From Collapse to Rebirth

In late 2022, I took an unplanned trip down the River Styx— a full-blown descent into the underworld— as my life as I knew it imploded. What I experienced was more than illness; it was a dismantling. A complete interruption. A sacred and important, even if terrifying, rerouting.

It began, as these things sometimes do, with something seemingly small: a strange lump in my inner hip crease and a back pain that persisted for two months. I went to the emergency room “just to check on it,” and four days of hospitalization and two biopsies later, I came away with a cancer diagnosis. Two tumors—one in my colon, one on my pancreas. The actual diagnosis itself remained a mystery, even to the medical experts. I didn’t fit any mold for cancers in these areas. The staging was never clarified and genetic testing came back negative. In the end, my medical chart labels what I had as Stage 4 pancreatic cancer—but what I lived through, and what lived through me, felt bigger than any diagnosis could name.

I was 100% not the poster child for this kind of medical issue, being young, healthy, and quite careful about my diet and lifestyle. Honestly, when it came down to it, not knowing all the medical details turned out to be a strange sort of grace for me. I didn’t get distracted by prognoses or probabilities. I could focus fully on what mattered: healing.

And so, healing became my full-time job. And healing is what I ultimately did.

Through the extraordinary support of my family, friends, and care teams—plus excellent insurance and a supplemental cancer policy I’d gotten in 2020 “just in case”—I was able to step back from everything else in my life and devote myself fully to the healing path ahead.

I started chemo treatments right away as well as frequent visits to the cancer clinic for infusions to help balance my very unstable electrolyte levels.

Once I got into a rhythm with my western medicine treatments, I began to organize my emotional and spiritual healing treatments. I began weekly medical chi gong treatments with acupuncture, weekly “forgiveness coaching” sessions, weekly network spinal analysis sessions, and bi-weekly consciousness clearing coaching sessions. I also was visited multiple times a week by various friends and always had someone staying with me. I probably was only alone about 5 days total between November 2022 and June 2023. I’m very grateful for the amazing community of care that organized itself around me.

I had five chemo sessions ( 9 were planned for me and 12 is a pretty normal round), worked with a phenomenal oncology team and an equally phenomenal energetic and spiritual team, and was fiercely committed to my own inner healing: emotional processing, spiritual inquiry, journaling, rest, joy, and lots of laughter.

One day about two and half months into my journey, I decided I was done with being sick. I determined it was a boring story and being a sick person was not who I knew myself to be. So, I decided from that point I actually didn’t want to do any more treatments of any kind ever (I was not going to arm wrestle with my doctor over this, but if there was a way to not have to continue with chemo, that was my prayer.) I also said to the tumors in my body, who I had befriended in the process of my healing, that it was time for them to leave and go live their best lives somewhere else.

“OK guys, I’ve learned so much from you these past few months. I’m very grateful. We’re done here. It’s time for you to go live your best lives somewhere else.”

And that’s what they did. Leave. Rather quickly in fact.

Maybe 1-2 weeks after I offered this prayer of goodbye, I had a strange stomach pain one night when I was alone. I thought the food I had eaten earlier in the day was not sitting well with me and that I maybe had food poisoning. I had intermittent vomiting for the next few days. I couldn’t keep any food or drink down. It was clear this was not food poisoning. It time to go to the emergency room.

Once there, after scans and tests, they determined that my colon had perforated. I had to have an emergency surgery to save my life. I woke up in the ICU a few hours later with all manner of things hooked and poked into my body. I also had a new friend: an ostomy (ileostomy to be exact) on the right side of my abdomen, where the perforation of my intestine had happened. I named the stoma (the external part of the intestine sticking out of my body) “Pierre” because he had a lot of attitude and a lot of air to release. For whatever reason, he had a French flair to him and that was the name I heard. Soon, everyone around me came to know Pierre.

I stayed two weeks in the hospital on round the clock antibiotics to keep me from going septic. I had to have only liquids for a few days and then was restricted to a low residue diet for much of my stay. I even had to be put on a food tube because I had dropped so much weight. Unbeknownst to me, I was weighing in at around 74 pounds.

