Serenity Rising: Healing with Cancer

Bron Watson, the Serenity Project
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What does it mean to heal when a cure isn't guaranteed? Serenity Rising is the podcast for people living with cancer, chronic illness, and those walking alongside someone they love. Created in the third space between science and soul, evidence and experience. Hosted by Bron Watson, a registered nurse, educator, and two-time cancer survivor living with incurable Multiple Myeloma, each episode blends research-backed insight with honest, lived wisdom. No toxic positivity. No hustle. Just real conversation about the human experience of navigating illness with courage, clarity, and compassion. From expert interviews to fireside Q&As, Serenity Rising explores the emotional, psychological, and deeply personal side of living with cancer. The parts your medical team rarely has time to address. Because healing isn't about reaching a finish line. It's about finding peace in the journey itself. Where moments make memories, and memories are how we make every day count. Brought to you by the team at The Serenity Project Learn more at http://www.serenityproject.com.au/

  1. 2d ago

    Is It Real or Is It Fear? Belief, Prognosis and the Gift of Life

    Michael Dorfman does not tell people he is 84. He tells them he is 84 and a half, the way atwelve year old counts down to becoming a teenager, because he stopped measuring his lifeby the years he has left and started measuring it by what he does with today. Michael went vegetarian in 1976, moved to a whole food plant based lifestyle in 2008 and hascalled Mexico home for more than fifty years. A certified health and nutrition life coach, he haswritten two books since turning 80, the latest being The Longevity Wellness Revolution, hisblueprint for what he calls the fifth stage of life, the years from 80 to 100 and beyond. In this conversation, Michael and Bron talk about eustress, the short bursts of good stress thathelp the body and mind adapt, and Bron shares the simple question she reaches for when feartakes over: is it real, or is it fear? They explore why fibre is the favourite food of the gutmicrobiome, what Dan Buettner's Blue Zones research found the longest living communitiesshare, why purpose gives us a reason to get up in the morning at any age, and how the childinside us never really goes anywhere. Michael does not have cancer himself, though his father died of mesothelioma and his brother,now in his 90s, is living with prostate cancer. His lifestyle choices are his own and are sharedhere for interest only, as one perspective to explore alongside your medical care. What heoffers everyone listening, whatever their age or diagnosis, is the reminder that it is not aboutwhat you didn't do, it is about what you can do now. In This Episode Why short term stress, or eustress, can build resilience, and what our hunter gathererancestors have to do with it A piece of paper with a line down the middle: is it real, or is it fear? Healing versus curing, and why Michael sees healing as an inside job Being 84 and a half, and why he stopped thinking about his chronological age Whether chronic disease really is a natural part of ageing, and why Michael believes it isnot The story of Beatrice, a family friend given months to live after heart surgery, and theplant based path she chose Why fibre is so overlooked, and why Michael calls it the favourite food of your gutmicrobiome Start with a bowl of salad: small changes instead of throwing out the whole pantry The five Blue Zones and what the world's longest living communities share, from dailymovement to a reason to get up in the morning Giving up writing for decades and finding it again in his 70s, and why the child insidenever died The longevity summit with twenty experts and only one in his 70s, and the worries aboutmemory and balance that only arrive in your 80s A sleepless night, some sleep music, and Michael's answer to what serenity means: aplace of peace that has always been inside us Make every day count my friend.  Bron  -- Connect With Michael Dorfman Book: The Longevity Wellness Revolution: A Bold New Blueprint for Thriving in the 5th Stage of Life (Ages 80 to 100+), available on Amazon Earlier book: The Thriving Vegan Website: http://www.longevitywellnessrevolution.com/  Free guidebook: https://longevitywellnessrevolution.com/guidebook  Substack: https://www.substack.com/mike82  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michaeldorfman353  -- Connect With The Serenity Project  Website: https://serenityproject.com.au  Instagram: https://instagram.com/bron_watson  Facebook: https://facebook.com/bronwatsonme  LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/bronwatson   YouTube  https://www.youtube.com/@BronWatson  Have a question or feedback? You can leave a message here: https://fanlist.com/serenityproject

