If you want to know who I am outside of breast cancer, there’s a lot we need to cover.

I’m a wife of 15 years and a dog mommy. I’m an amateur baker, seafood lover, nature freak, musical fanatic, Raider Nation, journal-happy, and a lover of Christ.

Professionally, I’m a Neuro Exercise Physiologist. I also have a Master’s in Public Health with a concentration in Epidemiology, which surprises people because I don’t actually use it professionally.

I love helping people in whatever capacity I can. I love serving my community, fellowshipping with friends, sitting in coffee shops reading for hours, and being anywhere near a beach or mountaintop.

And apparently, I love being near water even though I can’t swim.

That’s me. Breast cancer is also part of me, but it isn’t all of me.

I Was “Too Young”

My breast cancer story began with six months of being told I was too young.

I knew something wasn’t right. I was leaking milk from my right breast, but three doctors failed me before I finally received my diagnosis in November 2020.

I was 32 years old. By the time I was diagnosed, I had Stage 2B triple-positive breast cancer.

One of the biggest lessons that experience taught me is something I want every newly diagnosed woman to understand:

It’s okay to fire your doctor.

I fired three, and I didn’t feel bad about it.

Your care is too important. Your life is too important. If you feel like something isn’t right, speak up. If you aren’t being heard, find someone who will listen.

Three Days to Make a Decision

Cancer doesn’t always give you time to process one thing before it asks you to make another life-changing decision.

I was given three days to decide whether I wanted to freeze my eggs. Three days. I chose to do it, and I underwent the procedure the day after my first round of chemotherapy. That’s the reality of being diagnosed young. While you’re trying to process the fact that you have cancer, you’re also being asked to make decisions about treatment, fertility, your body, your future, and a life you thought you had more time to figure out.

You make the best decisions you can with the information and time you have. Then you keep moving.

Then Treatment Ended

There is so much attention given to getting through treatment.

Make it through chemo. Make it through surgery. Make it through radiation. Get to the other side.

But we don’t talk nearly enough about what happens when you actually get there.

After treatment, I felt like I was thrown to the wolves and tasked with figuring out who I was.

Cancer treatment may end, but that doesn’t mean everything suddenly goes back to normal. I’m currently NED, and I’m grateful for that. But there are things cancer changed that I still carry with me.

I don’t miss my boob. It was low and trying to kill me. I do miss not opening MyChart so frequently. I miss my memory. And I’ve had to figure out who Lynley is after everything she’s been through.

Survivorship has been its own journey.

We Shouldn’t Wait Until Something Goes Wrong

My professional life has also shaped how I think about breast cancer care.

One of the causes closest to my heart is prehabilitation, or prehab, for newly diagnosed women. We shouldn’t always wait until a patient develops a problem before offering support. What can we do before treatment begins to help someone maintain their strength, mobility, function, and quality of life? What information and resources can we provide earlier? How can we prepare women for what their bodies may experience instead of only reacting afterward?

Prevention matters. Preparation matters. And women deserve support before there’s a problem to fix.

I Wanted to Bring Joy

I became a Baddie Ambassador because I wanted to bring joy to other women going through breast cancer.

That’s it.

Someone needs support. Someone needs to see light when everything around them feels dark. And if I can be a little bit of that joy for someone else, I’m going to do it.

For the Breast of Us gives me a space to do that in my own way.

My faith is a huge part of how I move through the world and how I’ve gotten through some of the hardest parts of my life.

What brings me hope? Jesus Christ. He’s brought me through a lot. My affirmation is, “In Adonai is deliverance and strength.“ Cancer reinforced something in me that I carry into every difficult situation now: nothing is too hard for me to get through.

My Voice and My Experience Matter

For a long time, I don’t know if I fully understood the value of my own experience.

Now I do. My voice matters. My experience matters. It’s unique, and it’s needed. That’s also what I want other women of color navigating breast cancer to know. Your experience doesn’t have to look like mine to matter. You don’t need a title to advocate for yourself. You don’t need permission to ask another question. And you don’t have to stay with a provider who makes you feel unheard simply because they’re the doctor.

Use your voice.

Find your people.

Let people support you.

And when you’re standing at the beginning of this journey wondering how you’re possibly going to get through everything ahead of you, I want you to know one more thing:

It truly does get better.