I am sitting on the beach, the water’s edge just a few feet from me, reminiscing.

I came here to be with myself. To break up with busy for a morning. To watch the sunrise over a sea that holds me. To remember the woman underneath the mother and the builder and the everything else.

A gift I gave myself.

Thinking about the journey of becoming a mother a long time ago for me. I married the weekend I was turning 22 and figured I had a really long time ahead of me, so I waited to get pregnant for several years. My career was going as a young female home builder, running around construction sites. I was building strength in a world usually built by men. Not slowing down to be all of me. But then the yearning for motherhood came to me. So we started trying.

At that young age, the doctors told you to try for a couple of years and if nothing happens, come back. Which I feel, in hindsight, is such bad advice. If there is an issue, you need help with it. Why wait that long?

I was a healthy, fit young woman, yet pregnancy didn’t come easily. I went on infertility drugs with a specialist. Five or six rounds of Clomid, then one round of an injectable with IUI. We took every path we could to get pregnant.

It is a hard feeling when so many cycles are unsuccessful. I felt really defeated and disheartened. I wondered why this was such a struggle.

Then one day, before they had even officially confirmed my pregnancy, we walked into a pizza place and I felt queasy from the smell in the air. I knew something was different. A week or so later, I did the test. Positive. What a happy time in my life.

I relished every single piece of it. The emerging belly that takes longer to show up the first time. But on your second or third pregnancy, muscle memory lets go and shows the world your pregnancy status sooner than later. And oh, how fun, having an August delivery day and waddling around having gained an excessive amount of weight, because I was happy to be hungry and feeding myself and the baby. When I told my obstetrician it must be water weight, he looked at me with one of his hairy eyebrows raised. He said…that’s not water weight.

My body transformed into a mother from a maiden.

I still remember 28 years later that I had an insatiable craving for balsamic vinegar and carrots, together. I couldn’t get enough of that taste throughout my pregnancy. The most bizarre thing.

I had promised my mother-in-law at the time that I would sew up the seams of a skirt for her on my sewing machine. Weeks went by and I had not gotten to it. Then my contractions started. Would you believe I set up the machine, ran two rapid stitch lines up and down the left and right seams, and got the skirt done before we drove to the hospital. My hospital bag was not even packed.

I remember distinctly checking into the maternity office on the first floor at the Boston hospital, and having the contractions take their sweet time building. I definitely went for the epidural. The obstetrician said, you’re in modern day medicine, don’t be in pain. I took her advice. That was good advice for me, because I got to enjoy my delivery.

It was an awesome experience becoming a mother. A full head of newborn hair was a delight to lay eyes on. With the first one, we didn’t find out what the sex would be, and that was the new surprise on that day as well.

It’s funny how things evolved after you experienced things with the first baby. I was germ phobic and wouldn’t let anybody else hold the newborn. I walked around all day with him in my baby Bjorn carrier. I insisted everyone who came into my house scrub down their hands. I became a nursing machine and enjoyed that closeness so much.

I was able to stay home with him for almost 18 months, and what a gift it was getting to bond with him. Hearing his vocabulary evolve. Seeing his face lit up with new discoveries. It’s just the best ever.

I had to go back to work two weeks after my second born, and three days after my third born. If I could do it again, I would do otherwise. But at the time, it seemed necessary. I was building homes and had to get back out there. It felt kind of sad for the feminine part of me to go back out into the masculine world that I had put myself into. It is a dichotomy I have lived inside for decades.

Now my children are grown. My eldest will turn 28 this summer.

A ripening. I am 56 now and I feel my mothering yearning stronger than ever, but in a different way.

My most favorite job on earth is being a mother.

I have loved raising my kids. I have loved guiding them. I have loved watching them laugh and snuggle up next to me, sleeping in my bed as babies and toddlers. I was the Dr. Sears attachment parent. I nursed my firstborn. After my mastectomy, I bottle fed the next two. The closeness did not depend on the method. Holding them close. Responding to their cues. Letting their needs lead. I read everything I could on the Gesell Institute’s work on developmental readiness versus chronological age. I loved every part of being their mother and deeply tried to be the best mother I could be at each stage.

I hear their young voices in my head when I think back. The three of them laughing and talking together, the family we built. They played together as kids. They are still close as adults, with each other and with me. None of it has faded. That makes my heart very happy.

