Cancer Took My Voice at 21. I Took it Back in a Life of Adventure.
How I freed myself of external expectations to create an authentic life I love
By 20, I thought that I’d finally hacked my way through all of the weeds of pain and heartache that impede our path to adulthood. Most 20-year-olds feel this way. It’s natural. I’d grown up with a mother struggling with drug addiction, a father whose temperament had led to restraining orders, and recently overcome an overeating disorder — dropping 80 pounds and feeling good about my body for the first time in my life.
I was unstoppable, freed of the childhood bonds of poor parenting and determined to climb straight up the corporate ladder. The more money I made, the further I’d be from ever having to depend on my absentee parents again.
The summer after my junior year of college, I landed an internship with AMC Networks in London and felt like I had taken the first step in really ‘starting my career’. I wasn’t sure if television was where my heart was, but it offered the ladder I’d been looking for, so I grabbed the first rung.
I was only three months into my internship, however, when I was diagnosed with stage 2 Squamous Cell Carcinoma; or in layman’s terms, tongue cancer. It started with a benign office visit, as it does for us all. I thought I had a persistent canker sore. It was bothersome at most. After a biopsy, I was asked to come in for my results. I was busy that day and couldn’t make it in until about 8pm. I was told that the doctor would wait for me that evening. The first bad sign.
When I arrived, the doctor waited for me to take a seat and then came from around his desk and sat next to me. My senses were heightened. This was NOT doctor behavior I’d ever seen before. It was late and I was alone.
The doctor, true to British form, jumped right into the facts of exactly what was invading my mouth. As he spoke my mind drifted off. It’s hard to explain. When the gravity of your condition increases with every question you ask, you stop asking questions. You let the doctor speak, vaguely aware of what vital information he is imparting. At the end of his talk, he asked if I understood what all his talking meant. I didn’t.
24 hours later, I found myself on a flight back to LAX. 48 hours later I found myself in an oncologist’s office surrounded by my recently sober mother, my father, stepmother, and more doctors than I’d ever seen in one room. 72 hours later I was scheduled for surgery. And 96 hours later I had 50% of my tongue removed, as well as all of the lymph nodes on the left side of my face. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t speak. I was dazed, immobilized, powerless. They moved fast because of the rarity and aggression of my cancer. But it was too fast for my brain to catch up.
I couldn’t speak for several months. Surgery complications led to follow-up procedures and a year of treatment to help me regain full speech. I had always loved languages and spoke four, but now I was having trouble pronouncing any sounds at all. Doctors recommended I take a semester off school and recover at home. That wasn’t an option. I couldn’t have pain pills in my home since my mother had relapsed on my medication during earlier treatments. I decided to recover on my own, in my dorm back at UC Berkeley.
During my last semester at university I spent a lot of time in silence. I wasn’t forced to speak in any class, was given extended dates for assignments, but had to drop my German minor since I could no longer orate. That semester I learned more in silence than I would have with speech. I mainly learned about myself. I was learning about everything I have besides my mouth to communicate. I learned that I was happiest outside, hiking and exploring. I loved feeling the health of my body: my legs that were strong enough to climb mountains, my arms that could embrace powerfully, and my face, which could still smile brightly, all the while in silence.
Despite this newfound passion for exploration and adventure, I held onto my assumption that I needed to climb the ladder. A mere 10 days after graduation, I joined Yelp selling ad space for their listings. I was finally able to speak at low volumes and I gave it my all. I was doing well, performing above my peers, making great money for a recent grad, but I hated my life. I was terrified that if I sat inside that office, with my headset on and my eyes glued to a screen, that I would forget how authentic and alive I felt outside and exploring.
On a beautiful Monday morning, one year to the date of my hire, I gave my final notice. I was fully recovered and so keenly aware that my future was not promised. My healthy body wanted to move and to adventure more than it wanted the money, the title, the “opportunities”. By 21 I decided, fuck the ladder.
