Tag Archives: breast cancer survivor

Something I really, really have been meaning to share for a while now.

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In 2002, I thought my mother was going to die.

She was diagnosed with stage3 breast cancer. There are only four stages a patient can go through.

I felt incredibly hopeless and lonely during that time in my life and I swore I would change that one day.

And then I did.

Below is a short story about an event called Yoga in Motion that I co-founded with a friend in 2008 – it combines yoga and fundraising and to date we have raised more than $100,000 for breast cancer research and awareness. This is a big part of my life these days, which is why I want to share it with you all, because this blog is a big part of my life, too.

Oh, and I should mention.. in 2005 I wrote, “start a charity” on my Birthday List that year. And it, just three years later, it happened. See? Lists work. Just sayin’.

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The power of change

By: Sandy Braz, co-founder, Yoga in Motion

My story begins like many others: In a doctor’s office, on the receiving end of a conversation that started with the words, “I’m sorry to say, but…”

My mother was 49 when she learned that she might lose both her breasts and live for another six months, if she was lucky; longer if she took treatment, which she knew nothing about, but once watched a friend receive and surely thought the treatment looked worse than the cancer itself.

For a few minutes that day in the doctor’s office, as the news was delivered to her, she considered foregoing treatment and living out her days with my sister and I by her side, her hair, breasts and body in tact. She considered it, but not for long. My mother wanted to live, and we needed her to.

At the time I was 21 and my sister just 16. We were newly a family of three, the ink on my parents’ divorce papers barely dry. To say it was a difficult time would be an understatement; but to say it was the worse experience of our lives wouldn’t be accurate either. That year, as I watched my mother be pricked and prodded, go bald and lose part of her breast, I learned that, like me, she wanted to live a full and healthy life. She wanted to be there for my graduation the following year; she wanted to celebrate my first home; she wanted to button my dress on my wedding day; and she wanted to kiss her grandchildren goodnight. For the first time in a long time, she regained her will to not just live, but to live well.

Simple pleasures like coffee became a joy; spending time with my sister and I became what she looked forward to, not what was a chore of preparing dinner or doing laundry; and sitting in the passenger’s seat of my car as we drove to and from the hospital every Tuesday and Thursday for treatment became an opportunity to watch her daughter become a strong woman, just like she always hoped I would be.  “I’ve done well,” she once told me, as we pulled into the treatment centre, “and I am so proud of who you have become.” As the breast cancer broke her down, the experience of being loved and cared for helped build her back up because, as we learned that year, it is possible to change how cancer changes you.

By the time my mother was diagnosed, I had been teaching yoga for a couple of years. It helped me help her. Yoga gave me a way to deal with my confusion and sadness and anger towards breast cancer; it gave me an opportunity to heal and change what cancer meant in my life. For all these reasons, and for my mother and sister, I co-founded Yoga in Motion, alongside the compassionate and philanthropic women of the Mount Sinai Auxiliary. It is an event that I hope inspires others to redefine what cancer means in their own lives; it is a way to put themselves in motion for a cure.

Want to help make a change – feel free to RE-BLOG this post or sponsor me here.

2nd Annual Yoga in Motion
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Liberty Grand, Toronto
10am-2pm
yogathon

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Space for rant.

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From ages 20-24, I was living in a basement apartment in Toronto. After my parents divorced and we sold our family home, it just felt like it was time to leave and start over on my own. I lived with my mom and sister for a few months after the house sold, in a two bedroom apartment where we fought a lot. Almost as soon as we moved in there I started to make plans to leave and be on my own, for the first time.

My first apartment was a small bachelor in the basement of a three-storey house.  It cost me less than $400 a month, plus countless sleepless nights of lying awake listening to the booming of my landlady’s Polish TV shows just above me. A year earlier, I had been living as one fourth of a family, waking up to bacon and eggs on Saturday mornings and listening to my parents argue with deafening silences that lasted for days. Looking back, I really should have seen their divorce coming; but you never do- somehow you think that kind of thing only happens to ‘other families’ and you dismiss it as a possibility… until it does, finally, happen. But even then you’re still sort of in disbelief. Then at some point it becomes the norm and you stop remembering how it was any other way. You start to forget how bacon and eggs smell on Saturday mornings.