    Is It Real or Is It Fear? Belief, Prognosis and the Gift of Life

  2. Oct 26

    Breast Cancer, Grief and the Next Small Step

    Some mornings the only thing you can manage is to get up and brush your teeth, and Lisa Espinoza believes that might be enough for today. It is the heart of her book, First, Brush Your Teeth: Grief and Hope in Real Time, written every single day in the year after her youngest son Chandler died, and it became the thread she followed when breast cancer arrived in January 2022.  Lisa is an author and speaker who knows hard seasons from every side. She lost her mother to lung cancer on the 4th of July 1983, when she was just 18, and has spent decades coming alongside people in grief. In this conversation she walks Bron through a routine mammogram that turned into biopsies on both sides, a long wait over Christmas, and a frightening decision between a lumpectomy with radiation or a double mastectomy.  Bron and Lisa talk about how to make impossible decisions when you are already overwhelmed, why the anticipation of wires, tracers and scans was far worse than the reality, and what it felt like to cry over a bottle of hormone blocker tablets before taking the first one. There is plenty of laughter too, including a bidet that Lisa's husband Chip installed just in case and now loves far more than she does.  Serenity Rising is an interest only podcast. Nothing in this episode is medical advice, so please talk with your own treating team before making any change to your care.  In This Episode  Losing her mother to lung cancer at 18, and the legacy of loving motherhood she carried into raising her own children  The routine mammogram in December 2021, biopsies on both sides, and why her mammograms now happen in January  The patient advocate's phone call: this is a blip on your radar, not the end of the game  Lumpectomy and radiation or a double mastectomy, and the friend whose calm voice of reason helped her choose  The bidet her husband Chip installed just in case, and who ended up loving it most  Making impossible decisions when you are frightened: the next right decision, not the one ten steps down the track  Why the anticipation of biopsies, wires and scans was worse than the real thing, and being where your feet are  Crying over the hormone blocker bottle, and what actually happened once she started taking it  Taking your research to people who can interpret it, and asking for help when you are at capacity  Bron's field of dots, and why the path only joins up behind you  Being a professional at creating stories in her head, and learning not to borrow that trouble  Where First, Brush Your Teeth came from, and the sacred small step that connects every hard season of her life  What serenity means to Lisa: trust and peace, and the two buckets she doesn't carry alone    Make every day count my friend.  Bron xx    Resources Mentioned  First, Brush Your Teeth: Grief and Hope in Real Time by Lisa Espinoza do we have a link for this Ann?  Lisa's Substack, where she writes about grief, resilience and hard seasons  Kerri Chinner on A equals A, Serenity Rising Series 2: https://push.fm/fl/x4qge6fe   Connect With Lisa  Website: https://lisaespinoza.com  Substack: https://blog.lisaespinoza.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisa.espinoza  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lisachandlersmom