I started a gig I knew incredibly little about and felt insanely underprepared for, but which, for the first time in my life, sounded like an incredible adventure. And that was enough! I was leading cross-country overland adventure tours for G Adventures. We camped the country and hiked the most amazing parks in America. We saw sunsets from cliff tops and cooked smores at night. Every morning I woke up excited to load my adventurers into our bus and drive us off for another day of life. It was blissful.
There was one day on my lengthy cross-country journey, however, that was to be the most powerful of my life. After hundreds of miles of dusty, desert highway we arrived at Monument Valley, an incredible piece of Cherokee land filled with awe-inspiring landscapes and the aura of ancient wisdom. We spent the day among the red sands, sitting inside rock formations and listening to the Cherokee share the magic of this important place. As evening approached, our guide led us to an open valley. The sun had set and the stars were growing brighter. Here, he told us, under the stars, is where we would spend the night.
I walked alone through the valley, sleeping bag and pillow tucked under my arm. I was looking for a piece of land that called to me. Yes, I had fully bought into the magic of this place. I mean, a few months ago I’d been dialing for dollars at Yelp, and now I was sleeping on the raw earth under the incredible array of our endless Milky Way. There must be some magic in this world. How else had I so drastically transformed my world?
I didn’t sleep that night. As soon as I laid my head down, I was entranced by the twinkling show above. The stars soon blurred, blending into one another. I realized that I was gazing through tears. I was crying and hadn’t even realized it. I chose not to wipe my face. I was here in this valley to feel whatever it was I was meant to feel.
My mind flipped through traumatizing moments of my childhood: growing up alone, shaking my mother awake from overdoses by the age of four, being left in a home with an unstable father whose tone of voice would indicate the level of fear I ought to have. As a child, I always knew I needed to look out for myself. I was taught time and time again not to rely on my parents. I didn’t retreat or self-harm because of the years of abuse. I threw myself into finding a way out. I dedicated myself to school, attended prestigious institutions, all with the aim of making enough money to never need the help of others again.
Suddenly, with the red sand absorbing my tears, I spoke to a vision of myself. This woman was 80, still with my deformed tongue, but she had a wisdom that felt foreign. She told me that she loved her tongue, that it was the reason she was who she was. This beautiful tongue, and the decades-old scar across her neck were part of her. She told me that it was okay to live a life led by adventure and passion. That the pursuit of passion — not prestige or money — is truly living life.
She held open her much older arms, letting me fall into them. I clasped her back with my young arms and she felt truer than true because she was me. These were arms that would never drop me because I would never let myself fall.
By morning I decided I was never going back to the ladder. Screw that. Screw everyone telling me that in order to be happy I needed to be wealthy, I needed a title, I needed a corner office. None of it held any power over me anymore. I had just survived cancer and wasn’t going to let the healthiest years of my body go unused, wasted in an office chair. I was going to live, fully.
After that starry night in the valley, I hunted wildly for opportunities that spoke to my heart. I had been freed from the restraints of what was expected of me, was floating in a world of possibility, and I wanted to help others find this freedom
As I write this post from a sunny nook in my coworking in Santiago, Chile, I am now a community facilitator for Hacker Paradise and lead adventures all around the world. The travel is sexy, fun, and exciting, yes. But my favorite part of my new life is watching the people who never thought that they were capable of changing their lives or leaving home start to become their happiest, truest selves.
I am blessed to speak every day, all around the world, about changing your life and living for yourself. I work with some of the most amazing individuals, who have all opted for a life ‘outside the box’. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that their turning points looked a lot like mine. The death of a parent or child, a terrible separation, a realization that they are, in fact, unhappy in their lives and that they have the strength to change it.
When I was unable to use my new tongue to speak, I never could have fathomed that a life like mine could exist. A life based on freedom. Freedom from my childhood, freedom from the pain, physical and mental, of cancer, freedom from the life that I had told myself I was supposed to live. There is no more “supposed to” in my life. There is only passion and gratitude. And I love my tongue now. For it is a beautiful reminder of my strength, my impetus to change and to honor my 80-year-old self whose wisdom guides me every day.
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