A Breast Cancer Diary with Kathleen Moss

by Kathleen Moss

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39 episodes

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A Breast Cancer Diary is a deeply personal podcast where women tell the stories of breakthroughs, connections and paths to overcoming the challenges of Breast Cancer. It's for women who are facing decisions in the near future, as well as those who remain in this world years after diagnosis. It explores themes of body positivity, reframing of family, relationships, lifestyle, work, and it also explores recurrence, metastasis and the sacrifices that we don't normally talk about.

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6/9/2024

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Recent Episodes

April 20, 2025

Reflecting on Integrative Oncology

Kathleen Moss reflects on Heather Jose's integrative oncology approach, distinguishing it from alternative medicine and highlighting the importance of functional medicine in cancer treatment; this is a reflection episode.

April 13, 2025

26 Year Metastatic Thriver, Heather Jose

Occupational therapist Heather Jose shares her journey of thriving with metastatic breast cancer for nearly 27 years with host Kathleen Moss, discussing the integrative approach that has kept her healthy and the importance of mindset and lifestyle choices in her success

April 6, 2025

Giving Back Through Breast Cancer Advocacy

Today's episode is part two of my advocacy series. I hope it's helpful, but if volunteerism and advocacy isn't your thing, I'll have more stories from guests coming up in the next two weeks! Subscribe on: <a href= "https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a-breast-cancer-diary/id1751189077"> APPLE PODCASTS</a> - <a href= "https://open.spotify.com/show/4cb2eSUf20WozZYCUbU7DF">SPOTIFY</a> - <a href= "https://music.amazon.com/es-co/podcasts/a1270244-0e4f-4725-98a6-e5f00b8b8e75/a-breast-cancer-diary"> AMAZON</a>   Join my Newsletter Mailing List:   <a href= "https://abreastcancerdiary.substack.com">https://abreastcancerdiary.substack.com</a>  Links: NBCC: <a href= "https://stopbreastcancer.org/">https://stopbreastcancer.org </a> LBCA: <a href= "https://lobularbreastcancer.org/">https://lobularbreastcancer.org</a> Tigerlily Foundation (WOC, young ambassadors locally): <a href= "https://angel.tigerlilyfoundation.org/">https://angel.tigerlilyfoundation.org/</a> Inflammatory Breast Cancer Network: <a href= "https://theibcnetwork.org/">https://theibcnetwork.org/</a> Project Life MBC (metastatic): <a href= "https://www.projectlifembc.com/">https://www.projectlifembc.com/</a> Project Life MBC/LGBTQ: <a href= "https://www.projectlifembc.com/project-outreach">https://www.projectlifembc.com/project-outreach</a> MBC Alliance (metastatic): <a href= "https://www.mbcalliance.org/members/">https://www.mbcalliance.org/members/</a> Triple Negative Foundation: <a href= "https://tnbcfoundation.org/">https://tnbcfoundation.org/</a> Stand Tall AFC: <a href= "https://standtallafc.org/">https://standtallafc.org</a> Not Putting on a Shirt: <a href= "https://notputtingonashirt.org/whcra/">https://notputtingonashirt.org/whcra/</a> Make Cancer Less Shitty: <a href= "https://www.makecancerlessshitty.com/our-ambassadors">https://www.makecancerlessshitty.com/our-ambassadors</a> Young Survival Coalition (science and legislation): <a href= "https://youngsurvival.org/">https://youngsurvival.org</a> The Breasties: <a href= "https://thebreasties.org/">https://thebreasties.org/</a> For the Breast of Us (women of color, national): <a href= "https://www.breastofus.com/on-podcast/">https://www.breastofus.com/on-podcast/</a> Cancer Culture (for metastatic patients, event driven, in Virginia): <a href= "https://www.cancerculture.org/">https://www.cancerculture.org/</a> Today, it's just me again, and I'm going to be talking about advocacy again, this is part two of my two part series on advocacy for breast cancer patients or former patients who are thrivers and survivors. And my first, if you heard. Didn't hear my first edition, uh, to this series. It was about the less intense ways to become an advocate. The ways to just dip your feet in the water and try it out. Uh, less commitment, less intensity, less time involvement, less, less longevity to the commitment that was last week. Now, this week I'm gonna be talking about the kinds of ways to become an advocate that are longer term, more time intensive, not necessarily, you know. Something you couldn't do in your evenings and weekends if you're still working full-time, but, uh, a little bit more hardcore advocacy. And like I said last week, it's mainly in the niche areas, in the edges or the margins of breast cancer that you find opportunities to become an advocate, but not always. So I'm gonna start out by talking about the more mainstream organizations that support breast cancer advocates, the ones that aren't fitting into any of those niche, margin. Topics or populations. So, as you may have guessed, Komen and the American Cancer Society are two of the most visible organizations that work with breast cancer survivors. Long term, they have mixed reviews. They're, you either love them or you hate 'em. People who are critical of them are critical because a lot of the dollars they raise go back