    Breast Cancer, Grief and the Next Small Step

  3. Oct 19

    A Map, Not a Treatment with Dr. Katherine Willow ND

    Dr. Katherine Willow ND has buried her mother, all three of her grandparents, her younger sister and her husband, all to cancer. For 43 years she has kept showing up for other families as a naturopathic doctor, and when Bron asks how she keeps choosing this work after so much loss, her answer is simple: the work chose her.  In this episode Katherine shares her own framework and her patients' experiences. German New Medicine isn't supported by medical research. At The Serenity Project we believe complementary approaches sit alongside medical treatment, never instead of it, so please talk to your treating team before stopping or delaying any treatment.  Katherine is a fourth generation naturopathic doctor and the founder of Carp Ridge EcoWellness Centre, a 190 acre healing centre near Ottawa in Canada.   When her husband Mickey was diagnosed with brain tumours, she came across German New Medicine, developed by Dr Ryke Geerd Hamer, and after Mickey died in 2002 she spent a year researching it with seven pages of questions before bringing it into her practice.   The framework connects emotional shocks with specific changes in the brain and the body, and reads symptoms as belonging to either a stress phase or a healing phase.  In this conversation Katherine explains the principles as she applies them, why she describes German New Medicine as a map rather than a treatment, and why she is careful not to apply it to everything.   She is also honest about its limits: she was losing people to fear, and she now tells frightened patients to do their conventional treatment and let her support them alongside it.   Bron shares her own path from passive bystander to CEO of her own ecosystem, and together they talk about carers, death, choosing your sources wisely, and why stillness is where our wisdom lives.  Serenity Rising is an interest only podcast. Nothing in this episode is medical advice, so please talk with your own treating team before making any change to your care.  In This Episode  Losing five family members to cancer, and why Katherine says the healing work chose her  Reading about German New Medicine on a flight at 1am, and sending Mickey's brain scans to its founder  Katherine's account of what Mickey's autopsy showed, and the year of research that followed  The basic principles: emotional shock, the brain, and the body's response  Why she calls German New Medicine a map, not a treatment, and why not every condition has an emotional cause  Stress phase and healing phase, and why she sees inflammation as the body trying to heal  Two cases from her practice, and why she stresses they are not typical  The hardest lesson of her career: losing people to fear, and why she now says do your treatment first  Bron's vortex of fear, and becoming the CEO of her own ecosystem  The basketball time out, and why the next play matters more than the whole season  For carers: the ten minute power nap, and why Katherine treats a partner as seriously as the patient  Death, fear and the experiences that changed Katherine's view of what comes after  What serenity means to Katherine: connectedness, found in stillness  Her book, German New Medicine: Experiences in Practice, and her final message to slow down  Make every day count my friend.  Bron   -- Resources Mentioned  The Tapping Solution, free EFT tapping resources: https://www.thetappingsolution.com/new-home/  Kerri Chinner on Serenity Rising: https://push.fm/fl/x4qge6fe   -- Connect With Katherine  Carp Ridge EcoWellness Centre: https://ecowellness.com  My book: German New Medicine, Experiences in Practice by Katherine Willow N.D., available through Amazon The Free Website: http://www.learninggnm.com/ -- Connect With The Serenity Project  Website: https://serenityproject.com.au  Instagram: https://instagram.com/bron_watson  Facebook: https://facebook.com/bronwatsonme  LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/bronwatson   YouTube  https://www.youtube.com/@BronWatson  Have a question or feedback? You can leave a message here: https://fanlist.com/serenityproject