I worked four jobs and attended university full-time while I lived in that basement apartment. That tiny space housed some of the worst and best experiences of my young life- I learned how to cook, clean and pay bills. I learned that I loved to write. I discovered that stress really can affect your health and that I hate Polish TV shows. I learned that when things sound too good to be true, they usually are, and I learned that I’m prone to having high cholesterol. That first year of living on my own, I ate more eggs than a bodybuilder and, as a result, earned a cholesterol rating that rivaled my dad’s. Eggs were cheap and, in many ways, nostalgic. I poached, scrambled, flipped and fried at least two dozen a week.

My last year of university my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and given six months to live if she didn’t undergo chemo. Because she was so sad- about the divorce, about the way her life had turned out- she actually considered not taking the treatment. At the prospect of losing another parent, I started to cry one day in her lap. I hadn’t cried in front of her since we lived together back in the house where I was a content one-fourth. I’m not sure if it was because she couldn’t watch me cry anymore or if she felt like I still needed her around, but she decided to take the chemo, which ended up being very bittersweet. Watching a parent go through the pins and pricks and sickness that comes along with chemotherapy is horrible, but we don’t regret it. It helped shape the strength of our family today. Maybe I’ll share that story with you, some day.

While I lived in that basement apartment, my dad hardly called, my mom was diagnosed with cancer, my cholesterol shot through the roof and I bathed in stress. Yet it was a time when I knew it was all so necessary. I was changing, morphing and shaping. For entirely different reasons now that change is happening again, which is why, instead of writing the post I intended for tonight (a little more humorous, with a picture), I’m posting this bit of personal history for you. I felt like it was important to put this comparison somewhere, and I’m glad I can put it here, on this blog. Everyday I grow a little more thankful for that.

I wish I had a blog while I lived in that basement apartment. I really could have used a space for rant.

I’d love to hear from you, dear readers, about anything… cancer, divorce, your first place, even how you like your eggs.

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Confessional. Oh we're going there.

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So, I’m still sort of in word purgatory.

But I give purgatory the middle finger by pulling the following confessions from my vault and spewing these words all over purgatory’s face.

… spewwww words…spewwww

A few 10 things about sandyb that you may or may not care about, relate to or know:

1. I have the world’s most pretty cat. She really doesn’t get enough attention on this blog

2. I’ve thought about deleting this blog. More than once.

3. I love the way a pencil case smells.. like new beginnings.

4. I was once a competitive figure skater.

5. I thought about being a food blogger once. The amount of stuff I know about food, cooking and nutrition is outrageous.

6. I’m a magazine editor by day.

7. I also teach yoga. Seriously.

8. I appeared on a home renovation show.

9. I co-founded a yoga-thon event that raised over $100,000 this year.

10. My father left us when I was 19. But forgiveness is more powerful than anger. He still walked me down the aisle.

11. I love my sister more than my left arm (and we’re pretty close, me and the arm). I am a lucky girl to have my sister.

12. I really am going through a reinvention right now, and some days are harder than others. Today was one of them.

13. I smile when people comment on my blog or email me that they can relate to something I wrote. I am always humbled.

14. More than death, I fear complacency.

15. Lately, I’ve had a few regrets.

16. I’m trying to not feel so bad about #15.

17. I wear my wedding dress on my birthday because it makes me laugh. And I look damn good in it.

18. I blush when people tell me they read my stuff, online and in print.

19. I’m hard on the outside, and soft in the middle. (that’s actually a lot deeper than it sounds.)

20. My husband does my laundry. Don’t hate me.. you’re just jealous.

21. My right boob is bigger than my left. (oh what, yours isn’t?)

22. Sometimes crying out loud is just necessary.

23. My mother is a breast cancer survivor.

24. I think too much.

25. I can speak Portuguese.

26. I don’t apologize for swearing. Sometimes “fuck” just sums it up.

27. In the next few days, I will add something else to my List.

28. Someday I want kids. But no time soon. They scare me.

29. I’m five minutes late everywhere I go. On a good day.

30. My dream in life is to be “discovered”.. I just hope I’m wearing something totally dope if/when it happens.

31. I have a girl crush on Megan Fox. Judge me, I don’t care.

32. I’ve been asked to write an advice column.

..But.. I dunno.  Can I? Thought it might be good practice if you send me your Qs first, just to get my feet wet, k? (originalsandyb@gmail.com)

So, tell me about YOU.

Behold.. PENELOPE THE CAT.

Behold.. PENELOPE THE CAT.

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