towards the bureaucracy of running their very, very large infrastructure organizations. So it's a little bit of criticism there. They're doing the best they can, making improvements, aware that they're being criticized. Komen will tend to want to partner with people around just fundraising and awareness raising and visibility for their campaigns. They have a couple of different campaigns nationwide. The main one is More than Pink and that's just their walks in different towns and cities, you can show up there, bring a team and , get your team to raise money for them, raise visibility for them, and they will be very happy. The other thing that Komen does is they train science advocates and their program is called Advocates in Science. AIS and once you sign up for that, you'll wanna look in your email inbox to make sure and catch all the a IS emails. I am an advocate in science with Komen, and sometimes I don't know the name of the person that's emailing me from them, but usually they'll put the, the, um, letters A IS in the email. So it's a very hands off. Uh, advocacy training, it's all online. It's very impersonal. You don't actually get to know any one person in particular. And that, for me, was hard. I like to do a little bit more personal work and be mentored and, I don't know, see people in person when possible. So, AIS is a really good program that I recommend for those of you who are maybe introverts who don't wanna travel across the country. To go to an in-person advocacy training. And again, that is science advocacy. That is a very particular brand of advocacy. We have mainly two brands of advocacy, um, education and science, and then there's fundraising for those that wanna just do fundraising. So to, oh, and then there's actually, there's four that I'm gonna talk about today. So education, that's peer-to-peer. Uh, sometimes you can educate your clinician. Usually you're not trying to do that. And uh, science is usually with regard to educating yourself in terms of research so that you can go and be, an advocate in the research community. And then fundraising obviously is really easy. You just go out and raise funds for whatever organization you support. But then there's also, uh. Legislative advocacy or lobbying. And that's another type of advocacy that you can do for certain types of nonprofit organizations that are not 501c3's. So I'll talk a little bit about that. But most of what I'm gonna talk about today is about education and science. Um, so. Some of my favorite organizations, oh, and I was gonna say that, um, American Cancer Society, they're the other kind of mainstream, huge monstrous organization that supports breast cancer patients in the world. And they do that by kind of gathering the science and, uh, reporting out on all the numbers. And, every year there's, you know, different statistics that come out from them. They also do a lot of funding for research as Komen does, and they really like to. Team up with folks in the breast cancer community more personally , choosing one or two representatives, or ambassadors from the breast cancer community locally during the time that they're putting on a walk in the local community. So they will ask you to raise a certain amount of money as their ambassador, but also they will ask you to go out and publicly speak, maybe get on the news for them so it's a little bit more of a partnership and you'll be mentored a little bit more personally. But it's not educational in nature. It is very much fundraising awareness, raising media, raising for them and for their cause, not necessarily for you or for your cause. So beyond those two gigantic, kind of global organizations, we've got all of the marginal ones. And so I'm gonna list off a bunch of those and, I don't know a whole lot about all of these, but I know quite a bit about most of them. So I'll start out with some of the ones that I've been involved with that I can tell you personally about. My favorite one is called the National Breast Cancer Coalition. , they are my favorite because they have invested the most in me, and they are a little bit more of an edgy research organization. So unlike Komen and maybe American Cancer Society, they're doing funding of kind of novel ideas in the breast cancer space. Uh, they're not investing as much in the kinds of studies, uh, and trials that we've been doing for decades and decades. So they have a little bit different edge on, their standards for choosing the research that they will endorse. And they lobby for lots and lots of funding, mostly from government sources every year. And then they also do. Uh, more legislative lo lobbying so that's what they do as an organization, but then. The way that I interacted with them is they trained me to be an advocate in science. So just like Komen has their advocates in science, NBCC has their advocates in science, and you can be both at the same time. If you're really obsessed with science and the science of breast cancer, then I highly recommend being both. So NBCC though, they train. They're advocates in person in San Diego every year. It's a highly competitive program. Not everybody gets in. You have to kind of prove that you're serious about advocacy before you apply, and one of the ways that you prove that you're serious about advocacy is by showing