    A Map, Not a Treatment with Dr. Katherine Willow ND

  4. Oct 13

    Unsolicited Cancer Advice: How to Sort What Helps

    Advice starts arriving the moment you are diagnosed with cancer, and it rarely stops. In the final episode of Season 2, Bron goes solo to talk about the advice nobody asks for, from the email linking to a cure made from ground apricot kernels, to the text blaming her lifestyle choices, to the coach who told her that her second diagnosis came because she had not done enough of the work after the first. Bron builds the episode around a single image. Someone standing at your front door with their eye to the keyhole sees a sliver of hallway, and none of the kitchen bench covered in medications and appointment letters, the three o'clock wakefulness, the energy calculations before every commitment, or the grief that sits quietly in a room of its own. She names the five familiar shapes unsolicited advice takes, cure, attitude, comparison, minimising and timeline advice, and explains why the timeline kind lands hardest for people living with a cancer that does not end. Nine years into treatment across two diagnoses, now on maintenance for multiple myeloma, she shares her specialist's description of it as a marathon without a finish line, and why she thanks science every day for the gift of time. Bron also turns the keyhole on herself. Drawing on a moment from her early years as a nurse, when she was so firmly in the disease lane that she missed the grief of a patient's wife, she reflects on why this conversation is not about good people and bad people, but about where you are standing. Every one of us has looked through someone else's keyhole and felt far more certain than we had any right to be. In this episode, Bron explores •      The five shapes unsolicited advice usually takes, and why so much of it arrives wrapped in love •      Why timeline advice lands hardest when you are living with a cancer that has no finish line •      Why the people closest to us are sometimes looking through the keyhole too •      What Bron learned as a nurse about carers living through cancer as much as the patient •      Where cancer treatment misinformation really comes from, according to recent research •      Name the keyhole, and the simple question Bron comes back to: is it real? •      Sort it, don't swallow it, using three doors: keep, check with your senior leadership team, and return to sender with love •      Hand them a key, and how to redirect someone's love to where it can actually land   As always, Bron does the research to what it tells us about unsolicited advice, positivity and personal choice. If you have ever felt your whole experience quietly written out of the story, this one is for you, and for the people who love you. Share it with someone who is trying to help and come and join The Serenity Project through the newsletter with our community opening soon. Make every day count my friends. Connect With The Serenity Project  Website: https://serenityproject.com.au  Instagram: https://instagram.com/bron_watson  Facebook: https://facebook.com/bronwatsonme  LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/bronwatson   YouTube  https://www.youtube.com/@BronWatson  Have a question or feedback? You can leave a message here: https://fanlist.com/serenityproject

    Unsolicited Cancer Advice: How to Sort What Helps

  5. Oct 6

    Given No Choices, She Made Her Own with Emma Victoria Johnson

    Emma Victoria Johnson was 43, fit, healthy and diligent with her annual mammograms when she was told she had stage four breast cancer that had spread to her lymph nodes and liver.   Seventeen years earlier she had lost her mum to lung cancer within six months of diagnosis, so she knew exactly how fast this disease can move.  Within weeks, her relationship of seven years ended, the luxury beauty business she had spent more than a decade building in Newcastle closed, and friends fell away.   In Australia, Emma says she was offered no surgery, chemotherapy or radiation because her cancer was too advanced, only two palliative tablets and a timeline. So she made her own choice and got on a plane to Oasis of Hope Hospital in Tijuana, Mexico, for integrative treatment that combines immune based therapies with conventional medicine, including the hormone blocker she still takes today.  In this conversation, Bron and Emma, who have both lived through breast cancer, talk about the split second decision that said I am not ready to die, what it takes to trust your own voice when the people who love you think you are crazy, and the head noise that arrives before every scan.   Emma shares why she goes to every scan alone, how Guns N' Roses and meditation pull her back, and how documenting her treatment on Instagram grew into a community of more than 50,000 people who carry her through the hard days.   Her latest scans show her breast and lymph nodes clear, with one stubborn area in her liver still being treated.  When Bron asks what serenity means to her, Emma describes surrendering to, and becoming, your inner warrior: going through the darkest place and rising into the best version of yourself.   As the youngest of three sisters she was always the softest, the princess, and she never knew she had strength in her until cancer asked for it. "I have found my inner warrior and I activate my warrior mode," she says.   Now, whenever a new treatment or a needle frightens her, she goes inside herself and finds her.   Serenity Rising is an interest only podcast. Emma shares her personal experience of integrative treatment at Oasis of Hope, where she is now a patient ambassador, and nothing in this episode is medical advice. Please talk with your own medical team about any treatment decisions.  In This Episode  Losing her mum to lung cancer at 26, and receiving her own stage four diagnosis 17 years later  A weekend behind locked doors, and the moment she decided: I am not willing to die  A tsunami upon a tsunami: losing her partner, her business and her friends within weeks, and asking who am I now  Why the internet rabbit hole of cancer advice became too much, and how she learned to listen to herself instead  Being offered no surgery, chemotherapy or radiation in Australia, only palliative tablets, and choosing a plane ticket instead  Walking through the doors at Oasis of Hope and feeling safe, seen, heard and, for the first time, hopeful  What integrative treatment looked like for her: a 16 day first stay, hyperthermia, immune therapies, and the hormone blocker she still takes  Head noise before every PET scan, and why Emma chooses to go alone  Guns N' Roses or meditation: how Emma breaks the spiral, and the look up tip Bron learned from a clinical psychologist friend  How sharing her journey on Instagram built a community of more than 50,000 people, and why she answers every message herself  Why she is happier now than she was before cancer, and her one piece of advice: do not give up hope  What serenity means to Emma: surrendering to and becoming your inner warrior, rising through the darkest times into the best version of yourself, and the warrior mode she switches on whenever a treatment or a needle frightens her.  Resources Mentioned  Oasis of Hope Hospital, Tijuana, Mexico: oasisofhope.com  How to Starve Cancer by Jane McLelland, the first book Emma read after diagnosis  The Serenity Prayer  Be Where Your Feet Are, Bron Watson (coming early 2027)  Related Episodes  Two Cancers Later, She Found a Better Word Than Resilient with Cheyenne Heflin (S2 E16) https://push.fm/fl/jugdagss  I Had Cancer. Cancer Did Not Have Me with Zulma Williams (S2 E7) https://push.fm/fl/ajfbye1p The Storm Will Pass: Bill Derrick on Business, Cancer, and Never Quitting (S2 E12) https://pages.serenityproject.com.au/serenity-rising-with-bill-derrick  Your healing matters every day.   Connect With Emma  Instagram: emma_victoriaj https://www.instagram.com/emma_victoriaj/  TikTok: @emmavictoria_j https://www.tiktok.com/@emmavictoria_j  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/emma.victoria.johnson/   Emma is a patient ambassador for Oasis of Hope Hospital: https://www.oasisofhope.com/    Connect With The Serenity Project  Website: https://serenityproject.com.au  Instagram: https://instagram.com/bron_watson  Facebook: https://facebook.com/bronwatsonme  LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/bronwatson   YouTube  https://www.youtube.com/@BronWatson  Have a question or feedback? You can leave a message here: https://fanlist.com/serenityproject

