Author: burkak1971
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Overexpressed Asks: A Series Featuring the Voices of MBC
Overexpressed Asks is honored and privileged to feature the thoughtful, heartfelt, and honest reflections of NANCY HÉRARD-MARSHALL. Nancy is a mother, wife, artist, dancer, teacher, therapist, and healer, who uses her various life experiences to empower and foster healing. Among her areas of expertise are treatment interventions for culturally diverse populations with an emphasis on […]
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Narrative Explanation: “Thirteen Ways of Looking at MBC”
In writing the poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Metastatic Breast Cancer,” (featured on Living Beyond Breast Cancer’s Blog) I am indebted to Wallace Stevens’ poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” His poem inspired me, and the form of his poem offered me a container to hold thirteen different perspectives of metastatic breast […]
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Overexpressed Asks: A Series Featuring the Voices of MBC
In the next installation of Overexpressed Asks, we feature the brave and honest voice of Rachel Kraus. Rachel Kraus is a Professor of Sociology at Ball State University in Muncie, IN (about an hour north of Indianapolis) who specializes in gender, identity, and religion/spirituality. She earned her BA in Sociology from the University of Cincinnati, […]
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Bringing Consciousness to the Breast Cancer Process: Reflecting on Audre Lorde’s The Cancer Journals
On April 16, 2012, a month before my radical right breast mastectomy and TRAM flap reconstruction, I wrote in my new journal: Spent a long time looking at life reflected in a shiny car bumper. Space and distance distorted in its reflection. H. and I showered together this morning in the dark. I wrapped her […]
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Let Poetry Be the Refuge
I imagine in the quiet cottage of his brain/the sepia of this desert city,/wind, dirt, grit that scuffs your skin./Wish him gentleness in the shade of shadows. writes Loretta Diane Walker in her poem “Imagining My Neighbor” published on Poem-a-Day on April 8, 2022 National Poetry Month, launched in 1996 by the Academy of American […]
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Overexpressed Asks: A New Series Featuring the Voices of MBC
Overexpressed Asks is an ongoing series, featuring the brave and honest voices of women living with metastatic breast cancer (MBC). Overexpressed Asks is honored to feature Andra Kalnins. Andra Kalnins is a patient advocate, mindfulness instructor, a former nurse, and a family nurse practitioner graduate. She lives in Chicago, with her husband and 6-year-old son. […]
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Cinnamon Girl: Women Artists Cover Neil Young for Charity
Out shopping at Hideaway Music this past December, I was immediately drawn in by the cover art of Cinnamon Girl: Women Artists Cover Neil Young for Charity. Reminiscent of Neil Young’s legendary Decade album cover—a barren desert dotted with a solo guitar case, plastered with random stickers of hotels and hotspots, propped up by a […]
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Why Cancer Patients Should Read … Romance by Jenna Shillinburg
I can hear some of the groans through the internet. Romance novels are so cliché you may be thinking to yourself. But the truth is, Romance novels have been given a bad reputation through decades of Fabio covers and cookie-cutter writing. The genre itself has changed and become much more diverse (especially after the RITAs […]
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An Open Letter to Herceptin
Dear Herceptin, A skilled infusion nurse straddles my blue puffy chair and counts, “Three. Two. One.” She punches the one-inch Power Loc Huber needle into my implanted port, located right above my left breast. Soon, my Herceptin—your name a beautiful mix of HER2, intercept, and inhibitor—soon, you will be flowing through my port, transported by […]
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Railroaded: Lessons from Terre Haute, Indiana
On a hot August morning, we sit in our Subaru at the intersection of US 150 and Railroad Avenue in Terre Haute, Indiana. Our kids blissfully sing Dua Lipa from the backseat as my husband and I, trying not to explode with frustration, scrutinize the seemingly endless stream of CSX train cars passing in front […]
Overexpressed 