While in the hospital my oncologist visited me one day to let me know that the surgeon, who was an oncological surgeon, determined during the surgery that there were no tumors in my body. They were gone. Yes—gone. (In some ways I had to feign surprise and excitement because a part of me already knew this was the case.)

What I can say from my experience is that magic is real and miracles are possible. Life can and will adjust to our wishes (prayers), if we believe and especially if we’re supported by the people around us.

After I got out of the hospital, I had to live with the temporary ostomy (Pierre) for four months while my body recovered and gained weight ahead of my reversal surgery. But this was great because, thanks to Pierre, I could now eat whatever I wanted. While on treatment my diet was extremely limited and I couldn’t keep weight on. Now, in these new circumstances, I gained 30 pounds in 3 months, eating all the pizza and ice cream my heart desired! Once I got up to around 100 pounds, I was able to have my ostomy reversal surgery, reconnecting my intestines. A few days before the surgery, a group of my friends and I gathered to throw Pierre a going away party, dressing up in French berets, speaking in fake French accents, and eating French baguettes. It was a joyful occasion and Pierre was more than happy to go back inside my body.

When it came time to revisit me starting chemo again, my doctor voiced a concern that because I had had the bowel perforation, there may still be infection lingering dormant inside me. With chemo my immune system might get depressed and the infection might spring to life, becoming problematic. She encouraged me to talk to my second opinion doctor about starting immunotherapy instead. When I spoke to that doctor, we determined that immunotherapy would be a bit of a waste, so to speak, because there were no tumors in me to test medication efficacy against. Her guidance was to keep immunotherapy in my back pocket should I ever need it and to move forward without treatment but under close supervision.

Soooo, my prayer to do no more treatments and to heal on my own terms came to be!

But That’s Just the Physical Part

Before the diagnosis, my life was fraying at the edges—beautiful on the surface, but unsustainable underneath. I had become overworked, overstretched, and emotionally threadbare. My “dream job” had become a 24/7 hamster wheel. My long-distance relationship was demanding and exhausting. I wasn’t sleeping. I wasn’t slowing down. I was eating meals standing up or staring at a screen. I was saying yes to everything and everyone—except myself.

Two months before my diagnosis, I had a painful realization: I had built a life so tightly constructed, so perfectly feng shui’ed and externally impressive, that it couldn’t be shifted or altered without collapsing everything. I had created a house of cards, and I was trapped inside.

And perhaps even more humbling—I realized I wasn’t walking my talk.

Despite decades of personal development, deep study, and soul-centered work, I hadn’t lived through anything that truly shattered me and required me to rebuild from the ground up. I had the language of transformation, but not yet the lived intimacy with it. That awareness floored me.

Then came cancer. And it did for me what I couldn’t do for myself.

It unraveled the knots.
It made the changes.
It cleared the decks.
It was, in every sense, a Tower moment.
(The Tarot kind. The sacred-destruction kind.)

Everything that wasn’t aligned crumbled. Everything I couldn’t move… moved.
And in its place came something unexpected: a new beginning.
Not just a new chapter—an entirely new book.

Why I Created CancerAndIntimacy.com

This site was born from the reclamation that came after the devastation. From the quiet, intimate questions that no one seemed to be answering:

What happens to your relationship with your body after cancer?
How do you reconnect with desire when everything’s changed?
Where do pleasure, touch, and sexuality live in a body that feels foreign, scarred, or numb?
And how do we talk about these things—in the presence of medical trauma, relational strain, or spiritual upheaval?

I created CancerAndIntimacy.com because I needed a resource like this and couldn’t find it. A place that doesn’t treat intimacy as a luxury, but as a vital part of healing. A place that honors nuance, sensitivity, and soul. A place that says: you are not broken, and you are not alone.

In Closing

This story is still unfolding. But if you’re here—reading this—I want you to know: you’re not alone. Your healing might not look like mine. It might be slower. Wilder. More mysterious. But it’s yours. And it matters. And it’s allowed to take up space.

I hope this space offers you something meaningful for your own journey.
Thank you for witnessing mine.

With love,
Claire

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