    Given No Choices, She Made Her Own with Emma Victoria Johnson

  6. Sep 29

    The Voice That Said Get Up: Surviving Cancer, Loss and the Worst Days of Your Life with Gaylynn Kapri and LaVonne Chastain

    Gaylynn Kapri has been told to say goodbye more times than most people can imagine. This episode of Serenity Rising sits down with Gaylynn and her cousin LaVonne M. Chastain, the two women behind the memoir Get Up, to talk about the question that gives the book and this conversation its title. What does getting up actually look like when you cannot see a single reason to stand? Gaylynn's story does not begin with cancer. She survived childhood abuse and domestic violence, and was in the middle of rebuilding her life when her daughter died in a boating accident. Six months later, in the midst of searching for her daughter, Gaylynn was diagnosed with stage four colon cancer. She was sent home from hospital on palliative care, down to a fraction of her body weight, and was told there was very little time left. What happened next is where the conversation turns. Gaylynn describes a moment of hearing a voice she believed was God telling her to get up, and the long, unglamorous months of learning to walk again that followed. LaVonne, who had been beside her cousin through every part of it, from childhood to the hospital corridor, talks candidly about what it costs to witness someone you love fight for their life, and how writing Gaylynn's story down changed her own faith along the way. Bron talks with both women about what get up means once the adrenaline of a crisis has worn off. Gaylynn and LaVonne describe it as a decision made again and again, not a single leap, closer to a moment-by-moment practice than a grand gesture. The conversation also moves into the parts of this story that rarely make it into a highlight reel, including shame, pride, and what it is like to need someone to carry you to the bathroom when independence has always been part of your identity. In this episode, Bron explores:  How Gaylynn heard the call to get up after being sent home on palliative care  What it took for LaVonne to witness her cousin's diagnosis and recovery as a carer  Why writing the memoir Get Up became its own form of processing grief  The difference between fighting a diagnosis and surrendering to what cannot be controlled  How shame shows up for people who have lived through trauma and illness, and why naming it matters  What a get up moment looks like on an ordinary day, not only in crisis  Why faith and family carried both women when medicine alone could not answer every question There is no clinical framework standing in for lived experience in this one. Gaylynn and LaVonne speak from faith, from family and from years of sitting beside each other through loss that most people will never have to imagine.   Bron connects their idea of getting up moment by moment to the show's own belief that healing rarely arrives as one finished decision; it is something you keep choosing, one moment at a time.  If you are in the middle of your own get up moment, or you are the person standing beside someone who is, this conversation is for you.   Find Gaylynn and LaVonne, their book Get Up, and ways to connect with them directly through valleygracepub.com, linked below.  Make every day count my friends.   Links Email: valleygracepub@gmail.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/valleygracepub/  Website: https://www.valleygracepub.com/  Substack: https://lavonnechastain.substack.com/?    Connect With The Serenity Project  Website: https://serenityproject.com.au  Instagram: https://instagram.com/bron_watson  Facebook: https://facebook.com/bronwatsonme  LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/bronwatson   YouTube  https://www.youtube.com/@BronWatson  Have a question or feedback? You can leave a message here: https://fanlist.com/serenityproject