In these wisdom years of mine, I still feel like a mother in full bloom. Not only for my children, but for everyone I touch.

I know many women have walked a hard path through their own childhoods. I am witnessing women of all ages who are finding themselves again, maybe after a crisis, a life change, or a transformation in waiting that is now ready to bloom. I am one of them. A mother in full bloom, still blooming.

I have been evolving and growing for decades.

I am here now, speaking my voice. Becoming more available, more visible. Reaching out to women. Being part of the circles. Speaking out loud. Sharing my stories.

And just as the ocean before me is wide, right now I am feeling like there is a wide ocean of possibilities for all of us women when we touch our hearts together and raise ourselves up to be the best versions of ourselves through every season of our lives.

I am here to say to you, embrace your femininity. Even if you have a job that pulls the masculine, and that is okay too, remember to give grace to your femininity and stay in touch with your inner space.

Don’t forget her. She is still in there.

Show your daughters and your girlfriends and sisters what it is to be all of it. The strong and the soft. The hard and the cry. The vulnerability and the guardrails of protection. You can have it all. But sometimes you build a life so powerful that your soft heart gets forgotten. Even by you.

For that little girl inside you. She still wants to play. She still wants to find her glee. She still wants to be touched by life in soft ways. She still wants to be held in nurturing places, around people who see her.

If you have not yet found your community, find women who lift you up, see you fully, and walk alongside you through every season.

Happy Mother’s Day to all of us.

If this resonated, subscribe to JoAnn K so you do not miss what comes next. And if you know a woman who needs to hear this, send it to her.

Subscribe now

Share

If you are looking for a circle of women who lift each other up, see each other fully, and walk alongside one another through every season, I am building one. I will share more soon. In the meantime, reply to this email or send me a private message if you want to be among the first to know.

I just came from the funeral of my friend, Vera. She was 46 years old.

Vera was diagnosed with invasive breast cancer while she was nursing her second child. She had gone to be seen in the spring and a nurse practitioner turned her away, dismissing it as mastitis. Seven months later, she went back. By then, the cancer that was likely already invasive had gone undetected for seven precious months that might have made a difference.

This hits close to home for me. Twenty-five years ago, I was almost turned away by a mammogram tech when I showed up for my first mammogram at 31. I was still breastfeeding. She nearly sent me home. If I had listened to her, I don’t know if I’d be writing this today.

Vera was turned away by a nurse practitioner. I was almost turned away by a tech. Two women. Two different decades. Same system. Same assumptions.

After her diagnosis, genetic testing confirmed Vera carried a BRCA variant that predisposed her to the cancer risk she was facing. Her paternal grandmother had died of breast cancer. Her father had died of cancer a year before Vera’s own diagnosis. But no doctor ever sat the family down and said, “given this history, you need genetic testing.” No one in her medical care guided them to look. She didn’t know she carried this gene until after she was already fighting.

If a clinician had reviewed that family history at the right moment, Vera might have had a chance to get ahead of it. Instead, she spent six years in treatment. She fought cancer four times. She was 46 when she died. Her children are 10 and 12.

Vera was a teacher, a coach, a mother, a force. She founded Breast Cancer Goddess, a nonprofit she built to support and educate women navigating life with breast cancer through holistic healing, community, and radical self-care. She presented her work at Harvard alongside Dr. Ellen Langer. She did not play small. She lived loud and bright until the very end.

I want you to hear this.

If you have family history showing you patterns... a parent who had cancer, a grandmother who died young, a relative with an autoimmune disease, a father with heart disease in their 40s... take those as your warning signs. Take them as your roadmap. Start putting them together and treat them as clues to how you can recalibrate your own health trajectory.

I’m telling you this from personal experience and from the research I have done for my own family. There is so much we don’t know unless we go looking. And mainstream medicine is not going to do it for you. Mainstream medicine is not going to do it for you.

I’m not saying don’t go to your doctor. I’m saying don’t stop there.

You have to be your own advocate in all of this.

Early detection is everything. But prevention goes even further. Even stage 2 cancer has the capacity to put your life at risk. This is not something to wait on. This is not something to assume won’t happen to you.

