In July of 2002 I married my husband in an Aspen grove in the mountains of Utah surrounded by our friends and family. Fast forward six months where we found ourselves at  Johns Hopkins Hospital. My husband was undergoing a punch biopsy of his spine to test for Hodgkin's disease while I was taking  a pregnancy test. Both tests came back positive. I was a 29 year old newlywed, pregnant and terrified. My key ring was empty; no tools to help me process, combat my negative thoughts, or ways to bring the light in.  

Six months into his treatment, we found out his cancer was chemo-resistant and had spread into his lungs. We searched for a doctor who would take his case with a warning label of a 20% survival. Luckily we  found our guy, Dr. Jones loved an underdog, and he came up with an intense treatment plan. 

Three weeks before my due date, we checked into Hopkins for his bone marrow transplant chemo protocol. Once we got him settled into his room, I walked myself downstairs to meet with a new OB, Dr. Baker, to create a birth plan that would allow me to give birth in the same hospital. Within minutes it was decided that I would be induced that day to guarantee that my husband would be alive to witness the birth of our first daughter. 

The nine months of my pregnancy and the subsequent years were filled with tears of fear, worry, doubt and hormones. I was racked with anxious thoughts about the future. Could my husband handle the treatment? How would I raise my daughter alone? How do you nurse a baby at a funeral? As I said I was keyless, these thoughts took over and made my challenging situation unbearable. My husband recovered and we settled into a life routine similar to our friends. A few years later we had an gloriously uneventful pregnancy that rounded out our family with another beautiful daughter. 

We walked a normal life path until 2009, when my sister-in-law, Phebe, who is also the mother of three and my dearest friend and support system, began experiencing headaches. It wasn't long before we found ourselves driving back to Johns Hopkins Hospital, only to discover that she had been diagnosed with a glioblastoma. Once again my key ring was empty, no tools to bring in the light or accept the things I could not control. I cared for my sister in law and her family for 5 years until she passed away. These days were a different shade of dark. I was constantly worried about her 3 young children. How could we keep their lives going with normalcy when nothing about this was normal? How would they move on without the most important person in their life?  

Although it may seem like cancer was my full time job I was also a professor at the community college and a mother of 3.  I loved my work, teaching future teachers, right up until my contract switched from nine to twelve months. This was my sign to make a switch and get some keys on the key ring. I enrolled in a positive psychology program as well as in a life coaching program and I dove in head first.  With two shiny new certificates in my hand my partner and I  opened up Happy YOUniversity, teaching the tools of positive psychology to schools and school communities. Three  months later covid hit, and our business took off.  We were working directly with the people who needed these tools and skills the most, teachers. The more we taught the more we integrated the tools into our own lives. We made a point of practicing what we were preaching and noticed how the tools we were using were starting to sprout in our families.  

We were on a roll and in August 2021, I discovered a lump on my breast. My doctor dismissed it as a rib. A year later, the same lump was diagnosed as cancer. I was devastated.  Can lightning strike a family 3 times? Could this really be happening to me? My protocol was 6 months of chemotherapy, double mastectomy and 6 weeks of radiation.  I looked in my pocket and guess what was there? A janitor sized key ring. 12 keys to be exact and yes those days had darkness but they also had more light and love then I have ever experienced in my life.  Those keys served me that year and continue to serve me today. When life storms roll in I take them out and  try a key, maybe it lasts for a minute, maybe five minutes, on to the next key, rinse and repeat. Some days I will go through the whole ring, other days a single key will do the trick.  I offer these keys to you, because no one is immune to adversity. Use these keys as you wish, whether it is a big or a little challenge, so that you can handle it with a bit more optimism and grace.