up to their leadership summit, which happens every May in Washington DC. So they're kind of like a bi-coastal organization. They have their big event every year in Washington dc Everyone's invited to that every year consecutively. You can come. Over and over and over. And then they have their week long training in San Diego every year, but that's only a one time thing. And there are follow up trainings, but most of those are online. And then they do have their legislative advocates that they train separately. And that's pretty much online. It's, it's more of a, a zoom based training. But I, I really got a lot out of their project lead, which is their advocacy in science or advocate in science training in San Diego. And I did it backwards 'cause I came to them straight after Covid. I got into the project lead the week long. Educational training in the science of breast cancer before I went to the summit. I'm going to the summit next month for the first time, but I haven't been to the summit before. Most, most often you'll find that you are accepted into Project Lead after you've been to the summit and Project Lead. What it is is very intense day long trainings. By the scientific community. They bring in all the best scientists in breast cancer from all over the world, and you learn from them directly on all of the different. Parts of the science of breast cancer. So you learn about immunology, you learn about breast cancer research, how to look and pick apart, uh, a research, a trial, so that you know whether it's reliable. Uh, you learn about the different ways that media can spin that research to make it look more significant than it really is, and some of the more kind of controversial issues in the breast cancer research world, you kind of look into those too. So I highly recommend that if you're a serious. Someone who's serious about advocacy and you really wanna go the long haul and use your knowledge in, in breast cancer science long term, it is a big investment that they make. It is an expensive training and there are scholarships for it. Um, usually they'll just pay for part of it. Uh, but if you have a sponsoring organization like I did, then your sponsoring organization can also provide you with a scholarship in many cases. So that organization that sent me to the NBCC's project Lead is the Lobular Breast Cancer Alliance, and I am now an advocate for them. I am one of their official advocates. After going through NBCC's program, I. I, I started to work right away, uh, leading one of, or coordinating one of their programs, a local advocacy teams program. So the LBCA supports me in a lot of ways, but I also support them because I, I do a lot of volunteer work for them and kind of mentoring other. Newer advocates in an in-person local advocacy team setting. So you can join the Lobular Breast Cancer Alliance if you've had lobular breast cancer, or even if you haven't, if you're a caregiver or someone that cares a lot about lobular, usually it's the patients that come to us. And there's lots of ways to get involved as an advocate. With the Lobular Breast Cancer Alliance, it's one of the most open organizations, lots of ins, lots of opportunities, and those opportunities are made very clear on the website. There are committees that you can join. You can do more nationally based advocacy and education. You can do research advocacy, you can sign up to be a research advocate in lobular trials, and then the Lobular Breast Cancer Alliance will have your name on a list. When a scientist comes to them to say, Hey, I need a patient's perspective, then the Lobular Breast Cancer Alliance would call you and say, Hey, this lab needs a patient's perspective. Usually that lab's not gonna be in your backyard, but it might be probably not. Uh, and then you can sign up to be on the team of people that review that trial in an ongoing way from the beginning to the end. And that's what we call advocates in science or advocates in research. Or you can just do your own local advocacy in your own community to raise awareness for lobular breast cancer like I do and like I help other people do. And that means not just showing up to walks, which would be great, but also showing up. Uh, on October 15th, which is the global Lobular Breast Cancer Awareness Day, uh, it could mean that you're bringing flyers and literature to your local clinics and libraries of clinics or hospitals, or to your clinicians. It could mean all kinds of things. You could do fundraising for the LBCA. Doing all kinds of advocacy and they give you a whole big, long list of ways that you can do that. You can do interviews for national media or local media. You can set up a table at a health fair. Just all kinds of ways to do advocacy with that organization. They're an excellent organization that supports their advocates very well. The next place on my list is around metastatic breast cancer, which in my experience and opinion, needs a lot of support and awareness raising. And the one of the organizations that has maybe a little bit less receptivity or paths of, , being able to join them is the MBCA, so not the LBCA, but the MBCA, which is Metastatic Breast Cancer Alliance, and they're at MBCalliance.org and you can join them if you're an organization like the LBCA is a member. That's a group