Obedience In The Valley: My breast cancer story

We share how a stage three breast cancer diagnosis, stacked on fresh grief, became a path of obedience that closed a dream salon and opened a calling to writing and coaching. Faith meets neuroscience as we unpack how repeated yeses reshape the brain and help us trust in the valley.

• sudden loss of mom and the shock that followed
• finding a breast lump, diagnosis at 40, first mammogram
• holding fear in silence, then confiding and praying
• treatment plan, BRCA result, lymphedema reality
• Psalm 23 in practice and daily obedience
• closing the salon and releasing identity
• shift from hair to healing, mirrors to manuscripts
• neuroscience of fear, amygdala, prefrontal cortex
• building faith through neuroplasticity and repetition
• practical tools for regulation and trust
• questions to discern calling and surrender

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Chapters

• 0:00 Faith, Shame, And The Journey Theme
• 0:51 Losing Mom And Life’s Sharp Turns
• 3:12 The Lump, Diagnosis, And Silent Fear
• 5:32 Telling Family And Clinging To Promise
• 6:04 Treatment Path And Genetic Findings
• 7:25 Calling To Close The Salon
• 8:44 From Hair To Healing: A New Assignment
• 9:15 Grief Compounded: Losing Dad
• 10:05 Living With Lymphedema And New Identity
• 11:38 Obedience Through Highs And Lows
• 12:20 Self-Love Beyond Adornments
• 13:53 Questions For The Listener’s Calling
• 15:12 Neuroscience Of Obedience And Faith
• 16:44 A Simple Practice To Regulate Fear
• 18:01 Obedience Over Outcome And Closing CTA