There are things happening inside your body right now that won’t show symptoms for years. But the patterns are already there if you know where to look. Your bloodwork, your genetics, your metabolic and inflammatory markers can show meaningful patterns long before symptoms appear. Most people don’t look until something has already gone wrong. You don’t have to wait for that.

Knowledge is power. Knowledge is power.

Most of us are too busy to dive into this. I understand. It takes focus, attention, and a level of investigation that most people don’t have time for. But I have learned so much through doing this work for myself and the people I love, and I am not willing to keep what I know quiet. Too many women are walking around without information that could save their lives.

This is something I feel deeply motivated to share out loud. I was lucky to be spared through my own advocacy 25 years ago. And now I’m seeing what a difference diving into the facts is making for my own family’s health for generations to come. This is not exaggeration. This is real.

From my lived experience, I have seen firsthand how much of this is not being pursued by mainstream medicine. It is upsetting to me when I see young parents leave their little kids behind, or people spend decades not knowing about something going on inside them that they could have gotten ahead of. So please, get your tests done.

So here’s what I’m asking you to do.

If you have put off your mammogram, your Pap smear, your prostate exam, your colonoscopy, or any other tests... do not delay any further. I have heard from too many women who have skipped their mammogram for years because life was busy. I have heard from women who have put off their Pap smear for six or seven years. I understand how it happens. Time gets away from us. But the cost of waiting is one you do not want to learn the hard way.

Do it for yourself. Do it for your family. Do it for prevention.

And most of all... do not take no for an answer.

If someone tries to turn you away from a test you feel you need, do not accept it. Push for it. Look them in the eye and ask them to document in writing, in your chart, that they are denying the test and that nothing will come of it. You will see them change their position.

Doctors are not gods. You have an instinct of your own. Trust it.

When you keep hearing the same thing from different directions, when something in you is telling you to push further, listen. That is information to pay attention to.

You have more knowledge and power within you than you may realize. Follow through.

I have a lot to say. And I’ll be back with more.

If this resonated with you... subscribe to JoAnn K so you don’t miss what comes next. And if you know a woman who needs to hear this... send it to her.

Subscribe now

Share

A note. If you want help navigating the testing and information-gathering piece of any of this, knowing what to ask for, how to organize what you find, and how to identify what is worth bringing to your doctor's attention, that is where I can help. I have spent years doing this work for myself and my family. I am not a doctor and I do not give medical advice. I am someone who has learned how to gather the right information, organize it, and prepare for productive conversations with your medical team. Before I launch a more formal way to do this work with women, I am opening the door to women who have questions in the meantime. Send me a private message.

Vera’s husband Joe and their two young children are walking through profound loss. If you are moved to help carry them through this time, contributions can be made here:

GoFundMe to support Vera’s husband and their children: DONATE HERE

To continue Vera’s legacy in supporting women with breast cancer, visit breastcancergoddess.org

Breaking up with busy means stopping long enough that you can find yourself again.

I was sitting on a beach towel on cold sand. Off-season, maybe 40 degrees. Leggings on, snow boots dug into the sand, a hat, my winter jacket. No one was on the beach except a couple of people walking their dogs at that hour. Clean ocean air with the sun on my forehead, watching the sunrise, listening to the loud waves crashing only a few feet away.

Stopping long enough that you can find the center of where your relationship originated... with yourself, with your partner, with how you relate to your kids, your elders, your colleagues at work. When you oversee so much, touch everything, constantly move and build... do this long enough and you lose yourself.

And what does that mean? It means you lose touch with who you are. Your origin. Your belief system. Your north star. It also means you have to recognize how much you do for others. Maybe you realize that, maybe you don’t. Maybe you’re young, maybe you’re old. But we all have stuff. And for some of us, that stuff puts us into over-giving, overdoing, and neglecting ourselves.

It can be based on how much we’re needed, how much we serve. And then decades later you realize that all of that exhaustive energy, all of that output, is draining your own inner battery. You wake up someday recognizing you’ve identified yourself as someone who serves. Someone who needs to be needed. Someone who over-gives. And sometimes it’s thankless. Sometimes it’s without any recognition. And in some cases, it’s not even needed or asked for. If we stepped back and let it go, it’ll probably find its own place and direction. Or they need to find it out for themselves.

