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The Space Between is the podcast where strength and vulnerability meet for families navigating life with cancer.
Hosted by Amri Kibbler, a cancer survivor and parent, each episode offers honest stories, expert insights, and heartfelt support for those balancing treatment, caregiving, and parenting - often all at once.
If you're walking this path, you’re not alone. This is your space to feel seen, find connection, and heal.
[00:00:00] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: The pressure to show up with grace is absolutely untenable. I think that we instead should be encouraged to show up with all of our vulnerability and truth because that will model for other people that they can do it too. And that complexity is okay, and that feeling like shit one day and feeling great, the next is part of the process.
[00:00:33] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: If we ever feel great the next day,
[00:00:37] Amri Kibbler: hi, I'm Amri Kibbler and this is The Space Between I'm a cancer survivor and a mom, and while those roles don't define me, they have shaped who I am. I created the space to share honest stories, expert insights, and meaningful support for families navigating life with cancer.
[00:00:55] Amri Kibbler: If you're balancing treatment, caregiving, parenting, or just trying to hold it all together, you are not alone. This is your space to connect, to heal, and to feel seen, and I'm so glad that you're here.
[00:01:11] Amri Kibbler: Today on The Space Between, I'm interviewing Dr. Jessica Zucker. She's an LA based psychologist specializing in reproductive health and the author of the award-winning books Normalize It, Upending the Silent Stigma and Shame That Shape Women's Lives. And I Had a Miscarriage: A Memoir, a Movement. Jessica is the creator of the Viral.
[00:01:32] Amri Kibbler: I Had A Miscarriage campaign. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, New York magazine, Vogue and Harvard Business Review, among others. She's also a breast cancer thriver. She's been featured on N-P-R-C-N-N, the Today Show and Good Morning America, and earned advanced degrees from New York University and Harvard University.
[00:01:53] Amri Kibbler: Let's get into it. Hi, Dr. Zucker. Welcome to The Space Between. I'm so excited to have you here today. Thank you so much for having me. I always like to start by grounding us in your own personal experience. Can you share with the audience what your cancer experience was like, what kind of cancer you had, and how old your kids were?
[00:02:16] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: Of course. Ooh, I think I need some coffee for this. I was diagnosed with breast cancer in March of 2021, which was about two to three weeks after my first book actually came into the world. So the timing was incredibly confounding and befuddling, and not that it wouldn't have been otherwise, but it was just like.
[00:02:41] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: Wow. I was like the highest I've ever been with the excitement of putting this memoir meets manifesto into the world. And then I was diagnosed and was faced with something truly unimaginable. As you well know, you know, the process was interesting, as it probably always is, you know, multiple scans, uh, several opinions and shuttling between various hospitals and, and really trying to get a sense of what lay.
[00:03:19] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: So mine is estrogen and progesterone positive and HER two negative. And essentially we figured out that I do have a gene. It's called the CHEK2 gene, and it's actually on my dad's side of the family, but I'm the first person in my family to have breast cancer. Because of that, I ended up deciding to have a bilateral mastectomy.
[00:03:43] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: I was given the option of just doing the one side where the counselor was found, but we decided that it was most prudent to go ahead and do a bilateral mastectomy just so that I wouldn't be. I essentially afraid for the remainder of my days and having to do screening ongoing. I had the bilateral mastectomy and then got the results back.
[00:04:13] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: The cancer was not in my lymph nodes, so I did not need to go ahead with chemo, which I felt very. Relieved by, but what they do do, and they highly recommend, is five weeks of daily radiation. So I did that the summer following, waited a bit, and then went through reconstructive surgery, which in some ways was probably the hardest part of the experience because I ended up doing what's called a DIEP flap.
[00:04:48] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: And so they take. Your own tissue to create the breasts or what they call the flaps, rather than do implants. I opted for this and so that was a 12 hour surgery with 12 weeks of recovery. All of this to say that, you know, at the time my kids were seven and 12 and it was a lot. It was a very sort of poignant time.
[00:05:18] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: How do I know? What's going to happen next? My husband would sort of always focus, of course, on what the doctors would say and you know, the staging and the fact that I was doing all the things they were recommending and therefore, oh, this means you're safe, you will be okay. But I think anybody who has been in the position of receiving a cancer diagnosis.