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hey hey, it's your favorite shifter story coach, Coach Tara, and you're listening to the Her Authentic Voice podcast. This is where faith meets real life, where shame gets silenced, and where your story becomes your strategy. This is October Breast Cancer Awareness Month. I want to share my story with you. I am a stage three breast cancer survivor, and this isn't just about the diagnosis. This is more about the journey. It's a journey of obedience. Because behind every cute little pink ribbon, there's a process, there's a purpose, there's a story, there's a journey, there's a call. So today's episode is called Obedience in the Valley, my breast cancer story. So in June of 2016, my mom suddenly passed away. Prior to that, I had just opened my own salon. I was so excited. So talk about the highs and lows of life. I was actually in my salon when I got the phone call. And my brother, he called and he's like, Mom's gone. And I'm like, what do you mean, gone? I couldn't even fathom like what he was saying. But I could hear myself screaming and sliding down to the floor. I just talked to her. I was looking forward. Now this was on a Friday. I was looking forward to picking her up. We hung out on Mondays. I was looking forward to getting her and bringing her to the salon because I had just opened. I'm like, Ma, I want you to see everything I've done and all these things. And the Monday before, the week before, she had this deep conversation with me. And she looked me in my eyes and she was telling me how proud she was of me. And I I left there so happy, you guys. 39 years old, but I was skipping, leaving. My mom's proud of me. She told me she loved me. She just was deep, you know. And I was like, mom, I'ma see you. I'ma see, I gotta go. I was going to a doctor's appointment. I gotta go. I'll I'll see you next week. I'll be here to pick you up and get you in there so we could you guys can check it out. I didn't know that that would be the last time that I saw my mom. When I left there skipping and happy. But I'm grateful that the last time I saw her was so beautiful. It was a special moment, and I'll never forget it. And I mention it because right after that, that was in June of 2016, in September of that same year, I was still deep in mourning, and I remember going in a shower, and out of the blue, I started doing a self-rest exam. And I found a lump. I it felt like a marble, like it was brown, it was hard, it was on the right side of my breast, and I froze because I'm like, uh-uh, this is not supposed to be here, something's wrong. And I went to my OBGYN, and she also was alarmed, but I didn't want to deal with it. I'm like, okay, I'm about to turn 40. I have a party coming up. I just want to focus on that. I don't want to focus on this. And I didn't tell anyone about the lump. Me and my OBGYN, that's it. I had my 40th birthday and I was looking at everyone, knowing that something could be inside of me, just wondering what was going on in my body, but really not really ready to face it. But right after, directly after my 40th, I went to get my mammogram. It was the very first one I've ever had, and it was abnormal. They did a biopsy, and it came back abnormal, malignant. I had cancer. So that December, I remember sitting there that Christmas, looking at my children, open their gifts, and I didn't know if I would see them again. I was sitting there like, will I be here next year? I didn't know. And I still hadn't told anyone. I was still holding this. But then after that, I did talk to my spiritual mom. I spoke to her and I started telling a few people. You know, they all prayed for me and things like that. I hadn't told my children yet. I waited until a week before my surgery, which was in January. And the Lord told me that this was not until death. So he was reassuring me that I wouldn't die. But he also said, you're gonna go through it. So I wanted the testimony where when I went to the doctor, they're like, the tumor is gone. You know, miraculously it's gone. That wasn't my testimony, though. I had to go through it. And I went through it. I had a double mastectomy, chemotherapy, radiation, reconstruction, then an oofarectomy, which is when both your ovaries and your fallopian tubes are removed. After finding out I was bronchite positive, which meant that I had a gene, an abnormal cancer-causing gene, right? Go figure. I'm reminded of Psalm 23. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. And he was with me every step of the way. And it was hard, y'all. It was. But he was with me. And I'm so appreciative. I didn't understand it at the time. You know, that January, I was scheduled to go to instructor's training to get my instructor's license. I was already a licensed cosmetologist, but in my mind, I'm gonna do hair always. I'm gonna open more salons, I'm gonna travel and be a platform artist, I'm gonna teach. I just had all these dreams. But while I was receiving chemotherapy, the Lord told me to close my salon. Now, the salon that was my dream, the salon that was my identity. I mean, I dreamt hair. I dreamt about hairstyles. I loved hair, everything haircutting, uh, coloring, all of it. And he said to close it, and he didn't give me any other information, and it felt like another loss. First my mom, then my health, then my business. But Jeremiah, one of my favorite scriptures is Jeremiah 29, 11, and it says, For I know the plans that I have for you. That's what he declares, that he knows the plans that he has for me. And they're plans, they're good plans to give me an expected end, to give me a future and a hope. They're not evil plans, and I have to hold on to that, and I still hold on to that. I didn't realize then that God was shifting me from there to here. Like he shifted me from hairstyle and mirrors to book manuscripts, you know, sitting in front of the mirrors and the chair. He shifted me from hair to healing, from styling to restoring, from my business dream to now walking in my kingdom assignment. Amen. That's what he did for me. He shifted me. And it, like I said, I didn't know at the time. And let me tell you something else. So my mom passed, then my dad, the only dad that I knew, he was my stepdad, but he was the one who raised me. He had cancer also. So we were receiving chemotherapy at the same time. He had stage four liver cancer, and I had stage three breast cancer. And he died in October of 2017. It was just a lot. It was a lot because now I was an orphan. Another loss. And I had to try to reconcile that. All these losses, this valley, and it seemed like there was no mountain. It was, I couldn't see it. Even though it wasn't into death, and I thank God for it. I was living with this new normal, this lymphedema diagnosis in my right arm because nine out of 12 lymph nodes were infected. And I had this large hand and arm, which I still do, on my right, right side. But I've learned to live with it because I'm here. And this tells a story. I wear this wound. This shows me as someone who's been in a battle, who's been in a war, and who's come out victorious. So I wear my battle scars proudly because where I am weak, he is strong. So I am grateful. I'm grateful to be alive. But I think about the highs and lows. One moment I was thriving, a business owner like on Cloud Nine. You hear me? And the next I was sitting receiving chemotherapy, bald, no hair, breast cut off, just body not the