It’s really important to see not only why the people who raised us acted the way they did, but also how we go through life on autopilot... potentially for a long time... before realizing the connections to why we see the world and navigate our interactions the way we do. I’m not sure if it takes a midlife point to see this more clearly. But I wish they taught this earlier on. It’s a big part of why I started writing.

Where does our communication style and our needs all come from? It’s worth looking at. Not only for our own sake, but to stop passing these patterns down the line. The people before us were suffering from their own traumas. They did the best they could. And we absorbed it. And now we get to choose what we keep and what we let go of.

So I broke up with busy. Not forever. Just for long enough.

I architected this weekend for my husband and me. He had just landed from a multi-day conference where he was on the entire time. I knew he needed a place to land and recalibrate. I did too. We came to a spot we’ve known about for years... off-season, right on the ocean, a short drive from home. A dear friend of ours owns it. And the moment we arrived, it was an instant energy reset. My soul and my nervous system were craving it and I just unwound.

I woke up to birdsong that morning. I was born at dawn, so birds and the sunrise have always had meaning for me. It’s always curious when those things synchronize. I came outside at six to watch the sunrise. I wasn’t scrolling. I was absorbing my environment.

When my husband joined me, we sat together with a hot cup of coffee and the sky and the sun above us. A slow start with nothing distracting us.

We spent hours on the beach. Sitting on a big log that had washed up on shore, talking. Not about work. Not about schedules. About culture and emotions and history. About how we relate to people and where our communication habits come from. We talked about how art developed through the years. How humans could hear certain sounds at different stages of time and couldn’t even see certain colors at different stages of development. It brought us into this deeply rich conversation... the kind we have when we actually have time together. Even at home on a weekend morning, we’ll sit and have these coffee talks. We see and realize so much through our lived experiences, singularly and together.

Not just your body resets when you stop. Your mind resets. Your point of view resets. You start to realize the depths of where everything comes from... how you see things, how you relate, how you carry what you carry. And when you do that alongside someone you love, it adds a clarity that you can’t get while you’re both running at full speed.

My husband and I were taking pictures of ourselves to capture this time together. And we built a tripod out of driftwood sticks to hold up the ring on the back of my phone. It was so fun and funny to improvise in the moment. Camera meets driftwood. I found a few pieces of perfectly shaped driftwood that organized the situation really well. If I had a second camera, I would have taken a picture of the whole setup.

Being this close to the ocean is one of my happy places. It may not be the same for everybody. But what I’m telling you is that you need to find your version of this. And you need to make it happen because it will not happen on its own.

Do it for two hours. Do it for an overnight. Housesit a friend’s empty place for the weekend... and that doesn’t mean babysitting their six cats. You need to be in solitude for a bit. If you can, go someplace you love to be there for dawn, if that’s your thing. Sit there and just listen. Let it all go. Cry even. Open yourself up to your core.

Close the computer. Stay off your Instagram. Stop over-worrying about Monday’s to-do list. You really need to let it all go for a bit.

And I mean truly unplugged. Your quiet time isn’t the time to go to others for their advice... because their advice will be shaped by how they’ve gone through their life, not yours. And it’s not the time to have conversations with AI to sort through your feelings. That’s fine to do when you’re centered. But a reset needs to be electronic-free. No devices. No outside voices. Just yours.

What is this going to do? It’s going to clear your head. It’s going to clear your nervous system. It’ll give you a reset... most importantly with yourself.

If your partner and you do this together, spend some time apart within it too. Wake up earlier than the other person if you’re an early riser. Go take the walk at dawn. Don’t compulsively listen to a podcast or even music. Spend time listening to nothing.

That may sound a little scary. But honestly, it’s when your brain opens up. Thoughts drop in. Pay attention to those thoughts because some of them are meaningful. If you don’t know what intuition means... it’s not the voice reminding you to do XYZ or telling you nasty things about yourself. I mean the person you haven’t talked to in a while whose name drops into your head. Why? Think about it. Maybe give them a call. Maybe there’s a message there or something you need to hear. Or a book you haven’t thought of, and when you walk by your bookshelf, it calls out to you. Maybe there’s something there for you to see.

Those are you talking to you. Not everyone else talking to you.

We have everybody vying at us at home for our attention. At work... deadlines, phone calls, endless emails. We’re more in touch now than we ever were. I grew up in a time, being born in 1969, where there were no cell phones. Messages were written on pink slips, ripped out of a message notebook, and left on my desk to call back when I could get to it. The world doesn’t want to let us go because now we’re more connected than ever. We’ve got our phones tied to us constantly and it seems like it’s either an endless scroll or an endless demand list of life.