[00:05:43] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: Can't help but sort of flirt with the idea of, does this mean that I won't be here as long as I had expected? And when you have young children, it's all the more sort of, well, for me it was all the more complex and compelling, you know, will I leave my children motherless? And how do we explain this to.
[00:06:11] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: The kids and how do I navigate this with enough, for lack of a better word, poise, to sort of illustrate for them that we can go through hard things, that we can be both vulnerable and emotional and afraid, but also remain connected to. Them in a very important way and continue to sort of somehow mother them through the complication of it all.
[00:06:45] Amri Kibbler: And how did you share the news with your kids and how much did you decide to share with them? Because you didn't do, you didn't lose your hair, right?
[00:06:54] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: Yes, that's true. Yes, I did not, it was very challenging to figure out exactly what to say. Right, because it's like. Children often associate cancer with death if they've heard about it within the family, or if they've heard that a grandparent has died of cancer.
[00:07:13] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: And so with my older child, with my son, I ordered a book about cancer that was sort of geared toward children, and we read parts of it together and we talked about it. Luckily. He is very sort of, he's very into the facts and just wanted to stick with kind of like my husband, you know? Okay. So if the doctor's saying, you're gonna be okay, you're gonna be okay, great.
[00:07:44] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: With my daughter, it was different because she was too young for me to present it in a similar fashion. And again, I was very aware of not wanting to overwhelm her. I also didn't want her to then somehow become afraid of her own body. And of course at the time she didn't have breasts. But you know, just anything.
[00:08:07] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: I didn't wanna instill fear for her present or her future. And so we basically talked about it like mommy has not a booboo because she was old enough that we didn't talk like that, but like. We've, you know, found that mommy has something that could be wrong and we're going to deal with it and address it and get through this, and then everything will be okay.
[00:08:37] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: I'm not sure that I would sum it up as everything will be okay, but because I, I don't, I don't know that it is, and I don't know that it will. And of course I didn't wanna promise something I couldn't necessarily deliver on, but. Basically though we were trying to get across the message that we're going to handle this and we're going to be able to kind of return to some homeostasis afterward.
[00:09:03] Amri Kibbler: How did things progress? As your kids got a little bit older and you were going through these reconstructive surgeries, um, I would imagine that that would pique your daughter's interest in some way and you would have to talk to her about what was happening.
[00:09:19] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: Yeah, I've a actually written a bit about that since going through it.
[00:09:26] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: Yeah, I, it's interesting because kids can be, so they are. Embodied in vulnerability, you know, like they have yet to kind of become, well now my kids have, but at the time, you know, they weren't, there wasn't this sort of self-consciousness. My daughter was at such a tender age and was so direct with me, and so she came into the bathroom after my mastectomy after a shower and said something like, you know.
[00:09:57] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: I don't know how she said it, but your breasts or your boobies don't look like what I thought they would look like. They just have one cut and she asked, you know, when will you be getting nipples again? And it was honestly so beautiful because she was, wasn't walking on eggshells like most adults would do.
[00:10:17] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: Right. Like she wasn't trying to say it in a way that would make me feel better. She was just. Asking exactly what was on her mind, and we were able to really talk about it. It's fascinating. The other day actually, we were out and she was eating something and she brought up a time during my radiation when I had this thing called esophagitis where I suddenly couldn't really swallow and she just, you know, she's about to be 12 and she.
[00:10:52] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: Out of nowhere recalled this experience. She's like, do you remember when you couldn't swallow and all you ate were popsicles for a week? And I was like, wait, how is this coming up now? And as a psychologist, I found it really, I found it kind of sad, you know? But also very powerful that she does remember those moments and.
[00:11:20] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: I'm careful not to say, do you remember this? Because you were afraid, because I don't wanna project, like, I don't wanna put on her what I may have felt or what I was feeling myself or what I am maybe afraid that she was feeling. So I just let her talk about it and just kind of try to meet her where she is without making the experience even more harrowing.
[00:11:49] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: Than it was for me, um, putting it onto her, if that makes sense.