member or you can join them if you're a patient who has been metastatic. I tried to join them as an individual member. Since my mom was metastatic as an advocate for metastatic breast cancer and I was not accepted. So I think probably if you're not a metastatic patient, you may not be accepted as an individual member, but if you are accepted as an individual member, they're very supportive. They have regular meetings. They will give you support in terms of like scholarships to training events of your own choosing. And it's a very, um. A great, a great network of resources. So they're gonna provide educational resources and travel grants to get to different conferences to learn about metastatic breast cancer. Another organization that I work with closely is Stand Tall, AFC. I've mentioned them a number of times in the podcast and so I won't say a whole lot about them, but they are about the type of closure that you get after a mastectomy and at stand tall we are really just focused on. Breast cancer walks, it's a very narrow path of advocacy. You can only be an advocate at stand tall if you are going to the breast cancer walks in your community and either leading a team of volunteer, flatties that can, are willing to be seen as flatties. So whether they're wearing a shirt that says flat, or whether they're taking their shirt off to be seen, um, it's just about visibility, support, and solidarity. And then if you've done that kind of leadership, if you led a team in the past, you can move up to the next. Responsibility level and do a table. And so I kind of mentor people around tabling and tabling at walks is very different than leading a team at walks. It is much more conversational, much more educational. There are, you know, brochures and literature and, and things you can hand out and use as kind of prompts when you're just getting rolling. So it shouldn't be something you're too intimidated to do, but it is very much of an educational role. And so Stand Tall AFC has that place in the breast cancer world of just showing up to breast cancer walks and breast cancer events and either showing visibility or educating folks that walk up to your table. Another flat. Oriented organization that's a little different is Stand Tall's umbrella organization, which is a, a nonprofit called not putting on a shirt.org. And um, they are doing a kind of a legislative project where they're seeking to amend the wording to the W-H-C-R-A act. Um, it's the Women's Health and Cancer Rights Act, and they are seeking to just. Put a couple of words in that would make it a little bit more likely that flat closure would be funded by insurance in all cases across the board. Just the way that implants are funded by insurance in all cases, which is what the W-H-C-R-A was created to ensure. So that's a very niche little path of advocacy. But I will put that link down below so that if you're passionate about the W-H-C-R-A and adding those two words, um, so it's not just paying for, reconstruction, but reconstruction or chest wall reconstruction. The chest wall is the two words that we're seeking to add. So that's a very, very, very niche, um, area of advocacy, but very legitimate for many of us, including myself. And so I'll put the link down below to let you look into that if you're interested. Uh, the Triple Negative Breast Cancer Foundation, this is one I don't know as much about. Um, this is one that is, I think they're the main contact for triple negative advocacy in the world. And the main thing they do is. They allow you to help them fundraise. So it is pretty simple. There's not a lot of paths into the actual work that they're doing. As far as I can tell. It's mostly about fundraising or you can receive support from them in terms of getting into a support group or something like that too. And then, um, some of the organizations that are oriented around women of color and their needs are Tigerlily at tigerlillyfoundation.org. They are mostly concerned about equity and um, they have a really beautiful program that they allow everyone, I think everyone can apply to be, to be an advocate for them. So they have their own advocacy program, it's called Angels, and I think it's mostly geared toward younger women who are breast cancer survivors. And it's mostly geared toward. Advocates pushing for equity in healthcare setting for people of color, women of color. So if you become an advocate for them, you're mostly gonna be advocating for women of color, even if you aren't a woman of color. Um, but most of their advocates are women of color, but they're very, very inclusive. I felt very much embraced by them when I met them at the San Antonio, breast Cancer Symposium. They were not. Only interested in partnering with women of color. I've, I'm very much not in that population, so I've, I'm just, you know, Northern European in my ancestry, so. But they were very interested in allowing me to fill out the Angel application to become an angel advocate. So I love that and I love them. And the other one that I've interacted with a little bit in those same spaces at Project Lead and the San Antonio Symposium is "For the Breast of Us", and their website is breast of us.com. And. They are a little bit less, I think they have a very small staff. I can't tell that whether they're interacting