I am dying. I am working.

I am dying.

Almost a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. Stage 3C. After months of chemo transfusions, 28 rounds of chemoradiation, and more pokes, scans, and tests than there are veins in my body, my latest scans revealed that the tumor didn’t respond to treatment. In fact, it’s spread. It’s metastasized.

When the news came, my brain couldn’t recalibrate fast enough to make sense of the world. The cognitive dissonance was so intense that I felt like I was floating in a nightmare. A kind of uncanny valley—everything looked familiar, but it wasn’t quite human.

People I love have sent kind words. Well wishes. Thoughts and prayers. “Healing vibes.”

I am a prayer person. I am a faith person. I don’t talk about it much—mostly because prayer and faith have been twisted to fit so many ugly agendas that I’ve felt ashamed of the words.

Being a prayer person means I have to reconcile these two disparate truths:

• Healing is what’s best.

• Healing did not happen.

And professionally speaking—well, that’s just it. There is no “strictly professionally speaking.” Not in my experience.

In some ways, it’s a relief to have an excuse to say that out loud. Because there’s something I’ve wanted to tell you:

This newsletter has never been a burden. But I often worry about disappointing you, the reader. 90% of you joined to get better tactics, strategy, and frameworks for growing community and building more human-centered businesses.

And we love those things. Strategy. Frameworks. Things we can turn into action and watch the tangible results roll in. As entrepreneurs, we crave the binary.

I’m including myself here. I love a super-specific how. But mechanics alone don’t interest me. In isolation, they never hold my attention.

When I was younger, I used to tear up when villains got their comeuppance.

I cried when Maleficent was defeated in Sleeping Beauty.
I got choked up hearing the cries of pain from the ROUSs Wesley slayed in The Princess Bride.
I wondered if loneliness drove the old witch to poison Snow White’s apple.

It’s not that I condone bad behavior. I just always knew there was a backstory we weren’t hearing. Everyone feels pain. (Well… maybe not the ROUSs. But no one wants to hear a creature die.)

Even the mundanity of business strikes a similar chord. I can’t separate marketing strategy or HR policy or a new growth hack from its impact on actual humans.

And to be clear, the opposite doesn’t interest me either. I’m not into endlessly pontificating about human nature. We are minds and souls. Brains and bodies. I don’t believe any category of our lives should exist in a vacuum. When I try to be “all about business,” it all just falls flat.

So… cancer.

When the results came in, I was sitting at a local brewery with my partner and my dog. It was 8pm. We had just sat down when I got a notification: my scan results were ready. I opened the report.

In my head, there was a “bad, better, best” case scenario. I wasn’t expecting bad. I was expecting better—which I thought was quite reasonable.

I certainly didn’t expect worse than bad.

I felt betrayed. By the world. By my faith. By my body.

That was almost a week ago. Suprisingly, I’m in a very different place now.

I’m wired to seek information like air. My first Strengthsfinder result is Input:

“People with strong Input talents are inquisitive and always want to know more. The world is exciting precisely because of its infinite variety and complexity.”

I suspect many of you are like me. The more shaken I am, the more information I want. And one question kept rising to the surface:

How do you make peace with dying?

In the span of a week, I read three books. One of them, When Breath Becomes Air, was written by a neurosurgeon as he was dying of lung cancer. There were many worthy sentiments in it, but one in particular landed:

“Am I dying or am I living?”

I have cancer. So, technically, I’m dying.

But technically—please forgive the morbidity here—people without cancer are also dying. We’re all marching toward the same fate.

Maybe I have six months. Maybe I have a few years. Maybe a miracle is still coming.

So what should the passage of time look like? Should it look like a woman marching toward death?

Within days, I decided I’d better get to living. Not the kind of living you see on a TJ Maxx canvas. Actual living. Because truthfully, I love a lot of things about my life.

My partner is an amazing man. More than I deserve.
My daughters are hilarious and wondrous.
My dog adds color to every day.
Dance makes me feel alive.
And I get to build community.

I would have guessed cancer would make work feel silly and unimportant. And to be fair, there are aspects I won’t engage in anymore because they are silly and unimportant.

But weirdly, it’s made the work feel more energizing.

This borders on LinkedIn lunacy, but it’s the truth:
People need people who need people who need people.

And I get to be a part of that.

It’s so important—those invisible threads. Community comes in all kinds of shapes and purposes, but it is still community. And it’s one of the most cited components of a long life well lived.

It would have been weird to send you an email today about “ten ways I scaled communities.” That title alone makes me want to scream and yawn at the same time.

This is my world for now. And it’s no time to duck out.

I want to build more community.
I want to take more walks with my dog.
I want more adventures with my partner.
I want to dance more.

I want more. And as long as the world allows, more shall be.

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