[00:11:53] Amri Kibbler: It does, and I, I definitely found that, that kids, when they're younger, they don't have the same attachments to things because they don't have any experience, like even the word cancer. Right. Because. You know, my youngest had, she had just turned five a couple of weeks before.
[00:12:11] Amri Kibbler: She had no association with that word, so it didn't bring up fear in her. Whereas even just saying the word cancer when I was diagnosed, you know, it just, it brought up so much terror, um, for me and I found that it was really hard for me to kind of try to detach myself from all these things and just be a little bit more factual in what was happening.
[00:12:35] Amri Kibbler: And then wait. To see what they had questions about. And I found a lot of times that, especially in my youngest, she'd be like, oh, okay. And do you have any questions? No. Alright. Can I go play now? And I'm like, exactly. Okay. All right. I wanna get back to the fun. Right, right. And they're like, oh, another serious conversation.
[00:12:55] Amri Kibbler: Yeah,
[00:12:56] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: exactly. Yes. I mean, it's so beautiful. I mean, I sort of envy and kind of, I wish that I had memories from that time when I was. That age. Right? Because it feels so much easier. It's not layered the way it is for us. And they, like you said, the associations that we have with the word cancer is primarily death when it comes to at least older people.
[00:13:23] Amri Kibbler: Yes. It's death, it's losing your confidence, your virility. It's all those things. And there's also for. For, I think especially for women, there's also this sense of shame around being sick and I found so much correlation in your work and the writing that you are doing around miscarriages as well. It's like, wow, there is so much here that I think applies to both, especially in your book, Normalize It, you are talking about breaking taboos around experiences and I just felt like shame shows up in so many places.
[00:14:00] Amri Kibbler: It, it's. Not just miscarriages. It's so much to do with being a woman. Yes. And so much an illness. Why do you think shame clings to experiences like illness or mental health?
[00:14:12] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: I think that we are sort of groomed from the beginning to feel self-conscious or to feel somehow uncomfortable in the skin that we're in.
[00:14:27] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: Right. So even when it, when it starts with, you know, menstruation. It's somehow associated with being dirty that we should hide it, that we should feel like it's disgusting, that we should think that it's something to be quiet about. And so I think this sets off a trajectory over the course of women's lives to feel very sort of ill at ease with ourselves and continually searching for a more perfect version of ourselves.
[00:15:00] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: When usually that is not something that's necessarily attainable. It's interesting that you bring up shame with sickness. So when people would actually say to me, what does it feel like to be sick? Or are you scared that you're sick? I never actually thought of myself as sick because I didn't feel sick.
[00:15:23] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: Right. So it's like, I don't know about you, but like cancer. Uh, there was a lump and there was something that needed to be removed from my body, but it's not like I felt like I had the flu, or it's not like I felt like I couldn't leave my bed. So I think I found that incredibly confusing and I feel like upon being diagnosed, I had zero shame.
[00:15:53] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: I had all the fear in the world, but I did not have shame, and the shame seemed to come. Through things people said to me, words like, you know, you're such a warrior. You're gonna beat this. You're such a badass. You've done such hard things. This is just another one that you'll conquer. That language, this sort of warlike language actually made me not feel straight up shame, but just made me feel.
[00:16:27] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: Like I was given a task that seemed incredibly unfair. I did not want to go to war with my body. I wanted to embrace my body and lean into what was happening. Not because I was going to quote unquote give up. I was going to try my hardest to get through it, of course, but I feel like. Our souls, our bodies, our psyches need tenderness during times that are so intense like this.
[00:17:03] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: The last thing I could think of was like getting up on a horse with a sword and being a warrior, I mean, I just didn't understand those things. Just didn't mesh for me. And so it made me kind of feel like maybe I don't wanna be talking about this as openly as I was. And I think that's potentially where shame leaks in or sneaks in, because when people are saying things that don't really match what we're feeling on the inside, I do think we can begin to feel like we wanna hide.
[00:17:44] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: Or that somehow we should feel differently about this situation than we do.
[00:17:50] Amri Kibbler: Mm-hmm. I didn't necessarily look like I was sick because the kind of chemo that I had didn't make my hair fall out. And I think, 'cause I've always been so thin and it was the middle of COVID, no one noticed that I lost 20 pounds.