This is no way to live. And I’m telling you this from lived experience at 56.

So breaking up with busy doesn’t mean breaking up with everything and everyone around you. It means stopping long enough that you can come back into your own thread of life. Recognizing that you want to do it your way, for you.

And this doesn’t happen overnight. Don’t go blowing up a marriage or yelling at your kids because they’re asking too much of you. We’ve trained people around us to expect certain levels of performance from us. They’ve acclimated to how competent we are at handling so much. It takes time to reset that too.

I’m not asking you to turn everything upside down or walk away from people. I’m here to say take time to slow down. At least every week or two. And a few overnights a year if you can. Make it happen. We’ve evolved as humans to be almost fully automated. We have to be aware of how much time is getting away from us. The busier we are, the faster it goes.

I use quiet spaces like this to write my thoughts. And while I was sitting with mine, something told me to stand up and engage with a person walking by. I listened to that nudge. And within minutes, a lovely stranger touched me with her story in a way I didn’t expect. Call it serendipity. Call it divine intervention. Call it intuition. But it proved to me what this whole essay is about...you have to stop long enough to hear what's meant for you.

Your north star is in there. If you don’t know that yet... with lived experience, trust me, you will find it.

I have a lot to say. And I’ll be back with more.

If this resonated with you... subscribe so you don't miss what comes next.

And if you know a woman who needs to hear this... send it to her.

Share

Subscribe now

I titled my last essay Everything I Touch. The phrase came from my grandmother. On her deathbed, on a Greek island in the 1940s, she blessed her eight-year-old son. He became my father.

The phrase has followed me all week.

Not because I inherited it. Because I started paying attention to it.

Because the more I look, the more I realize I have been touching everything. And most of it, I never stopped to see how much it mattered.

This week alone.

Hours piecing together a health puzzle that spans generations. Pages and pages of research. Synthesizing lab results. Genetic markers. A biological age over a decade older than chronological age. A health trajectory heading in the wrong direction. Uncovering what the body was quietly dealing with years before symptoms would arrive or an irreversible event would happen. Looking for what no one else digs into. The kind of work that changes the trajectory of a family’s health history.

This is work I know from lived experience. A person’s health is too complex to be understood in a 20 minute annual physical. I am the 56 year old woman with the 31 year old breast cancer survivor inside her. She is still here. And she has a lot more to say.

Blueprints reviewed for a new project. Clients counseled on pricing their home to sell. Follow-up calls with the people I am helping through major life transactions, because they need someone who actually cares how it ends.

Paving contractors interviewed for our road, every detail of the estimates reviewed to make sure nothing was missed. Chemical settings checked for our pool to keep anyone who swims in it safe. Contracts organized.

I built a new platform this week. A Facebook Page with my name on it. A welcome post written for the women and men who have been following me quietly for years, waiting for me to finally say something publicly.

Spanakopita made. My mother’s recipe. My grandmother’s recipe before her. I taught one of my children how to fold the phyllo without breaking it.

The vet called about one of our Goldens and her kidney medication. Preventive ultrasounds planned for both our dogs. My hands ran carefully along the surgical site of another one of our dogs... the alpha of our pack... and held her tight before they brought her into emergency surgery.

Books ordered for myself, and for friends who need the right words to name what they are feeling.

Special coffee bought and a station set up for a house guest, so the first thing she tasted in the morning felt like care.

The gardens walked. The clearing begun. Raking away what had decomposed over winter. Making space for the new shoots to push up through clean soil.

I stood in a room this week and used my voice to reach women who can benefit from hearing the wisdom of a life already lived... some I have not lived yet, and some I am only now learning to say out loud.

I listened to one of my adult children offer wisdom to a friend that I recognized as my own words, passed forward without attribution. That might be the best thing I’ve ever built.

That was one week.

You have been doing this too.

You read the report no one else read. You asked the question no one else asked. You made the phone call. You noticed the bruise. You insisted on the second opinion. You signed the paperwork. You remembered the appointment. You held the line on the price. You cooked the meal. You tended the aging parent. You soothed the child. You built the career. You held the marriage. You did the research you knew needed to be done.

