Burnout to Balance: Transforming Your Work Experience

By Angela Ross (student at University of Minnesota Crookston), with Joshua Rivedal

“Burnout is what happens when you try to avoid being human for too long.”

- Michael Gungor

A decade ago, I was commissioned (hired) to write a big musical that was to be produced in a few locations in the Southern U.S. around Christmas time, collaborating with a producing team I greatly admired. The initial thrill of this opportunity was palpable, but as the months unfolded, what began as a dream project gradually morphed into a source of overwhelming stress. The demands of the role expanded far beyond my initial job description, and with each passing day, the workload intensified. Despite my efforts, positive feedback felt elusive, leaving me to wrestle with exhaustion.

The culmination of this experience came on opening night of the show. While the atmosphere was electrifying and the excitement hard to contain, I found myself at the receiving end of unwarranted frustration from the director, who vented his displeasure over decisions well beyond my control. In that moment, I felt a profound sense of fatigue, anxiety, and despair wash over me. As someone who has navigated the complexities of depression and anxiety for years, this experience intensified feelings I had long grappled with, bringing them to the forefront of my life.

It wasn’t until years later that I recognized what I had endured was workplace burnout.

If my story resonates with you, the following information may provide the insights and understanding you need to navigate your own experiences with workplace burnout.

In today’s fast-paced office jungle, burnout has become the new normal, like that one coworker who always microwaves fish for lunch (you know the guy). It’s that state of emotional, physical, and mental exhaustion that sneaks up on you like an unwanted surprise meeting invite, just as you’re walking out the door at the end of a challenging day.

What is Workplace Burnout? It's not just your average Monday morning grumpiness; it’s an actual interruption to a once-happy environment that now seems unwelcoming and a challenge to go to each day. It’s dreading Monday morning, Friday afternoon. If you or someone you know has experienced these feelings of workplace burnout, it is no surprise, as the latest statistics on workplace burnout from the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) find that 52% of American workers reported some form of workplace burnout that significantly got in the way of their productivity and general happiness. NAMI has broken down three main factors that may result from chronic, unaddressed workplace stress:

• Feelings of exhaustion or energy depletion.
• Negative or cynical feelings toward work.
• Reduced performance at work.

Several factors contribute to workplace burnout:

• A heavy workload: High demands and little time for rest. This can lead to feelings of being overwhelmed.
• A lack of agency: Employees who have little control over their work environment or tasks often experience higher levels of stress and depression.
• Lack of recognition: Feeling unseen for your hard work and ideas.
• Poor work balance: Difficulty separating work from personal life can contribute to fatigue and stress.
• Toxic work environment: A culture that promotes competition over collaboration can exacerbate feelings of isolation and stress.

The effects and consequences of burnout extend beyond individual employees, affecting overall workplace productivity and morale. Some common effects include:

• Decreased performance – Burnout can lead to reduced efficiency and productivity, impacting both the individual and the organization.
• Increased missed days of work – If you are experiencing burnout, you are more likely to take more sick days.
• Anxiety, depression, and other signs of mental health problems.
• A higher turnover rate – Organizations with high levels of employee burnout often face increased turnover rates, leading to additional costs in recruitment and training.

Alright, let’s tackle this burnout beast with some strategies, because we all know that ignoring it is just going to make it worse. 

• Set clear boundaries: Establish limits on work hours and stick to them to maintain a healthy work-life balance.
• Prioritize self-care: Engage in regular physical activity, eat well, and ensure you get enough sleep to recharge your body.
• Take regular breaks: Schedule short breaks throughout your day to step away from your work and refresh your mind.
• Practice mindfulness: Incorporate mindfulness or meditation techniques to reduce stress and enhance focus.
• Seek out your support system: Talk to trusted colleagues, friends, or a professional about your feelings to gain perspective and support.

Burnout is a serious issue that can have lasting effects on both employees and organizations alike. By understanding its causes and effects and implementing effective strategies for recovery, we can make space for a healthier work environment that prioritizes mental well-being. Remember, recognizing the signs of burnout is crucial, and seeking help is a sign of strength. Prioritizing mental health not only benefits individuals but can also lead to a more productive and positive workplace for everyone.