[00:18:03] Amri Kibbler: But I felt terrible and I was so exhausted and I had really bad brain fog, so I just, I felt like I couldn't do anything. Yes. And I found this sort of like shame of that I can't show up and I can't do things. Yes. And I also didn't wanna tell people that I didn't know very, very well that I had cancer. So there was a lot of, like, I, yeah.
[00:18:27] Amri Kibbler: I just can't, I can't do that right now. And I think that's what kind of opened the shame door for me is like I couldn't really reconcile what I looked like with what I felt with, with what I should be able to do. And I felt like I was like letting my kids down Yes. And what I wanted to be doing. And I was just so damn tired all the time.
[00:18:46] Amri Kibbler: I couldn't do anything and I would try to power through and be like, you know what? Okay, I, I have to do this today. And. I would go to get in my car and be like, I can't. I, I mean, I still feel that way first time in my life that I couldn't force myself to do something because I wanted to show up for what someone else wanted.
[00:19:05] Amri Kibbler: I just couldn't do any of it.
[00:19:07] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: Yes. I mean, once treatment started, when I started radiation, I felt the same way. And to be honest, I. Still feel that way sometimes, and I, I don't know how I'm going to feel on any given day given the medication that I take in order to, to keep the cancer away. And yes, I understand what you're saying.
[00:19:30] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: I feel a sense of, I guess I wouldn't call it shame, but real disappointment and worry that my children. Will look back and see me as somebody who was disengaged some of the time, and that feels terrible because in general, I have a lot of energy and enjoy being productive and engaged with them, with my life, with my career, with my friends.
[00:20:00] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: But Tamoxifen makes me feel. Like I can be awake for a few hours a day and then need to lay down, and no amount of laying down actually makes me feel renewed. And so that is also problematic. I'm guessing you can relate to that. You know, it's like even rest does not bring you back to your sort of normal, poised self.
[00:20:30] Amri Kibbler: No, and I always think, I'm like, I feel like, okay, so I was first diagnosed five years ago and I had a recurrence. So I've been cancer free for two and a half years, and I feel like every six months I'm like, okay, I feel like I'm back to my normal self, and then I'll have some like real waves of fatigue that hit me and I'm like, uh, no, I'm still not back.
[00:20:54] Amri Kibbler: And it's been two and a half years. There are days that. I just can't manage to do things, and now I'll just resign myself to it and be like, okay, this is a day that I'm going to have to rest and I can't show up for, you know, whatever it is that I've committed to. And I find that to be really hard because mm-hmm.
[00:21:13] Amri Kibbler: When I say I'm gonna do something, it's really important to me. You know, I hate letting people down, but we have to prioritize ourselves now and there's no other
[00:21:21] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: option. I know, but it is really difficult and it makes me feel like, like you're saying, like. Should I push through? Like is there even a world in which I could, and it then becomes easy to compare ourselves to other peoples, to other mothers?
[00:21:40] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: How are they doing so much and I don't feel I can, what I try to remind myself of is, you know, the research around quality of interaction versus quantity of time with our children and. My Mother's Day cards that my kids write and my husband write to me every year and my birthday cards. It's like there's always this sort of reiteration of me being a real anchor in their lives, me being a true compass for them.
[00:22:12] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: And so I, on a daily basis, probably remind myself of that, like that I am. Here for them in the most important ways. And even if I can't show up to this or that, they know that I am 100% committed to them as people, that I am here to grow them up. And, you know, when I was first diagnosed, I, I just didn't know if I would be, so, I, I really try to lean into that.
[00:22:47] Amri Kibbler: Yes. It's that sense of connection that you have with your kids and you know that you can grow that and develop that. It doesn't have to be showing up for everything and doing everything. It's the little moments reading with them. Being there to open the door for them when they come in and asking 'em how their day is and just really listening where they feel like you're their person and you're connected, and that can be something.
[00:23:13] Amri Kibbler: I think that that's simple and that gives me a lot of hope always when I feel like, ugh, I can't be the chaperone for your camping trip with the Girl Scouts. Absolutely not.
[00:23:23] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: That one's a no. I'm never gonna try to say that. That is something I can do. Oh no. My husband does that.
