In 2017, less than a year after my first breast cancer diagnosis, I became involved with Twist Out Cancer.

At the time, I was still trying to understand what the experience of cancer meant to me. So much had happened quickly – diagnosis, treatment, fear, decisions, and the strange experience of trying to return to “normal” when I no longer felt quite like the same person.

Through Twist, I was paired with an artist who created a piece of art inspired by my cancer journey. At the gala, my friends and family came with me for the unveiling.  I  still remember how meaningful that experience was.  There was something incredibly powerful about seeing such a personal and difficult chapter of my life reflected back to me through someone else’s creativity. And there was something equally powerful about being surrounded by the people I loved while it happened.

Twist gave me one of the first opportunities to share my cancer experience beyond the private conversations I had been having with family, friends, and doctors. It helped me begin to see my story differently,  not simply as something that had happened to me, but as something I could talk about, process, and eventually use to connect with other people.  It was incredibly healing.

Cancer had already begun changing the direction of my life. I was studying acupuncture and Chinese medicine, and being a patient myself profoundly shaped the kind of practitioner, and eventually the kind of leader, I wanted to become.  I learned how important it is to feel seen when you are going through something frightening.  I learned how much it matters when someone asks not only, “What is your diagnosis?” but, “How are you sleeping? Are you eating? Are you scared? What hurts? What do you need?”

Several years later, I founded Moon Rabbit Acupuncture. Moon Rabbit grew from many things: my love of Chinese medicine, my belief in thoughtful and evidence-informed integrative care, and my desire to create an experience that felt both clinically grounded, connected and the kind of place you want to tell your friends about. But my experience with cancer is undeniably woven into it. I knew what it felt like to sit on the patient side of the room.

Today, our team at Moon Rabbit cares for people through all kinds of transitions: fertility treatments, hormonal changes, stress, pain, cancer treatment and survivorship, and so many of the other moments when people need care that sees more than a diagnosis.

And in many ways, that philosophy brings me right back to Twist Out Cancer. Twist understands something that I have come to believe very deeply: healing does not happen in only one place.  It can happen in a hospital room.  It can happen on an acupuncture table.  It can happen through art. It can happen when someone takes your story and reflects it back to you in a way you never could have imagined. And truly it can happen through connection.  

My relationship with cancer, and with the word “survivor,” has changed over the years. Cancer is not always a tidy chapter that closes when treatment ends. It becomes part of the fabric of your life in ways that can be both obvious and invisible. But through all of it, one thing has remained constant for me: community matters.

Having spaces where people affected by cancer can tell the truth about their experiences, without needing to make them prettier, easier, or more inspirational than they really are matters.  That is why it means so much to me that my relationship with Twist Out Cancer has come full circle.

In 2017, I came to Twist as someone trying to make sense of my own cancer experience.  Today, I have the privilege of serving on its Board and helping support the same kind of connection, creativity, and community that meant so much to me during that time.  Because cancer touches so many lives, I am profoundly grateful that Twist exists.  I am grateful for the artist who took the time to understand my story. I am grateful for the friends and family who stood beside me at that unveiling.  And I am grateful that an experience that began during one of the hardest chapters of my life has grown into a community I am now honored to help serve.