* * *

If you or someone you know is feeling the effects of workplace burnout, there are resources to help you in general or to assist you in speaking up to someone you care about, including:

National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI)

World Health Organization (WHO)

Suicide Prevention: The Power of Communication

By Pearl Ventura De Santiago (student at University of Texas at El Paso), with Joshua Rivedal

Human beings were not made to go through life alone. When we’re cut off from others, that sense of isolation can lead to loneliness, which has terrible emotional and physical health consequences. Every one of us depends emotionally on social connections; talking to people, expressing ourselves, being loved, and feeling company are what move us as people and keep us in our best state emotionally, physically, and sometimes even economically. Communication is one of our greatest tools as humans.

Though we’re able to communicate with one another, many of us don’t, often for reasons like fear, pride, a lack of self-worth, or simply because we think we don't need it. Yet, when we don’t communicate, when we don’t connect, especially over long periods of time, that isolation can be a sign or symptom of someone experiencing emotional crisis, which can often (not always) lead to suicide ideation, attempts, and deaths. The most recent statistics reflect that in 2023, over 49,000 people died by suicide. That number is staggering. What makes it even more heartbreaking is knowing how many of those people may have felt unseen, unheard, or unsupported.

This is why communication matters so much. Reaching out (whether you’re the one struggling or the one offering a listening ear) can make a life-saving difference. Sometimes, just saying out loud what you’re going through helps ease the burden. It can make you feel “normal” and less alone. And sometimes, just having someone listen without judgment is enough to keep a person from feeling completely alone (I’ve been there at points in my life, and so have many others). 

So how do we show up for the people we care about? How do we make it easier for them to open up? A few things can help:

• Create a safe space – Set aside moments where judgment is off the table, so your loved one feels comfortable sharing openly.

• Limit distractions – Find a private, quiet place where you can give them your full attention.

• Be an active listener – Notice not only their words but also their tone, expressions, and body language.

• Respond with compassion – You don’t have to “fix” what’s wrong—in fact, offering quick solutions can sometimes backfire. Instead, focus on empathy. A simple, “I’m here with you,” goes a long way.

• Respect boundaries – Know your own limits and theirs. If the situation calls for more support than you can give, gently encourage professional help. That could mean suggesting counseling, therapy, or calling the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. You can also help make a “warm handoff,” meaning you can assist them in calling 988, or you can ask the person in crisis if you can drive them to the ER or walk with them to your school’s counseling office (just a few examples).  

Listening is vital, but so is speaking up. If you’re the one struggling, know that you don’t need to explain everything perfectly, and you don’t need to even try to have all the answers. What matters is that you reach out. There will always be someone willing to hear you out.

Our minds are meant to think, our hearts are meant to feel, and our voices are meant to share. Communication is a gift that can bring healing, hope, and connection. Let’s use it to its fullest, for ourselves and for each other.

I’ll always be a listening ear, whether you’re in crisis or just want to call or text to celebrate something amazing that happened in your life. I look forward to hearing from you :)

Our minds are meant to think, our hearts are meant to feel, and our voices are meant to share. Communication is a gift that can bring healing, hope, and connection. Let’s use it to its fullest, for ourselves and for each other.

I’ll always be a listening ear, whether you’re in crisis or just want to call or text to celebrate something amazing that happened in your life. I look forward to hearing from you :)

5 Genius Stress-Relief Hacks Every College Student Desperately Needs Right Now

By Rachel Houston (student at Longwood University), with Joshua Rivedal

Navigating change in your life, especially academically, can add additional stressors. The newfound freedom and responsibilities. The unfamiliarity of it all. Then classes quickly snowball into “too much to handle.” These factors can have adverse effects on grades or relationships. This can lead to excessive stress that may be difficult to face.

The Impact

Stress manifests in multiple aspects. It affects the body through a change in behavior or health. It lowers your body’s ability to fight infection. As a student, being ill is the last thing you want to see on your bingo card. Missing a class will significantly worsen the pressure. You may find it difficult to relax after classes and constantly reflect on unfinished work. Stress can also lead to permanent alteration in decision-making, according to a 2012 study. When presented with a choice, your brain will want to choose impulsively. Reaction to stress causes a constant fight or flight mode, and you consider decisions that temporarily decrease coursework. It can lead to irritability or isolation from friends and family. 