[00:23:32] Amri Kibbler: I teamed up with Stacey Igel and Elyse Ryan to create S.E.A. Waves of Support.
[00:23:37] Amri Kibbler: Healing Selenite bracelet sets you keep one and gift the other to someone facing cancer or life's challenges. A powerful reminder, they're not alone. Learn more at seawavesofsupport.com. And I wanna read a quote that of yours and it was pertaining to something else. But I felt like it was really apropos in being able to give ourselves permission to set, kind of sit in what we're in and not rushing to get over it.
[00:24:03] Amri Kibbler: Mm-hmm. Because I think that that it makes it even harder to feel that fatigue and all of that. You said that the whiplash of life going one way and then suddenly another isn't something you recover from overnight.
[00:24:15] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: It's interesting that I wrote that we don't recover from that overnight because I don't even know if we recover from that over years.
[00:24:23] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: I think it really just depends on, you know, who we are go coming into this, you know, like I, I'm a pretty sensitive soul, so medications affect me in bigger ways than they might somebody else. And so that's something I've really learned, like the whiplash of this. Reverberates and it isn't something that, you know, a week later I get to spring up and just kind of, you know, find my footing the way that I would think I would.
[00:24:56] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: And I, you know, again, it's just like another learning that I've taken from this that I have to sort of embrace who I am and how I'm affected by things.
[00:25:06] Amri Kibbler: I really wanna talk about my own experience with antidepressants and anxiety medicine as it relates to cancer. And the reason I wanna talk about this is that.
[00:25:15] Amri Kibbler: People always ask me about how I got through this experience and what wellness modalities, um, supported me. And I talk about meditation and acupuncture, and I talk about exercise and a lot of other things that I do and I've never spoken about. Medication. And honestly, I had to put that in a box in my head and locked it up.
[00:25:39] Amri Kibbler: And the other day I was looking through my supplement drawer and like organizing it and I found a bottle of Lorazepam and I was like, oh my God, I'm going back to this place. Where I was so depressed and I like couldn't get through the day. And I feel like I wanna be honest about this because I had a woman who was a cancer mentor to me.
[00:25:58] Amri Kibbler: Her name was Andrea, most amazing woman. She had cystic fibrosis and she'd had a double lung transplant. Ooh. And then the medication she was taking causes cancer. So she had developed thyroid cancer and a dear friend had connected us when I was first diagnosed. And she was amazing. She was just like so full of life and spark and she had a career and two little kids.
[00:26:27] Amri Kibbler: And I was asking her, I was like, how do you seem so upbeat? How are you doing this? And she's like, I'm gonna be really honest with you. You know, you'll be given the option to talk to a, a therapist and a psychologist, and they'll recommend that you, if you need it, to take medication. And I would recommend to you that you, it sounds like you're in a really difficult place that you, you know, that you do that.
[00:26:50] Amri Kibbler: And I don't think that I would've gotten through the Yeah. Experience of being in the middle of COVID lockdown. And being diagnosed with cancer without it. And so I just wanted to talk about that because I think that it's not just always yoga and exercise. No, definitely not. Meditation and all of that.
[00:27:12] Amri Kibbler: Like, yes, you, you need support in whatever way you need to to find it. To be able to get through.
[00:27:19] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: Yeah. So tell, tell me about that. Like what, what did you decide to take and were you feeling depressed and anxious, and did the medication make a huge difference in your life?
[00:27:30] Amri Kibbler: It made a huge difference in my life.
[00:27:33] Amri Kibbler: I, I had a lot of anxiety because. I was also running my company HeyMama. I was having problems with my co-founder. I was, I had really bad brain fog was like one of my biggest symptoms in how my cancer was found. Finally, because I would be on a Zoom call and I would just hang up and I would go and lay down and three hours later I would wake up and be like.
[00:27:56] Amri Kibbler: Wait, what happened? What am I doing? And I was just really disoriented as well. And so that was causing like really severe anxiety. So then once I finally got the cancer diagnosis and I, like, I just couldn't function, like, I couldn't sort through things. The level of anxiety, the fear of death, the fear of all of these things was just crushing for me.
