What I remember most about last Thursday is the clinical team. They were attentive and compassionate, and they made me feel taken care of. And while I sat there, my mind went straight to the people who depend on me. My family would be okay. I would still work. I was already thinking about how life would keep moving, whatever happened. It struck me how quickly my brain went into managing everyone else’s future when I was the one sitting there for an examination.
That was my mammogram. The result came back abnormal, and I after further testing today, I’m in the clear. October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and in my family that has never been a ribbon or a campaign. It is a list of women. My grandmother had breast cancer. Twice. So has most everyone on my father’s side. I have known since I was a girl that this was the appointment I could not afford to skip, and this time, I was six months late to it.
Because of that history, I was supposed to go every six months. Then the baby came. Life became incredibly full, and my appointment slipped. It was not that I did not understand the importance of going. I knew. I just kept putting what everyone else needed ahead of the thing I needed to do for myself. I will rearrange my entire life for the people I love. But I let six months pass on an appointment that was supposed to protect mine. When you are the one everyone needs, your own name is the easiest one to erase from the calendar. This is not a story about a woman who ignored her health. It is a story about how easily her own care became negotiable.
I remember the year I first decided my health was mine to own. It was 2012. I was under enormous stress at work. I was constantly getting sick, exhausted, and I reached a point where I felt like I could not move. I knew something had to change. Instead of continuing to push through, I decided to study something I had become passionate about, and I pursued certification through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I was not trying to become someone else. I wanted to understand what was happening in my own body and why. That was one of the first times I realized I could take an active role in my health instead of waiting until something went wrong.
Then came four doctors in four years, and I have told you that story before. What it taught me is that a medical degree does not mean someone automatically understands my body better than I do. Doctors have clinical expertise. I have the lived experience of being inside this body every day. Both matter. So now I interview my doctors as much as they interview me. I want to understand their reasoning, and if something does not make sense, I keep asking. Being an advocate for your health does not mean rejecting medical expertise. It means finding the right expertise and participating in the decisions.
It changes how I walk into a room. I want to go in knowing my symptoms, the timeline, my medications, what has changed, and what I need answered. I want to leave understanding the next step, not just holding another prescription or referral. There are three questions I think every woman deserves to ask: What are we looking for? What happens if the result is inconclusive? And when should I follow up?
On an ordinary Tuesday, owning my health looks smaller than that. It is getting my morning walk in and making room for weights again. It is paying attention to my energy, my sleep, and the hormonal changes, rather than dismissing them as the price of being a busy woman. And it is putting my appointments on the calendar before the calendar fills with everyone else’s needs. Taking ownership is not about controlling everything that happens to my body. It is about staying engaged with it.
The timing of all of this feels particularly meaningful. The morning after my mammogram, I sat in a meeting about a cause I had not expected to be handed. I have recently come into contact with Lou Weisbach, co-founder of the American Center for Cures, and learned more about the movement he is building: a bipartisan effort to fund the prevention and cure of the major diseases. Their campaign is called The Cures Pledge, and it opens with one question. Who are you waiting for a cure for? Sitting there with an abnormal result less than a day old, I did not have to think very hard about my answer.
I am waiting for a cure for myself. For my grandmother. For the women on my father’s side who have already faced this, and for every woman in that waiting room. Disease is one of the few things that crosses every boundary we create between ourselves. It does not care about your career, your politics, your income, or how much you have on your calendar. Maybe it is your grandmother. Your aunt. Your closest friend. Your father. Your child. Maybe it is you. Almost all of us know what it means to love someone whose health has changed everything. In my family, we did not need October to remind us.
So advocating for our health happens on two levels. We have to show up for ourselves, ask questions, attend our screenings, and insist on understanding our care. But we can also show up for each other. That is why I want to share The Cures Pledge with you. You record a ten-second video saying who you are waiting for a cure for, you ask three people to do the same, and you send it to the people on your ballot. It is at thecurespledge.org. It is an invitation to make the fight against disease something we unite around, rather than another issue that divides us. Because taking ownership of our health should not end at the examination room door.
The PHASE™ grew out of exactly this. I knew something was changing in my body and I struggled to get answers. I wanted women to have a way to name what they were experiencing, track it, ask better questions, and walk into appointments feeling prepared. Because you cannot advocate clearly for something you have been taught to dismiss. Naming your season does not mean diagnosing yourself. It means giving yourself the language to start the conversation.
So let me talk to the woman reading this, because I know her. She knows when her children’s next dental cleanings are. She remembers her husband’s appointments. She can tell you exactly what the family has scheduled next Thursday. But ask her when her own screening is due, and she has to think about it. She tells herself that being needed is the same thing as being well. It is not.
One appointment. That is all I am asking you to book this week, the one you have been postponing. Maybe it is a mammogram, if you are due, and if breast cancer runs in your family the way it runs in mine, you already know you are due. Maybe it is a cervical screening, an annual visit, a diagnostic follow-up, or the appointment to finally discuss the symptoms you have been living with for years. Not every woman needs the same test on the same schedule, but every woman deserves a plan that fits her history and her risks. Put it in a slot you would never give away if it were for one of your kids, and write your three questions down before you go.
Here is where I want to leave you, because I am her this week too. I do not know what my next test will say. If you are scared of what yours might say, I am not going to tell you not to be. I am going to tell you that being scared and booking it anyway is what owning your health actually looks like. The fear does not mean you are weak. It means you finally decided your life is worth finding out about. I will tell you what mine says when I know, as much as I choose to. Until then, we wait together, with the appointment booked.
You are not too busy to be well. You are becoming MOMumental.
MOMumentally,
Erika