And you have probably been calling it managing.

It is not managing.

It is architecture.

Here is what I know after 30 years of building luxury homes and 25 years of surviving the disease that almost took me.

A woman’s hands do not just rest on things. They shape them.

The home she runs... she doesn’t just run it. She designs it. The relationship she holds together... that takes real work. Daily work. The body she keeps healthy... that’s not luck. That’s research and advocacy and showing up for herself even when no one’s watching.

Most women I know do this quietly. No one pays them for it. No one gives them a title. And the people whose lives depend on it rarely stop long enough to say so.

I’m not writing this for recognition.

I’m writing it because I want to ask you something.

Have you been seeing what you are building?

When I look at my own hands... red nails, the rings I still wear, the lines that 56 years have drawn across them... I see the tools of the only trade I have ever fully trusted.

My own.

These hands held a toddler at Christmas in 2000 while I waited for a biopsy result. They drove me to four Boston hospitals to interview surgeons in 2001. They signed the paperwork for my first construction builds. They have passed phyllo dough through three generations of women in my family. They have tuned a harp. They have drafted blueprints. They soothed a pet going into surgery. They have written three essays in 22 days about what I know.

Most days I did not notice them.

This week I am noticing.

For today, I want to leave you with this.

The question is not whether what you touch matters. That much is already true.

The question is whether you have been seeing it.

Notice your own hands this week.

Notice what they are building.

You have been the architect all along.

If this landed for you, subscribe and share it. Every woman you know is creating, building.

And if you love a woman like this, this essay is for you too. You probably already see it. She will never tire of hearing you say so.

Subscribe now

Leave a comment

I was planning to get pregnant.

That was the goal for the spring of 2001. My son was two. My construction business was underway... I was managing my first two builds. Life was full and moving fast and I had no reason to slow down.

But that autumn, a family friend was diagnosed with breast cancer in her sixties. She kept saying to me, “Get a mammogram. Just to be safe.” I was 31. Nobody gets a mammogram at 31. None of my doctors had ever mentioned it. But my father’s mother had died of breast cancer at 42. My father was eight years old when he lost her. So I listened.

My mammogram was booked for March. But I didn’t want to wait. I wanted to be pregnant by then. So I called the mammography center again and again until I found a cancellation.

December 22, 2000. Three days before Christmas.

I went alone. The waiting room was empty. I expected nothing. The mammogram tech almost turned me away because I was still lactating. She was rude about it. But I stuck to my mission and insisted on having the mammogram my doctor had ordered at my request.

The radiologist came out of the reading room with a face I will never forget. He asked why a 31-year-old woman was there for a mammogram. I told him for a baseline. My heart started racing the moment I heard the words breast cancer. He said the hair was standing on the back of his neck... that three days before Christmas, he had found a 4mm cluster of pleomorphic calcifications. Invisible to the touch. It would not have been palpable for years.

I was stunned. I cried the whole way home.

Christmas that year was something I had to get through. I sat with my toddler on Christmas Eve, then Christmas morning, trying to be present for him while having no idea how far the cancer had gone. It would be weeks before I’d know. No more tests during the holidays. Just waiting. Just praying.

My biopsy came in January. Then 10 days of silence before they called with pathology. I was driving when my phone rang. The cells were cancerous. Intermediate to high grade... the kind that likes to metastasize. But I had caught it before it left its original site. Barely.

If I had gone ahead and gotten pregnant without knowing, the hormones would have fed the cancer. I would not be writing this today.

I went from the holiday season thinking I was going to be happily trying for another baby to pausing my life entirely. I was building my first two homes under my own construction company, managing a job site, and suddenly I was a breast cancer patient at 31 doing research late into the night about a world I never expected to enter.

The first hospital sat me down and told me what they were going to do. A lumpectomy. Radiation. They didn’t ask me what I wanted. They directed me. They made it sound like I had to do it right away.

I said, “Hold on.”

I left that hospital and took my case to Boston. I interviewed four of the best breast surgeons in the city. I read Susan Love’s Breast Book cover to cover. I spoke with young women who had been through it... on the phone, because there was no Zoom, no FaceTime. Some of them were brave enough to show me their scars so I could understand what I was deciding.