Navigation

Some stress is good (“eustress” is the term for healthy stress) – it can motivate you through challenges and deadlines. When it reaches a point that becomes unhealthy, it’s time to consider strategies to mitigate it. Practicing even one of the following strategies may improve stress levels:

• Coloring – it doesn’t have to look perfect. Don’t even focus on that. Let the process consume your thoughts and take you elsewhere. (Even activities adjacent to coloring can be helpful, like playing with Legos or doing a puzzle.)
• Exercise – releases endorphins, a peptide in the body that responds to stress. Any sort of physical activity works. Walking or yoga is simple and easy to incorporate into your campus life.
• Socialize – Laugh and spend time with friends. Just a few minutes of quality time can release serotonin, a hormone that is lowered by stress. Serotonin is a neurotransmitter that plays a key role in regulating your mood. Joining clubs and organizations can fulfill this strategy. 
• Meditation – take a few minutes to quiet your mind. Find a comfortable space and watch a guided meditation video if needed. A moment to unwind can greatly benefit you by decreasing stress.
• Creative outlets – whether artistically or musically. Playing an instrument,  cooking, or making art as a hobby can help put stressful energy elsewhere.

It can be difficult to find the motivation to practice healthy stress relief. Take it a day at a time and take breaks when necessary. Don’t wait for burnout to hit you hard. Check in with yourself, talk to a friend, or reach out for help today—your mental health matters. You matter.

How to Handle Major Change

The old adage, “the only constant in life is change,” may be trite but it’s true. One of the greatest gifts one can receive while going through major change is the gift of perspective. Perspective isn’t just “maintain a positive attitude.” Perspective can be achieved by acknowledging what is going well in your life even while things are in upheaval. Daily gratitude has also been proven to change the chemistry of the brain for the better, and is another tool to give perspective. Perspective can also be achieved when we're in the constant pursuit of knowledge, self-education, and learning new skills. Sometimes when major change or even multiple major changes come our way, it’s tempting to think “why is this happening to me?” But I would challenge you to reframe and choose the mindset that everything is not happening for me and not to me. You might not get to choose what life throws your way but you can choose how you respond, search for a lesson to be learned, and work to make meaning from the difficult change or changes you are going through.

Serving Others is Self-Serving…and That’s a Good Thing

In 2016, a study was published in Psychosomatic Medicine: Journal of Biobehavioral Medicine that found that giving had greater benefits than receiving (yes, The Office fans; that’s what she said). The results from participants in the study showed that giving (and not receiving) reduced stress related activities in the brain and reduced vulnerability for negative psychosocial outcomes. Put simply, the study showed that when you help others you’re also helping yourself.

Outside the context of the study and from my own research as well as through lived experience, I’ve found that helping others is a great way to boost self-esteem, self-confidence, and self-worth. Helping others is a useful way to create connectivity, to find purpose in your life, and if you choose, to make meaning of the mundane or of something difficult or traumatic.

It almost seems counterintuitive to help someone else when you need help but even the seemingly smallest action can have a massive positive affect on the person being helped as well as on your state of mind. By getting our of your own head (temporarily) and shifting focus away from your difficulty or problem you’re facing, you’re distracting yourself from the potential of a self-inflicted negative feedback loop. You do something nice for someone and that feels good but you also gain a little perspective as well (the mountain you thought you were dealing with is actually an obnoxious mole hill).

There are lots of ways you can help people or groups of people. One overlooked method of help is to show another person compassion—for their mistakes, their slights (whether intentional or unintentional) toward you, for their uniqueness and vulnerability that might not line up with your own values or preferences. Compassion brings understanding, which then brings about connectivity (with varying degrees of elasticity, of course).

Another overlooked form of helping others is actually practicing self-love and self-care. By loving yourself, treating yourself well, and setting healthy boundaries, you’re ensuring that when you decide to begin or resume helping others you’re doing so as close to peak performance as possible.

By looking after others, you’re actually looking after your mental health and nutrition.

Self-Reflection for Mental Nutrition: Bringing Order to Disorder

“Our self-image, strongly held, essentially determines what we become.” 

- Maxwell Maltz 

Self-image and self-esteem are strongly influenced by the kind and quality of thoughts we have about ourselves and how we reflect, appraise, and evaluate ourselves.

Self-reflection leads to self-awareness, which is a key element to developing leadership (self-directed or a leader of others), maturity, and emotional intelligence.

Being able to self-reflect in a healthy and productive manner is important, but carving out time to do so is where things can get tricky. Long-held theory states that self-reflection occupies roughly 50% of our waking life. However, self-reflection can happen unintentionally and one can be unaware of how they are analyzing and assessing themselves; this is a more inefficient manner of reflection because it can often lead to poor planning and flawed decision making.