same, feeling broken, trying to figure out who I was without my business, who I was, without my plan. Who am I now? But I learned through that process that I could still be obedient while I was grieving who I was, that I could still trust God and still cry. Every high and low was teaching me surrender, teaching me obedience. Amen. The Lord used cancer to reroute me into my calling. That's what he did. He took me from behind those chairs, the salon chairs, and he put me into writing and coaching clients. Like I said earlier, from mirrors to manuscripts. If I didn't already write my memoir, I would write from mirrors to manuscripts. That's a good title, but I digress. But I wanted to share that because that journey, it taught me how to love myself on a deeper level without the outer adornments, just me standing there with everything that I thought made me beautiful, gone. You know, I had no eyelashes, eyebrows, hair, breast. I had one side of my body larger, like seriously, just different. And I stood in the mirror, like, who are you now? But I kept looking past the uncomfortable part because it was uncomfortable initially. I looked away and I kept looking until I reconciled this is me, and I love me. I love me. I reconciled what I've been through, and I became so grateful that the Lord starts fit to keep me here. I still miss my mom so much. I miss my daddy. I miss the countless people I lost. I lost friends and family members over the last years. I am now, I stand as an eight-year breast cancer survivor. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. And I'm grateful. I'm grateful for obedience. I'm grateful for surrender. I'm grateful for the trial. It was good that I was afflicted. I learned to love the Lord on such a deeper level. I learned to pray on a deeper level. I learned to war in the spirit. I learned to have more compassion for people. I mean, I had it before, but oh, I have it so much more. We all have a story, we all have a process. This was mine. And I'm still in it. Because he keeps taking me from faith to faith and from glory to glory. And I keep saying, yes, yes, Lord. Send me, I'll go. And it's not an easy walk. It's a bumpy one. It is. But it's a beautiful one. It's a blessed one. It's a sacred one. Hallelujah. There's nothing. Nothing that compares to the love of Jesus Christ. Nothing that compares. He saved me. And there's so much more I can share with you about my past and in due time. But I just wanted to share a little bit about being redirected, being in that valley, and how it taught me obedience. Going through and being stripped of everything that I thought I was and what I thought I would do. And being shifted into this new person that I didn't know I could be, but she was in there. He knows it all. I didn't know it. And for you, who is he calling you to be? Has he shifted you? What dream has God asked you to release so he could birth something new in you? Where have you resisted obedience? Have you resisted? Have you resisted change? Change is uncomfortable, sure. But it's the one constant thing in life. Sometimes we resist because we don't understand. We want to know why. But this walk taught me to relinquish the outcome to him because I had no control over what would happen. I didn't know. And even if I did know, having the knowledge still doesn't give me control. He is the one who has life and death in his hands. He rebuked death countless times, actually. Like I said, I have a story. But I ask you, can you trust him in the valley? The same way I know you praised him on that mountaintop. That mountaintop is good, isn't it? Yes it is. But can you trust him in the valley? Can you trust him when he's closing them doors? When he's shifting people around you, when relationships are ending, when your money's drying up. When the world is in chaos and you don't know what to do. Can you trust him then? I want you to think about something. And you know, I like to give you a behavior science insight. So here it is. When you face crisis, your brain goes into survival mode. And the amygdala, which is the fear center, what it does is it floods your body with stress chemicals and your prefrontal cortex. Why am I touching my forehead as I'm talking? But the prefrontal cortex is the part that processes your logic and your faith. But what happens is it starts to shut down. So when you're in survival mode, you can't think straight because it's shut down. When you're in grief, when you're in shock, you can't think straight. But what obedience does is it re-engages the part of your brain that builds stability. So as you keep giving the Lord a yes, even when you're afraid, even when you don't understand, you're creating new neural pathways. Keep giving him a yes. I've said before, repetition. It's all about repetition. So continue to give him a yes. Okay? And you'll be building trust in him as you go. And you're not going to be moved and being moved by emotion. So as you get these new neural pathways, that's called neuroplasticity. So every time I obeyed, I obeyed, not even understanding. I closed my salon. I was just, you know, showing up for treatment and doing all the things, confused, but saying yes to his plan. But my brain, as I continued to say yes and move in these ways, my brain was learning faith on a biological level. You hear me? On a biological level, not an emotional one. Because if it was on an emotional level, I would have had more no's than yeses. I would have stood still versus moved. I would have ran back to safety because God didn't make me close my salon. He said close your salon. I still had a choice. Like you do in your life. You have a choice. But as I continue to obey, and as you continue to obey, your faith will grow. Your brain will learn it on a biological level. Isn't that something? Our bodies are so dope. Seriously. Our bodies, wow. Oh, I know I started off a bit heavy. I know. And I hope that I didn't trigger you. But I tell you this: if you feel some type of way, this is what I want you to do. And even if it's not now, in any any moment in your life, when fear arises or anxiety, or you like I say, you're feeling some type of way. I want you to pause and breathe. Inhale for four. Hold it for four. And then exhale. Try to exhale to like a seven or eight. Who are you talking about? Regulating? Oh, you will be regulated. And then I want you to name it. Name what you can't control. What is it? What is it that's coming up, and you want to control the outcome, but you can't? Name that thing. And then I want you to say out loud, God, I trust you. I trust you. I trust you. Because when you do that, when you verbally say that, you're calming the fear response and you're training your nervous system to rest in his sovereignty. It's spiritual and it's natural. It works in tandem. You didn't know that it was on a biological level, did you? But it is deep on a cellular level. That you can train your brain. Amen. So today I stand here as an eight-year breast cancer survivor, as I said, and obedience saved my life. You hear me? Obedience, more than medicine. Obedience saved my life. So whatever God is asking you to release, trust that He's not taking something from you, He's making room for something greater. Amen. Amen. All right. Remember to live, love, and be authentic. Don't forget to subscribe, share, and rate the Her Authentic Voice podcast. This is Coach Star, your favorite shifty story coach. And I'll see you next week.