One male surgeon told me he was going to talk to my husband to stop me from having a mastectomy on my healthy breast. It took me nearly an hour of questions before the surgeons would tell me what they actually knew about my odds based on my age and cell type. They had the answers. They just weren’t offering them.

I pushed until they did.

I made a choice to remove my healthy breast because I wanted to get as far away from the risk of breast cancer as possible. I had spoken with too many young women who told me it came back, or showed up in the other breast, or happened to their sister. I figured I had been given a chance to not repeat history... and I wanted to do everything I could to ensure that.

The morning of April 2, 2001, I left the house for a six-hour surgery. My mother, who was staying with my son, said something like, “Keep thinking of the little guy.” She was choked up. Her 31-year-old daughter was leaving for something no one expected.

I had a Reiki master come to the hospital. I had Peggy Huddleston’s Prepare for Surgery, Heal Faster playing on a cassette tape in my Walkman, with Theo’s picture taped to it. Days before, I had written a six-page goodbye letter to my breasts... sealed it in an envelope I still haven’t opened, 25 years later. Peggy had encouraged me to pre-mourn the loss so I could walk into surgery with closure.

And I did. Just before they rolled me into the operating room, my surgeon, Dr. Carolyn Kaelin... the director of the Breast Center at Brigham and Women’s... looked me in the eye and said, “I fully support your decision.” She was the only surgeon who ever said that to me. That was a gift I will never forget.

I went under anesthesia listening to Peggy’s tape on repeat. When I woke up, my father was standing in my hospital room.

He had driven to Boston by himself. He never drove to Boston by himself. He didn’t like it. But he came. No other family members visited. Just my dad.

My father’s name was Anastasios. In Greek, it means Resurrection.

The months after surgery were harder than the surgery itself. The adrenaline wore off and I fell into a dark stretch. Why me. None of my friends were going through this. I had tall weeds growing on the lots of the first homes I was supposed to be building. My bank was calling, asking why construction had stalled.

I was still breastfeeding at the time of my diagnosis. I had to stop cold turkey to deal with the biopsy and everything that followed. That was its own grief... closing the chapter on something I loved, knowing I would never nurse another child again.

Dana Farber called me after reviewing a survey I’d filled out. They said my responses indicated clinical depression. By the time they reached me, I was already pulling myself out. But it was real. It was there.

And then one day, I was standing in a hallway at Brigham and Women’s, and my phone rang. It was Dr. Kaelin. She was calling to tell me my cancer was behind me. “Go live your life,” she said. “If you want to have more children, go have more children.”

If that phone call had never come, I’m not sure I would have had the courage.

My daughter was born two weeks early on Christmas morning. I had asked God for a sign that I made the right choice. She arrived on the holiest morning of the year. I named her Anastasia... after my father. After the Resurrection.

A few months later, I wrote in her baby journal: “Each day I stop and say to God how thankful I am that we have little Anastasia.”

Dr. Kaelin’s phone call is the reason my daughter is here. And my youngest son after her.

Dr. Kaelin herself was later diagnosed with young breast cancer. She survived it. Then she died at 54 from a separate cancer, unrelated. The woman who gave me permission to live didn’t get to keep her own life. I carry her with me still.

Twenty-five years later, my scars are still there. Long, pink, persistent. I have complete acceptance of my body. I’ve shared this with women who spent years apologizing for their reconstruction, feeling embarrassed by an imperfect chest. They told me they were so glad I said what I said... because they had been carrying that shame alone.

We are so much more than what our skin looks like. The wholeness of our being is deeper than any scar. That’s where the beauty lives... beyond the skin of every human.

I fought to see my son grow up. He graduated from college. So did his sister. Their youngest brother is in college now. I’m 56. I’m healthy.

Subscribe now

If you’re reading this and you just got the call... or you’re sitting in the car, stunned, trying to figure out what comes next... here is what I want you to hear.

Take your time. You likely have more of it than they’re making you feel. Ask if you have time to make a decision. When we hear the word cancer, we think we have to act immediately. Sometimes you do. But not every time. Get a second opinion. Get a third. Come armed with questions and do not leave until they answer you honestly. Advocate for yourself... no one else will do it the way you will.

See a specialist. General practice doctors and gynecologists are not as informed as a breast cancer specialist. Be aware of who you put your trust into. Talk to other women who’ve been through it. Dig into your family history, both sides... paternal matters just as much as maternal, and most doctors don’t know that.

