended:
Everyone around you thinks the hard part is over. Your scans are clear, but you don't feel "done." You're not imagining it. This is often where the real work begins. You may finally be able to feel the feelings you disassociated from during treatment. You may need to rebuild a relationship with your body and you certainly will be living inside "watch and wait," and figuring out who you are now.
Why this matters
I'm not just clinically trained to support people through medical trauma, chronic uncertainty, and grief. I've lived it. When a client tells me she feels like she's supposed to be grateful and she's just angry, I don't have to guess what she means. If she cries and says--I just don't think I can go sit in that chair and let them punish my body with chemicals--that was me. When she says she's terrified of every follow-up scan, I know that fear from the inside.
Credibility, here, doesn't come only from a license and years of experience. It comes from having sat in the chair.
Ready to talk?
If any part of this page felt like your life right now, reach out and let's chat about individual sessions or group therapy. Let's find the right fit to support you through this.
