Author: burkak1971
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Mind the Gap featuring Rebecca Fisher
Listen to the latest episode of OVERexpressed & OUT podcast featuring Beyond the Bell co-founder Rebecca Fisher. Rebecca Fisher is the co-founder of Beyond the Bell Tours. Beyond the Bell Tours is an inclusive historical tour company working to put the people back in people’s history. Their cornerstone tours are the Badass Women’s History Tour…
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OVERexpressed & OUT co-hosted by Jenny Burkholder & Roseanne Liberti
Take a listen to a new project: OVERexpressed & OUT –a podcast co-hosted with Roseanne Liberti. Born out of their experiences with metastatic cancer, Jenny Burkholder and Roseanne Liberti created OVERexpressed & OUT–a podcast that takes you on an outing that outs amazing women and their outward expression of healing. In Season One, we featured:…
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Celebrate the Wins (Ws) & OVERexpressed & OUT Podcast Teaser
I toss my last red rubber ring. It pops and sputters on and over three or four glass bottle tops. Then lands. Right around the lip. Securely and surely. I jump into the air. “I win!” I scream. “I win!” And as you can see, I won big! Ava (long a) the Avocado (short a)–as…
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Overexpressed Asks: A Series Featuring the Voices of MBC
I first met Emily Hunt in 2021 through Living Beyond Breast Cancer’s Hear My Voice Advocacy Training. Since then, she has counseled me on treatment decisions, danced with me at LBBC’s Butterfly Ball, and modeled with me for Alexis Bittar (more on that later!). It is an honor and privilege to feature Emily’s thoughtfulness, strength,…
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Upon My Oncologist’s Retirement
Yesterday in a conversation with a friend, I told her that my longtime oncologist is retiring in September. Her immediate reaction was, “Oh that’s worse than your hairdresser retiring.” I paused–thought about my fifteen year relationship with Mary at Apsara Cutting Edge and how she has helped me to look amazing, even through cancer–and said,…
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Prufrock & Priorities
Since 2019, I have lived my life in three-month cycles, from scan to scan. But now that I have had two consecutive stable scans, is it time to envision living my life in more than three-month increments? I hear the speaker of T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,” ask, “Do I dare/Disturb the…
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Storage Spaces
It’s early Wednesday morning. I wait for my teenagers to be dressed and ready, so I can drive them to school. I sit on my couch and look around the room. Surrounded by books, magazines, old comics, raincoats, clay figurines from third-grade art class, pictures, shoes, a pile of unread New York Times Magazines, even…
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SNAPDRAGON LIVE: Benefit Open Mic for Snapdragon & Living Beyond Breast Cancer
On Sunday, June 4 from 2:00-4:00 pm EST, I will host SNAPDRAGON LIVE, a virtual open mic for those impacted by breast cancer. Bring your story or poem of healing. Bring your story of rage. Bring your story of unexpected grief, joy, or kindness. Come to support a friend or family member. Come to listen.…
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Anne Boyer’s The Undying: A Poet’s Novel About Breast Cancer
“Breast cancer is a disease that presents itself as a disordering question of form” (7) begins Anne Boyer’s 2020 Pulitzer Prize-winning The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer and Care. An essayist and poet, Boyer has written an emotionally and intellectually challenging novel about her diagnosis at 41 with triple-negative…
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National Poetry Month: When Breast Cancer & Poetry Meet
Happy National Poetry Month! To celebrate, on Saturday, April 1, 2023, I became the Montgomery County Poet Laureate (MCPL). I am honored, thrilled, and humbled to be chosen for this, especially given the field of awesome finalists. Over the next year, I will share my poetry with a wider audience, become part of a larger…
Overexpressed 