Intentional self-reflection is much more efficient because we can analyze and assess “self” with more objective thinking and more easily seek outside solutions and help for whatever refinement or improvement we feel needs to occur in our lives.

Many avoid and forgo self-reflection though avoidance—running from “self” through any sort of excessive activity (fill in the blank with: alcohol or other substances, food, church, sex, caregiving). Why would someone not want to engage in self-reflection? Fear is likely a motivating factor—fear of what you might uncover, fear of the unknown, fear of confrontation, fear of the potential of opening old wounds, fear of taking accountability, or fear of not being “good enough.”

Taking the time to reflect on self allows you to slow down amidst the busy-ness or chaos of life. It can help you bring some order to the disorder. If you’re a go-getter or feel the need to constantly be moving, self-reflection allows you to pause and recalibrate so that your future actions are more effective and efficient. When first becoming intentional about self-reflection it can be uncomfortable, you might not know how to go about it, or what you uncover might be painful. But intentionally reflecting on self over a period of time can lead to a sense of clarity on one’s direction in life as well as inner peace.

Some important questions to ask yourself when engaging in self-reflection:

• What can I improve upon in my life, by even a small percentage?
• What am I avoiding?
• How can I be more effective in my relationships?
• How can I love or care for myself (at all or even more than now)?
• What am I grateful for?
• Am I viewing my current circumstances with a healthy perspective?
• What do I need help with currently and what is keeping me from asking for help?

What kinds of self-reflection activities exist? Here is a short list:

• Morning pages
• Constructive feedback
• Creating a personal manifesto
• Vision board
• Counseling therapy
• Monitoring your inner dialogue
• Personality tests

How do you practice self-reflection? And do you take part in any self-reflection activities not listed here?

How Social Support Nourishes the Brain and Helps You Live Longer

“I’ll just take care of it myself.” 

“I’ll figure out how to get through it on my own.” 

“I’m ashamed, I’ll keep it to myself.” 

“If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.” 

“I’ll just pick myself up by the bootstraps.” 

“No one will understand, so I won’t say anything about it.” 

“No one else is talking about it, why should I?” 

These are some phrases I hear a lot of, and for a good portion of my life I let this “lone wolf” mindset dictate my actions. However, as I gain more life experience and get longer in the tooth (you’re old if you know “long in the tooth” is a reference to getting old), I’ve come to realize that the lone-wolf mindset is a way to get nowhere fast. I, and all of us, need social support.

Even if I can do something well on my own, I’ll need some amount of help with it. There is no such thing as a self-made man or woman; human beings are meant to work as a collective (of varying degrees).

Social support is tremendously important and provides much-needed nourishment, contributing to a healthy or healthier brain.

Studies have shown that without social support or with minimal social support, there is an increased risk of depression, alcohol use, suicide ideation and attempts, cardiovascular disease, and diminished brain function.

Social support can improve motivation and can help in rational and healthy decision making. We typically think of peer pressure as a bad thing and something to be avoided. But peers and social groups can influence you in a more positive way and help you engage in healthier behaviors. You want to quit an unhealthy habit? It’s much easier when you have the support of the people around you. You want to improve a skill or personal attribute? Spend more time with someone whose skill you can learn from or someone whom you admire for the attribute you want to improve upon. You are the company you keep.

Finding support is crucial but the support you provide to others is not to be overlooked either.

Helping others provides a sense of meaning. In one sociological study, Americans who described themselves as “very happy” volunteered at least 5.8 hours per month. Another study showed that seniors who volunteered 200 hours per year decreased their risk for hypertension by 40 percent. You can help people in a variety of ways and for many different reasons. Help a kid tie their shoe, you can provide meals to the homeless, or work as an elected public servant. You can offer support for love, to build your skillset and expertise, or with the expectation of some reciprocal action.

Take time to check in with your support system on a regular basis, giving and taking without keeping score.

Creating a Mental Nutrition Plan

Many of us are familiar with a nutrition plan that involves food and exercise. But not nearly as many are familiar with the idea of creating a nutrition plan for the health of your brain and mental state. If you want your brain and your life to be running at peak performance, then it’s a good idea to create a mental nutrition plan for yourself. And think about it much like the food pyramid that was so popular back in the 1980s and 90s. There are 6 major mental nutrition “food groups.” 

1. Things you consume which can include food, supplements, alcohol, drugs. 
2. Relaxation activities or self-care. 
3. Reflection. 
4. Energetic activities or exercise. 
5. Service based activities. 
6. Your support system.