[00:28:18] Amri Kibbler: So I, I had a prescription for Lorazepam and then I took Mirtazepine, which is a. A low dose antidepressant.
[00:28:25] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: This is yet another thing that I took on in my book, Normalize It that creates shame for people. And I just think it's time that you know, for once and for all, we feel entitled to the things that we need at any given time.
[00:28:46] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: And so it really sounds like you figured out what was going to support you through. The darkest season of your life. I mean, we can believe in all the things that we believe in and think that we know what we would never do. But then we are diagnosed and we have to rethink it all. So maybe you thought you would never take medication for mental health, and yet it sounds like it made a profound and incredibly important difference in your daily functioning.
[00:29:24] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: And I think the more we talk about these things, the less stigmatized, the less silence, the less shame, and the more we can just embrace. Our humanity and try to kind of find our way during experiences that we just never thought would apply to us. I myself, I mean, I would've loved to have started an antidepressant or an anti-anxiety medication while in the depths of all of this, unfortunately.
[00:30:01] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: While taking Tamoxifen, there are actually very few medications that don't counteract the effectiveness of Tamoxifen, and I have been too afraid to try the things that are available and that are okay to take with Tamoxifen because of the side effects, because I just feel like I'm already struggling through so many side effects.
[00:30:27] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: Am I really going to. Dive into additional side effects, and then how will I know what's what. And it's interesting because that in itself is a symptom of anxiety. The what ifs and the guessing and the anticipating. But yes, I too would have definitely embraced getting help in that way.
[00:30:52] Amri Kibbler: And I wanted to talk about, you touched on this a little bit earlier and we were chatting about it.
[00:30:57] Amri Kibbler: And I'm relating it back to the medication because I had several people that said, oh my gosh, you went through cancer with such grace. Right? And I just don't think that it's possible to go through cancer with grace. I think that especially we talked about it's, I wanted to be a sturdy parent for my kids and I wanted to.
[00:31:19] Amri Kibbler: Show up for my partner in as a whole person, but I was not concerned with showing up with Grace or showing up with in any way for anyone besides the people in my family and myself or showing up on social media. I think that that may have been the case because I simply was not there on social media because I had no energy.
[00:31:40] Amri Kibbler: For anything like that. And I maybe I did seem like I was, if I did seem like I was perky when I was showing up at the school activities, it was only because of the medication that was like was lifting me up. And it's that comparison pressure, which it blows your mind to think about it, that cancer patients or people with illness would compare themselves to other people.
[00:32:02] Amri Kibbler: But it does happen, you know? 'cause I would look at, again, social media and see, okay. She's showing up with such energy and, and she's doing this to make an impact.
[00:32:13] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: I know it can be so dangerous this comparing and contrasting that we do and it's, it's kind of a knee-jerk reaction to being human. So I get it, but I think that while people are navigating the depth of despair and fear, it is probably best to sort of opt out of.
[00:32:33] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: You know, looking at all of these perfectly curated pictures on Instagram, for example, you know, unless somebody is finding a world of support there, which can also happen, the pressure to show up with grace is absolutely untenable. I think that we instead should be encouraged to show up with all of our vulnerability and truth.
[00:33:03] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: Because that will model for other people that they can do it too. And that complexity is okay. And that feeling like shit one day and feeling great, the next is part of the process if we ever feel great the next day. But you know what I mean? It's like we just don't know how we're going to feel. And so I think the pressure for perfection.
[00:33:29] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: Uh, you know, outside of a cancer is enduring. And then to apply it to women who are going through something so arduous is almost cruel, right? I mean, and so we almost have to find for ourselves the space. This liminal space, like The Space Between living and dying or The Space Between being grateful and grieving.
[00:33:56] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: You know, it's like we have to learn how to hold both. We have to somehow give ourselves this kind of, not the ability to, but just like the sense that it's okay that we don't know and that we can't be fully present. All the time. But I do think that other people's perspectives on this, I get it. I get people wanting to lean into silver linings, or people focusing on platitudes or focusing on, you know, oh, you're so strong you'll get through this.
[00:34:34] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: I believe that that's really a projection of their own fear and. It is a sort of cultural construct or lack thereof of being able to, there's no structure, there's no sort of apparatus in place for us to talk about grief in a real way. People wanna rush us through it. People want us just to quote unquote get better.