    The Voice That Said Get Up: Surviving Cancer, Loss and the Worst Days of Your Life with Gaylynn Kapri and LaVonne Chastain

  7. Sep 22

    Educate, Educate, Educate: Michael Bovarnick's Twenty-Three Year Prostate Cancer Story with Michael Bovarnick

    This episode of Serenity Rising turns on a question most men are never given room to ask, what happens when a cancer you thought was behind you comes back twenty years later. Bron sits down with Michael Bovarnick, founder of the Prostate Education Project, who was first diagnosed with prostate cancer more than two decades ago, lived cancer free for almost twenty years, and then, at eighty-three, found himself facing a stage four recurrence and a whole new set of decisions.  Michael takes us back to the beginning, to watch his own father die of prostate cancer and the primary care physician who caught his numbers early enough to act. He talks through the radical prostatectomy that removed his cancer with millimetres to spare, and the two decades of undetectable PSA readings that followed, right up until the day the numbers started climbing again.  Some of the most valuable parts in this conversation has nothing to do with medicine at all. Michael and his wife are approaching sixty-two years of marriage, and he speaks plainly about what keeps a relationship intact through treatment that changes a man physically and emotionally, mostly the importance of naming feelings honestly rather than expecting a partner to read them.  In this episode, Bron explores:  Why Michael built the Prostate Education Project after realising nobody had told him what questions to ask  What androgen deprivation therapy actually does to the body and why the side effects catch so many men off guard  The gap between what clinicians have time to explain and what patients actually need to know  Why men are statistically far less likely than women to talk openly about their cancer  What sixty two years of marriage has taught Michael and his wife about communicating through fear  How an ADT holiday works and why coming off treatment can be harder than staying on it  Why Michael no longer believes healing means going back to who you were before illness  Michael's project draws less on clinical research than on twenty three years of lived experience translated into plain language, a distinction he returns to throughout the conversation. His observation that many people now turn to AI or a search engine for answers that are not always accurate is exactly the gap The Serenity Project was built to fill, the third space where science and soul, evidence and experience, sit side by side rather than in competition.  If you are a man living with prostate cancer, a partner supporting one, or simply someone who has never heard this side of a cancer story told so honestly, this episode is for you. Michael's message, that education changes what a diagnosis is allowed to take from you, sits at the heart of everything The Serenity Project stands for.  Make every day count my friends.    LINKS  Website: http://www.theprostateeducationproject.org/  Email: Mikeb@theprostateeducationproject.org  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Prostateeducation  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100081487818057    Connect With The Serenity Project  Website: https://serenityproject.com.au  Instagram: https://instagram.com/bron_watson  Facebook: https://facebook.com/bronwatsonme  LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/bronwatson   YouTube  https://www.youtube.com/@BronWatson  Have a question or feedback? You can leave a message here: https://fanlist.com/serenityproject