with folks very much on the advocacy. In terms of like mentoring or supporting advocates in, in their space, but they are very much educating and giving lots of resources. So if you're wanting to be kind of a solo advocate and receive from them the resources that they have to give around advocating for women of color and breast cancer, I think they're amazing. They're really good at kind of redefining things in their own terms, so they don't say allies. Uh, they say accomplices and they have a little training for accomplices. Again, for people who aren't women of color who want to be allies, what we call allies in this space, um, they call them accomplices, so more like partners than just allies. And so their website is extensive. It's really, um, it's really full of resources, but you can't. I don't think they even have a newsletter. They don't have a lot of interaction, I guess is what I'm saying. They're supportive of advocacy, but they're not training or supporting advocates or communicating every, every month with advocates the way that the LBCA does, for example. Um, but they do have a great podcast and I think that if you got involved in reading their blog or listening to their podcast, you'd probably find some ways in. To connect with them because I know they do send advocates to Project Lead, so they must have some ambassadors in some respect. Um, so yeah, I encourage you to learn more about them. Uh, let's see. Young Survival Coalition, so their young survival.org is the website. They have mostly science and legislative advocacy programs, and they have in-person events. Their in-person events are more educational. They're not really. They're just educating you about, generally about the breast cancer as a young survivor and bringing people together. They're not really training you to be an advocate. Exactly. Although I think there's some crossover there. Um, but they do have a great, on their website, they have great resources, and if you want to be a science advocate or a legislative advocate, they have pathways for you to follow that are on their website. And then a really small niche, little marginal population in the breast cancer community, even smaller than lobular and triple negative is something called inflammatory breast cancer. The main place to go if you wanna advocate for that population is uh, it's called theibcnetwork.org, so the inflammatory breast cancer network, they are kind of the place to go for resources and for connection. And I've got a couple other, um, organizations that I know very little about. Project life MBC. So Project Life NBC is only for metastatic breast cancer patients. They have a lot of supportive resources in education to help people feel a little bit more prepared to be a metastatic breast cancer patient. But they also have a couple of advocacy avenues that they have for for people who wanna become advocates. Most of their advocates are folks that have been advocating for a while individually and then have decided to start volunteering for them as educators. And so that's the, the folks I know. Who are involved as advocates with Project Life are folks who have been pretty active in the advocacy space and they either teach a class or offer support group or do something give back to the community in that way, online mostly. So most, almost all of their offerings are online at Project Life, but Project Life. Al also has a very, very. Niched, um, area for metastatic breast cancer patients who are, queer or L-G-B-T-Q. So they have one little part of their website that is just this one little project for advocacy and awareness raising around folks who have metastatic breast cancer in that population. So I will link to that below as well. And then there are a couple of organizations that don't do a whole lot of advocacy, but I just wanna mention because I feel like they also do a lot of good in, in the world and probably will be doing some sort of advocacy just by nature of the fact that they're growing, um, tremendously these days. So The Breasties is one of them, and the Breasty is a very general. Organization, it's, it's just supporting women who've had breast and gynecological cancers. And the main way that they support women is just by having fun. So they just have this camp every year that has incredible funding, incredible opportunities to like dance and swim and just be childish together like you do when you go to camp and, and then also hear from panels and experts and learn a little bit in education. And then the Breasties. They do their own advocacy. So if you wanted to like be on their board or take a leadership position with them, I think they do advocacy, but they don't really partner with patients a ton around advocacy. That's my impression, just looking at their website and trying to understand what they're offering. I may be wrong about that, but they do have some things they're boasting about doing in terms of the advocacy space, but I think it's just their leadership team that does it. And then there's an organization called Cancer Culture, and it is very event driven, and it is on the east coast. It's in Virginia. So for those of us on the west coast, we probably won't really interact much with cancer culture, but I just wanted to mention them. For those who are on the East Coast and