After creating your mental nutrition plan, check in with it and check in with yourself on a weekly basis. What part of the plan were you consistent with and how are you feeling based on the actions you took? If you need to adjust and find that you need to spend 10% more time on self-care and 5% less time on reflection during the week then go for it. And be gentle with yourself—like a food nutrition plan, you’re allowed to have junk food once in awhile and some plans involve cheat days. Don’t go overboard with the metaphorical junk food but keep an eye on it.

You've heard that you are what you eat; well you are what you feed your brain too. Mental nutrition is important, it matters, and so do you.

Energetic Activities: A Major “Food Group” For Mental Nutrition

When exercising or doing things that involve any level of physical activity, the real or perceived impact of the activity is almost always measured with a focus on the external.

• The loss of weight or lowering one’s BMI
• How much faster you were able to do said activity
• How one looks as a result (thinner or more muscular or more toned)
• Rosier cheeks
• Looking healthier

All of these are noble when accompanied with proper balance and a healthy mindset.

However, the impact of energetic activities (or at times, lack thereof) is not often enough measured in an improvement in how one is feeling, the quality of their thought life, and how it can help provide healthy balance, perspective, and energy to one’s daily life.

Energetic activities can and should be one of six core, major groups that form one’s mental nutrition pyramid. 

Energetic activities have been proven reduce anxiety and depression, and improve mood and one’s motivation. It improves cardiovascular function (ain’t nobody got time for heart disease), and can mitigate the effects of stress.

Energetic activities aren’t only “gym” activities; they can include: stretching, laughing, walking, sex, playing outside, building things, or anything that increases your heart rate to beat a bit more rapidly.

Simple lifestyle modifications can help you engage in more energetic activities. This can include taking one flight of stairs instead of the elevator or walking through the airport instead of standing still on the people mover (the horizontal escalator thingy).

We need to be intentional about our energetic activities so that when we get busy or when something comes up, we don’t push our preferred energetic activities to the side.

Schedule your activity or activities in your calendar or put up a post it note on your bathroom mirror—there are so many ways to find and make time. You can add it to a vision board or create a visual system where you keep track of how often you meet your energetic activities goals and then reward yourself at certain points during your progress.

Start out small if you must. Incremental changes make the biggest differences over a long period of time. Rather than trying to run twenty miles per week, how about twenty minutes? If you want to increase time or distance at some point, then go for it but the most important part is first creating healthy habits (that goes for any one of the six core groups of your mental nutrition) and then becoming aware of what benefits these new habits have on your life. If you miss your mark or lose steam, that’s okay. You’re a human being and you’re trying your best. Your main goal is not a specific number or to beat a time or to weigh a certain amount; it’s to create the healthiest, happiest, most well-adjusted version of you as possible.

How to Effectively Deal with Difficulty or Failure

This is about retraining the brain. Instead of asking why this is happening to you; CHOOSE to acknowledge that everything is happening FOR you and not TO you. This is the first step in leading toward a more solutions-based mindset that will then lead you away from the thing that isn’t working and toward your vision of what “success” looks like.

You can of course, take time to mourn the failure or thing that didn't work, but at some point soon after take time to reflect on what you can learn from the failure and how you can pivot and eventually turn that loss into a win. Everything happens for a reason but only if you choose that mindset.

Take a look at your coping skills and mechanisms. Avoiding dealing with the failure or numbing the pain with alcohol or substances or excessive anything is not a solution and will only prolong the pain and might even make the effects of the failure worse. Instead, go back to reframing the failure as a lesson and find ways to cope by taking care of your physical and mental wellness. 

Take responsibility if it's required and be vulnerable with the person, persons, or entity who was affected by the failure. If it’s appropriate, express that you wish to work toward a more successful outcome and ask for feedback and assistance if necessary.

And don’t forget to forgive yourself. You are a human being and doing the best you can with the information you have at the moment.

Lean into failure—own it, wrestle with it, and learn from it. Failing doesn’t make you a failure, it simply allows you to move closer toward success. You’ve bounced back before and you’ll do it again.

What is Mental Nutrition?

Put simply it’s the fuel we feed our brains in order to have a well-adjusted and healthy life. Paying attention to our mental nutrition helps us manage our emotions, deepen our empathy, create a toolkit to handle adversity and unplanned crisis, as well as to deepen our fulfillment of the day to day.

