05/06/21 FRANCES INAK SPEECH FOR RISING LEADERS COUNCIL MEETING

I started Kicking Cancer 1000 because juggling a soccer ball helped me get through my own cancer. The project is still in the infant stages, evolving slowly on its own, but initially I thought maybe I could take this activity that helped me so much, and somehow use it to help others. Today I actually just practiced juggle walking for the 5K event I'm going to do to help promote the Race for the Place.

I've been touched by cancer a few different times in my life.

When I was 7 my dad was diagnosed with colon cancer. Fortunately they caught it early enough, and he survived. I was too young then to really understand all that was going on, but I remember how sick he was and how much it changed him.

Then when I was about 30, my brother was diagnosed with esophageal cancer. This cancer was way more aggressive. Within a year his cancer metastasized to his liver, lungs and brain. I saw his body grow weaker and more depleted until the cancer finally took his last breath. He was 42. He was not ready to go.

Through that experience my family had connected with Hospice. I had limited interactions with them, but the main impression that I got was that this was a group that helped ease you through the pain but inevitably just gently guided you towards the end of life.

When I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2019, it was these types of memories that I connected with the word cancer. At first, I was told over and over that it was probably nothing as I went through each progressively targeted test, until I got a call one morning, and the nurse told me the biopsy came back positive. Ultimately I learned that if I didn't have a mastectomy within a month I might only have 1 to 7 years to live.

I had a very hard time coming to terms with the idea of losing a part of my body, and, honestly at first I refused to even consider it. I was more afraid of the cure than the cancer. Radiation, chemotherapy, other medications I knew I might encounter and all of their side effects.

Perhaps part of this was because I was feeling very isolated and alone. I'm extremely introverted and didn't have a wide social circle. I wasn't willing or emotionally able to reach out to most of my siblings. My children who were 20 and 19 at the time, were old enough to understand, but I still felt like it was my role to be their support, rather than for them to be mine. I was uncomfortable putting this burden onto the few friendships that I did have. Even though I was surrounded by doctors trying to tell me things, I didn't feel like I had anyone to really confide in who would really understand.

In the beginning, I often found myself pulled over on the side of the road because the tears welling up in my eyes made it impossible to drive. I remember stopping at a GetGo one day to get coffee right before an appointment with a geneticist at Taussig, I burst into tears at the register, suddenly blurting out to the sales clerk that I was recently diagnosed and was going to find out if my type of cancer was a threat to my children as well. She was kind, and when I realized how much better I felt after telling her, this odd openness for me became my new norm. Each new stranger I told, somehow made the burden of my cancer lighter on me. Perhaps it wouldn't be the most recommended therapy, but I made a lot of unusual friends in the small shops of Lakewood this way.

It was around this time that a volleyball team mate told me she had gone with her friend who had cancer to a chocolate making clinic at the Gathering Place for free. This was the very first time that I associated something good with my diagnosis of cancer. It might not have been the right way to feel, but I was like "Ooh, since I have cancer, I can get some free chocolate!" I still wasn't ready to make the leap and actually go until many weeks later, but this was the first bit of lightness, a sense of fun and warmth, that made that first step of contacting The Gathering Place even possible for me. After my orientation, I remember scouring the first brochure I got my hands on to search for upcoming dates for chocolate making.

I never did find another chocolate day, but the appointments I did end up making were what I looked forward to each week. They were that spark of light that guided me through all of the darkness I was stumbling through. Events at The Gathering Place became the fuel for my strength and inspiration to stay positive and active, which I am certain had a lot to do with my optimal outcome. Throughout my surgeries and during my recovery I signed up for Nutrition Counselling, Zumba, Tai Chi, Reiki, Massage. After each surgery I remember eagerly counting days until I was given medical permission to participate.

One of the most important programs I attended was the Young Women's Breast cancer group. These meetings made having cancer almost seem cool, and TOTALLY changed my outlook on things. The women I met would talk about retreats and social network groups and with a gentle sense of humor even laugh about surviving all of the treatments and surgeries they went through, giving me the ability to laugh and feel strong and make light of my own difficult situation. All of the programming at The Gathering Place made you feel like you were a part of something, not alone.

Everyone's experience with cancer is different. But somehow, The Gathering Place just seems to understand. When I read through their activity lists, it seems like they take all the different stories and scenarios and create programming to support almost any angle, any stage, any type of cancer and any relationship to it.

I think this is the reason that The Gathering Place is so important. Where groups like Hospice soften a path moving towards death, The Gathering Place reminds people how to live. How to connect with others and see the wonder and beauty of life through all of the darkness, petrifying fear, and ugly unknowns cancer patients face.

So often when I go out and juggle, I meet someone new who has been touched by cancer. It seems to invade so many lives and never seems to go away. Even though my surgery was successful and I have been cancer free for about two years now, I recently had a scare with a suspicious mass in my so far (knock wood) healthy left breast. Thankfully the pathology came back benign, but it was a harsh reminder that cancer will always be a threat.

This is why the Kicking Cancer 1000 project and helping The Gathering Place is so important to me. Its why I will be running in the Race for the Place, and promoting it with the 5K juggle walk to raise awareness and hopefully participation and donations. Because even though I've already survived once, I would not want to go through my next cancer experience without The Gathering Place there to hold my hand and walk me through.

I'm a pretty shy person in general, but what The Gathering Place does for so many people is important enough that I am willing to come out of my shell to do things like videotape myself juggling all over the city and make speeches like this. The Gathering Place had a quote from Brene Brown on their Facebook page that really struck me, she said "one day you will tell your story of how you overcame what you went through and it will be someone else's survival guide" I think my survival guide was The Gathering Place.