you're interested in more of an artistic, um, kind of event based and aesthetic based organization, they, they started kind of. In the realm of art and fashion, I believe. And so they have a very flamboyant kind of, uh, affect. And like I said, that's, it's all in person event based--it's, not online at all. Another place that I've heard about through in different conferences that I've gone to that's very curious to me is an organization called Make Cancer Less shitty.com, and they are all about the side effects of cancer. Not just breast cancer, but all cancers. The drugs that we take, the chemo that we take, the long-term metastatic drugs, all have just horrendous side effects, usually including diarrhea. And so that's why they chose that title. And they're, as you can imagine, they're very edgy and their approach, and they do have specific ambassadors that they have partnered with that go out and talk about how difficult it is to live with cancer and how much we need drugs that are less harsh. And so you can apply to be a partner or an advocate ambassador with them specifically. And uh, then they will allow you to have some resources to go out and talk, maybe do some public speaking. And I think it's mostly awareness raising around just the symptoms and, and making sure that doctors know and don't minimize the intensity of the quality of life sacrifices that we make, as cancer patients. So it's kind of a political issue, I guess, in the medical space and it's a very, very niched focus and I think it's really cool. Okay. That's a lot. Now, I wanted to say too that a lot of advocates that I know will also do their own. Research into how to go and find people in their own places, their own cities and towns that are doing important work in breast cancer. And I would say that that happens on a very grassroots level just by looking and listening and learning. I have learned so many. Different labs that are doing cancer research. Well, a lot of 'em are gonna lose their funding in October because of all the crazy governmental cuts that have been happening. But right now there are a lot of universities and a lot of cancer centers that are doing very good research. And if you have a specific interest in a certain type of research, either a type of cancer, breast cancer that you are passionate about or. A certain type of approach, like a lot of us are more interested in the more holistic trials and what we can do with lifestyle and not as drug centered. So you might find a lab in your community that is doing the kind of research that you're most interested in, and you can as. A free agent as an individual human, you can partner with them as an advocate in various ways. Also, it would be best to go to a training like the Komen Advocates in Science or Project Lead first so that you can speak the language and kind of get the, the lay of the land. But even if you didn't there, there's a chance to learn from them. Get a tour of their lab, for example. Just let them know that you're available. If they ever want a patient's perspective, if they ever wanna bring in a patient advocate on their team in one of their research trials or studies, you could be available to them to do that. So I have an example of this that my friend Anna lives in Tucson and I was learning because I'm a a nutritionist, I'm involved in integrative oncology talks and seminars all the time. And one of the experts on, uh, exercise oncology that I was learning from in one of my seminars happened to be stationed at, I think it's the University of Arizona or something in Tucson. And my friend Anna, is interested in holistic. approaches to breast cancer, and so I emailed her and said, Hey, here's the name of this guy. He's just down the street from you. You may want to talk to him. Just email him and see what he's got going and if he has anything that you could help him with. She had already been trained a little bit to be an advocate to, to be confident in the advocate space. And so she reached out to him and I'm not sure how it went, but that is, is kind of some of the connections that don't happen really super easily until you start just kind of placing yourself in the breast cancer community and the scientific community in particular, which you can do by going to annual conferences. And the best one to go to is in San Antonio. So in San Antonio. The world comes to one place every year in December, early December, usually, and talks about what they've learned about breast cancer. So everyone who's studying breast cancer of all types comes and in all ways. So not just with drugs, but with lifestyle. Also, they come together and there's just thousands and thousands of people learning together about breast cancer. It's just the most amazing environment. I just love it. And it's pretty affordable for an advocate to go there. They get a reduced rate. I think I paid like $50 or something like that, maybe $60. But you do need a sponsoring organization, so you have to be advocating for, or with a nonprofit or an agency, an organization of some sort in order to get that reduced rate. And you do have to pay for your plane and you know, your, your hotel and everything too, of course. But if you're. Advocating with an organization, some of the, those organizations do have money to help you get there