    Educate, Educate, Educate: Michael Bovarnick's Twenty-Three Year Prostate Cancer Story with Michael Bovarnick

  8. Sep 14

    Two Cancers Later, She Found a Better Word Than Resilient with Cheyenne Heflin

    Cheyenne Heflin was thirteen years old, at her first ever sleepaway camp, when a soccer game left her with a knee injury that would not heal.   Weeks later an x ray showed what her orthopaedist called an aggressive tumour, osteosarcoma, a bone cancer that would take her leg above the knee and put her through months of chemotherapy, including a drug nicknamed the Red Devil.  She survived. But healing, she tells Bron, was not the neat return to normal everyone expected. She spent her teenage years in denial, masking that everything was fine, terrified to ask for help, until therapy and her father taught her a different way to speak the truth of how she was feeling.  Then, thirteen years after her original diagnosis, and years into building a career around helping other paediatric cancer patients, the cancer came back, this time in her lung. Cheyenne and Bron talk about what changed the second time around: the word she has swapped in for resilient, the deliberate choice to keep living her whole life alongside treatment, and the box of funny hats her friends and grandmother sent her when she lost her hair again.  This is a conversation about identity, about masking, about learning to ask for help, and about what it means to add the word and to your story rather than letting illness be the whole of it.  In This Episode  The soccer game at her first sleepaway camp where a knee injury would not go away  The x ray on the light box, and the words "this is an aggressive tumor" that she still remembers word for word  Doxorubicin, nicknamed the Red Devil, and the toxic chemo regimen that came with an above knee amputation at thirteen  Starting a Catholic high school freshly amputated and still bald, and the social skills nobody teaches you after trauma  Masking as fine for years, and the moment her father pushed her to learn how to actually ask for help  Why she has retired the word resilient, and the word she uses instead to describe how she lives now  The recurrence at twenty-seven: a cough mistaken for asthma that turned out to be osteosarcoma in her lung  Losing her entire right lung, and hitting her lifetime dose of the chemo that once nearly broke her  The box of funny hats her friends and grandmother sent her before her second round of chemo  Adding the word and: I am a cancer survivor, and I am so much more than that  Her advice for parents and young people living through a diagnosis right now  What serenity means to Cheyenne, and why she has stopped waiting for the next bad thing to happen  Make every day count my friends.    Connect With Cheyenne  Website: https://cheyenneheflin.com  Instagram: https://instagram.com/resilient_aka    Connect With The Serenity Project  Website: https://serenityproject.com.au Instagram: https://instagram.com/bron_watson Facebook: https://facebook.com/bronwatsonme LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/bronwatson  YouTube  https://www.youtube.com/@BronWatson Have a question or feedback? You can leave a message here: https://fanlist.com/serenityproject

    Two Cancers Later, She Found a Better Word Than Resilient with Cheyenne Heflin
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What does it mean to heal when a cure isn't guaranteed? Serenity Rising is the podcast for people living with cancer, chronic illness, and those walking alongside someone they love. Created in the third space between science and soul, evidence and experience. Hosted by Bron Watson, a registered nurse, educator, and two-time cancer survivor living with incurable Multiple Myeloma, each episode blends research-backed insight with honest, lived wisdom. No toxic positivity. No hustle. Just real conversation about the human experience of navigating illness with courage, clarity, and compassion. From expert interviews to fireside Q&As, Serenity Rising explores the emotional, psychological, and deeply personal side of living with cancer. The parts your medical team rarely has time to address. Because healing isn't about reaching a finish line. It's about finding peace in the journey itself. Where moments make memories, and memories are how we make every day count. Brought to you by the team at The Serenity Project Learn more at http://www.serenityproject.com.au/

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