Mental nutrition is partly interchangeable for mental health; and we as a society are so afraid to mention it or even say the words mental health, as if they’re dirty words and someone else’s problem or for those “unhinged” and seemingly unproductive members of society. The hell it is.

The functioning of your brain, healthy or unhealthy, isn’t “all in your head,” as if you’re making things up, just like if you have lung cancer, it’s not just “all in your lungs.” Mental health is a brain event and very real just like lung cancer is a lung event and very real.

We must not bury our heads in the sand or be fearful of opening Pandora’s Box if we start learning about and taking care of our mental nutrition. The healthier our brain, the more fulfilling and productive and happy our life will be. We must be intentional about taking care of our mental nutrition.

Mental nutrition is important for the individual. For the team leader. For the manager. For the corporation. For the system and for the collective.

It starts with me. It starts with you. It starts with us…together.

How to Support a Colleague Going through a Difficult Time

Helping and holding space with a colleague while going through a difficult time can be incredibly confusing. People are often reticent to be around someone going through a difficult time because they don’t know what to say or are afraid to say the wrong thing. 

But the best way to help a person going through a difficult time is to simply go to that person, in a private and respectful place, of course, and first acknowledge that they are going through a difficult time. Then validate what they are going through by saying things like: 

• “that must be difficult,” 
• “I feel for you,” or 
• “you’re brave…” 

…as long as it comes from a genuine and caring place. 

Then ask them if they want to talk about it or if they want advice or if they want to scream or cry or take a walk to let off steam. You don’t have to have all the answers and you won’t be able to fix their problem. 

Try not to say things like: 

• “I feel bad for you.” No one wants pity. People would much rather have empathy; so the phrase “I feel bad for you,” becomes, “I feel for you.” 
• “It's going to get better,” because you can’t keep that promise nor can you actually predict when it’s going to get better. Instead, you can say, “it’ll get different,” because that is a promise you can keep. Life is full of ups and downs; it will get better, not so good, and then better again. 
• “I know how you feel” because you don’t. Just be there and be present.

Simply giving them the space to express themselves goes a long way in helping that colleague going through a hard time.

How to Reframe your Thinking to Get a Better Outcome

So you want a better outcome on whatever you're looking to achieve. In order to work toward a better outcome you must acknowledge that the current outcome is not an end point but rather a lesson on the way to success. We often have some idea of what we want an outcome to look like and then act on what we perceive to be the first steps toward achieving it. But instead of doing that, identify how you want to feel after you’ve achieved that outcome and then trace your steps backwards from the end point all the way to the beginning.

Rehearse in your head and out loud what a successful outcome would look and feel like. Use past experiences of success to inform this. 

• What did the success feel, look, and sound like? 
• How did you handle it? 
• Had you experienced any other successes prior to the occurrence you’re thinking of and if so, can you dig deep and analyze to find patterns that led to each of those successes? 

If you do find a pattern, you can use it to inform the actions you take while you’re working toward achieving this new goal. 

One thing to note here: don’t fall into the trap of becoming attached to the outcome you’ve created in your rehearsals. And don’t fall into the trap of only relying on actions from past successes to inform future successes. You’re essentially practicing only so you can train your brain to be more accustomed to what success feels like and can then make it more of a habit.

I have no doubt that by taking any or all of these actions, you will be on the path toward a better outcome in no time.

Breast Selling Author

How does a person go from the happiest moment of their life to the scariest—all in a span of 24 hours? An engagement to be married, followed by a breast cancer diagnosis. Where do all of those emotions live? How does a person celebrate, mourn, fight for survival… and cope, all in a single breath? How does a loved one offer support in the face of such an uphill, life-or-death battle? And who supports the supporter/carer/loved one?  

Phew… these are all big questions. And we discuss them and a lot more in my interview with breast cancer survivor Holly Bertone. Holly is gracious enough to share her story and takes time to answer some of the big questions that not many think to ask or even ponder. Cancer can affect anyone and Holly’s mission is to provide hope, help, and answers to questions should the need arise. 

In this interview, despite the subject matter, Holly and I actually have a great time and laugh (Breast Selling Author is Holly’s title for her story in our first i’Mpossible book; and satiates the 3rd grade comedian living in my head who thrives on low-brow humor from time to time), and tell stories, and put a positive spin when talking about life, love, family, and the “C” word. 

The interview is embedded above, is available on iTunes, and can be downloaded directly here. I hope you take a little time to listen and hang out with Holly and I. Our chat was fun and enlightening for me and I hope the same for you