and for your hotel and everything too. And then there's ASCO, which is all of the cancers, which to me would be way too overwhelming. I don't have. Much desire to go and learn about all of the cancers myself, but somebody might, you might be interested in that conference. Um, but the, the new conference that I've heard about for the last couple of years that I really wanna go to, that kind of moves around the country, um, is the one for the Society for Integrative Oncology. They have a conference annually. And I think it's in Chicago this year. I think it's coming up soon in Chicago. And um, so I'm not going to that this year, but you may see me there next year 'cause I'm really interested in integrative oncology and I'd love to, to see the best of the best in that space. Now Lobular breast cancer also has, um, well it has been annual, but I think it's gonna turn to every other year. Starting this year, we're not gonna have one. But in the fall of every year, up until now, there has been, uh, the Lobular Breast Cancer Symposium, and it was in Philadelphia a couple years ago. And then last year I was overseas in Belgium. And next year in 2026, it's gonna be in San Francisco. And so I will definitely be there. That's close enough to home that I can make it very easily. Now you can find little. Tiny organizations in your own community to do good work. Also, like I do a monthly craft night, uh, in a satellite group for people who live near me with a local breast cancer support organization. And I guess that's, that's kind of advocacy. 'cause when people come together, we end up doing education and we, we converse about resources. So I'm educating folks just by nature of being with them in person . And you might have a local breast cancer organization that does a lot of good work, and maybe you can reach out to them and see where your talents match their needs and see if they need someone to lead a support group or if they need someone to lead a craft night or a walk. Um. Some kind of in-person activity that would support breast cancer patients that are feeling isolated. That would be a great opportunity to, uh, be an educational advocate as well, because like I said, if you're being around people just naturally you're gonna be sharing your experience with them and their, your experience means so much to them. Um, being new to this space and being a new patient and just not having a whole lot of information. So there are little ways to do educational advocacy as well that aren't as, um, I don't know, not as long-term commitment or reaching across the country and working with people from all over. So you can find little small ways to contribute as well. But that is kind of the summary of the more complex and intense ways to become an advocate. I started this series because someone reached out to me who had lobular breast cancer or a type of lobular breast cancer, and she didn't know that she could get involved. She was just like, you know, "what do you mean when you say advocacy? You really mean that there's a room, room for me as a new patient to come in and do some work and just, you know, team up and partner up with others that have been there and, and really know a lot more than I do?" And the answer is yes, absolutely. Almost all of the organizations that I mentioned today are very happy to receive one more person on their team and to support you in the ways that they do. So don't be shy. You know, introduce yourself to the executive director. Most of these organizations are quite small, and the executive director is, that's their job is to get to know new people in the community. Make connections. So they may not be the one that you work with long term, but you can introduce yourself to them and see where you might fit best in their organization. You can always ask, even if they don't have the infrastructure to support you long term as an advocate or as a representative of their organization. If you're a fan of what they're doing, they're gonna wanna hear from you. They need that. They need fans. They need people to take their message out into the world, and chances are at least they would give you a gig, you know, tabling for them or support you and educate you enough to be a representative in your community. I have a lot of interviews coming up, some really interesting folks. Uh, a long term survivor of metastatic breast cancer. Someone I'm really excited to talk to, Heather Jose is coming up soon and a couple of other new podcast creators from Australia will be guests of mine from Breast Case Scenario. I'm also going to be a guest of theirs and, um, have already recorded an interview with them for their podcast. So I will be following this one up with probably a couple interviews in a row since I've had a couple of non-interview episodes in a row. So look for that. And of course if you don't know about my new Substack, I always wanna plug that. Make sure you look for me at abreastcancerdiary.substack.com. So that's just the website to subscribe and you can get that newsletter. It's a weekly newsletter or maybe three times a month in your email inbox. And if you have the Substack app, you can follow me there without getting an email in your email inbox... and I will talk to you next week.

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