On today's episode, Becky interviews her good friend Jill Krause, who is a certified cancer empowerment coach, oncology yoga teacher, and breath coach.
She is the owner and founder of YOUniversal Love, a community creating space for women who have been affected by cancer--whether by diagnosis or by genetic testing results.
Jill created Youniversal Love to fill the void she felt when she was diagnosed with breast cancer almost 12 years ago. She had an arduous three-year journey treating her cancer. She endured eight surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and targeted therapy. Jill has spent the last nine years surviving the diagnosis and its treatment and she has been healing her body, mind, and soul.
She wrestled with accepting her new body with the missing parts and she spent years feeling more like a science experiment than a woman. She struggles with long-term side effects that include pain, medically-induced menopause at age 38, osteoporosis, and lymphedema.
Blessed with the tools from therapy, coaching, yoga, breathwork, and prayer, Jill currently owns her feminine energy and womanhood. She accepts all of who she is and embraces the magnificence of her body--every scar, missing eyelash, new curl in her hair, and hot flash.
She now appreciates her body's amazing ability to adapt and heal. Jill is dedicated to empowering women to re-connect their own healing powers, to create a community to remind women that they are Universal love, and embody everything they need inside of them. Women feel safe to exhale and let love return.
Becky says that our podcast is about self-love and that it is the key to healing and living your best life.
Jill's story began at 38. Right off the bat she plugs the idea of knowing your body--knowing the ins and outs of your own body. Wash your body with your hand, not with a loofah or a washcloth, so you can feel every mole, every birth mark, every cellulite dimple, so you know your own body. Normally, she wasn't doing a regular breast self-exam. One day, she was showering after her workout and she lifted her breast and she found something. She says that when you find something that your body is not used to, you try to find out if it is real. She moved her body around in different ways to see if it might disappear, but it did not disappear. She said it did not feel like anything she had ever felt before. She double-checked with her husband and he confirmed it was actually there.
She went to see her OB/Gyn who also felt it and found a second lump. She thought it was a cyst and told Jill to go and get a sonogram and a mammogram and that they would probably just aspirate it right then and there. The doctor was not concerned, but Jill knew something was different and off. What she has learned in her long journey is to trust that gut wisdom. She believes that is God or Spirit or whomever you believe in--whispering to you.
The radiology tech couldn't get a good mammogram picture--one lump was right at her nipple and one was just under. They tried for three hours to get a good picture and they couldn't get one. She went onto her sonogram and they told her they had never seen anything that looked like that before. The radiologist said that she was fine and that she could come back in six months. Jill suggested that she had been there for four hours, she has two palpable lumps, the tech has never seen anything like this before, so she wanted to speak to the radiologist. The tech said, "No, he says you're fine." Jill wasn't having it and had her go and get the radiologist, but the radiologist would not come and see her. So, she ground down into her core and advocated for herself and asked for everything that was taken that day to be delivered to her in the waiting room. She took the films to her internist for next steps. Her internist sent her to a breast surgeon.
She did that and the diagnosis came back as breast cancer and she found out...