And share your story. I stayed quiet about mine for years. Not because I was embarrassed... I just wanted to get back to my normal life as a young mother. It wasn’t how things were done back then. No social media. No online communities. Just phone calls and silence. My friends didn’t bring it up. I didn’t bring it up. And that kept me more isolated than it needed to.

Talk to the women in your world. It helps us know we’re not alone. It helps us navigate with more clarity. And it opens doors for other women who are still standing in the waiting room by themselves, the way I was.

And trust your intuition. I didn’t know to call it that at 31. But something in me pushed for that mammogram when no doctor had suggested it. Something in me said “hold on” when that first hospital tried to rush me. Something in me knew which surgeon to trust. I’ve leaned on that inner knowing many times since. It’s there for a reason. But you have to slow down long enough to hear it. Stop rushing through life long enough to pay attention to what you already know.

Never, ever feel less of a woman because of what this disease asks you to give up. Your body is not broken. It is doing exactly what it needs to do to keep you alive.

My grandmother died of breast cancer nearly 80 years ago. She was 42 years old, on a remote Greek island that took three hours by boat to reach the mainland. There was no healthcare for her. By the time she knew, it was too late. My father was eight years old, the last son still at home, caring for her as she was dying.

On her deathbed, she said to him... My little boy, my little boy... may everything you touch turn to gold.

She never knew that her own life became a thread of gold I’ve followed through mine. Her history informed my decisions. It changed the trajectory of my life. It gave me the chance to do what she never got to do... survive cancer and raise her children.

Her story is the reason I had a family history at all. That history is what pushed me to ask for a mammogram at 31 when no doctor had suggested one. And that mammogram is the reason I was able to make a decision... to have a double mastectomy with reconstruction at 31, going against what most of the surgeons were telling me... that gave me my life back. The reconstruction was part of feeling whole again. Part of choosing to move forward on my own terms.

I did not want my son to grow up without his mother the way my father did. He didn’t have to. None of my children did. And I got to raise all three of them.

This is the full circle. Grandmother to father to me to the daughter I named Anastasia... for the Resurrection.

I am 56 years old. I am healthy. I am a mother, a builder, a woman who refuses to let anyone else make her decisions for her.

And it is because of her that I am still here today... to share her touch of gold with you.

If this story resonated with you... subscribe to JoAnn K so you don’t miss what comes next. And if you know a woman who needs to hear this... send it to her.

This Wednesday evening, I’m hosting a live conversation for anyone who wants to talk about any of this. Survivors, supporters, women going through it right now. Details coming tomorrow.

This essay reflects my personal experience only and is not medical advice. Every diagnosis is unique. Please consult your own physicians and specialists for guidance on your care.

Subscribe now

Share

I’ve been building things my whole life.

Homes. Businesses. A family. A reputation. A body that survived breast cancer at 31. A mind that hasn’t slowed down since.

I’m JoAnn Kalogianis Spaneas. I’m a second-generation Greek-American builder... the daughter of an immigrant who constructed homes with his bare hands and taught me that the most important thing you’ll ever build is a life that means something.

For 30 years, I’ve worked in luxury construction and real estate. I’ve negotiated multi-million-dollar deals. I’ve designed, problem-solved, and created things that most people wouldn’t know where to begin. I’ve raised three kids who still call me their fiercest advocate. I play the harp. I speak, read and write Greek. And I have a lot to say.

About health... and what happens when you dig deeper than your doctors are willing to go. About what it means to be a woman who refuses to shrink. About business. About resilience. About the things nobody prepares you for and how you get through them anyway.

I started this Substack because I’ve spent years learning things the hard way... and I’m done keeping it to myself. I’ve researched. I’ve advocated. I’ve survived things. And the women in my life keep saying the same thing... “How do you know all of this?”

So here I am. Sharing it.

I’ll write about health, business, personal power, and what it actually takes to build a life that works. I’ll share what I’m learning, what I’ve lived, and what I think more women need to hear. Some of it will be practical. Some of it will be personal. All of it will be honest.

I’ll post weekly... sometimes more when I can’t stop writing.

If this resonates with you... subscribe. And if you know a woman who needs to hear this... share it with her.

This is just the beginning.

Subscribe now

Share JoAnn K