[00:35:00] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: But as we've said, even when we are. Technically cancer free. If oncologists believe in that terminology, it doesn't mean that we feel fully ourselves again, and so rushing us only makes us feel like we can't be honest and to feel like we have to show up. As you said with grace. With ease. Oh, I have such a, you know, positive outlook and that that's somehow, you know, this toxic positivity pressure, like that's gonna get me through.
[00:35:42] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: No, I think that the sooner we are honest with ourselves and other people about how truly difficult this is, the sooner we can hopefully shore up the support that we need and change this narrative so that people can just. Be real about where they are.
[00:36:03] Amri Kibbler: And I just heard you say a word that just like clicked something inside of me.
[00:36:09] Amri Kibbler: You referred to grief. Yeah. And I do think that there is this experience of grief going through cancer because so much of what you consider to be your normal and who you are shifts throughout this whole process, whether it be. The scars that we have on the outside and the trauma. You, I feel like I had to go back and deal with so many other things in my life, um, that I hadn't dealt with.
[00:36:35] Amri Kibbler: And just the experience of evolving, I don't wanna say losing yourself, but there is a, you know, you're losing who you were before cancer. We become someone else. Yes. And it follows along the process of grieving. We're going through. As we're healing through our physical bodies and everything else that we've gone through, we're also grieving for the loss of the person that we, we were before and were evolving.
[00:37:03] Amri Kibbler: And for me, I discovered self-compassion, something that I was not friends with before. Cancer. Also, compassion for everyone else too for me. Almost there. There were words that were triggering, but anyone that reached out to me or wanted to support in any way felt like it was something that, even if it wasn't, they didn't say the right thing.
[00:37:28] Amri Kibbler: I felt compassion and gratitude for them for reaching out to me, but just so much comp, self-compassion for myself when I was in circumstances where I couldn't do something or I just felt like too exhausted. Or my brain just couldn't handle processing it. And I was like, you know what? I have to have, I have to have compassion for myself in this moment.
[00:37:53] Amri Kibbler: I have to understand that if I even open up my phone right now, my head is going to explode because just being connected to the digital was so draining for me. Yes. And something that there were so many things that I had to put aside. And finally being able to have self-compassion for myself at. 50 years old.
[00:38:14] Amri Kibbler: Finally I was like, wow, this is a completely new concept for me. Yes. And able to have con compassion for other people, but allowing that space for myself to need to heal, to be exhausted, to just need to rest, and needing time to be able to process and to. Deal with all of those things was hard for me. Of course, it was hard for me
[00:38:37] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: to give myself that space a hundred percent because we're so used to the go, go, go, right?
[00:38:42] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: And until we need self-compassion to survive in a way, we don't embrace it usually because it's not served up to us as girls and women typically. And I get it. I mean, I just think that. If we don't have that self-compassion, who will, how will we get through this? And I feel like it's something that I'm proud to model for my children at this point.
[00:39:16] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: And so again, even though I don't show up to everything in the same way that I did before, I think they see though that that is their mom. Taking care of herself in order to refuel, to hopefully be able to be engaged later on that same day.
[00:39:35] Amri Kibbler: And it's such a healthy thing to hopefully teach our kids that they have self-compassion now.
[00:39:41] Amri Kibbler: They don't have to go through a traumatic health experience to, to be able to have self-compassion. Like that's great. I would want to give that gift to them because it was a hard fought gift for me to have. Yes,
[00:39:54] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: precisely.
[00:39:55] Amri Kibbler: One last question. Sure. If you could leave women listening with one permission slip when it comes to facing loss, illness, or trauma, what would it say?
[00:40:06] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: Wow, that's a tough one. The permission slip would say you deserve to feel everything that you're feeling like there is no use in. Shoving feelings down, trying to sidestep them, trying to show up in a certain way, try to sort of embody a cultural pressure. And I also wanna say, you're not alone. And even though that sounds trite, it's true.
[00:40:39] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: You know, it's, we know the statistics around all the types of cancers, and yet we can feel so isolated. In the throes of it. And it's wonderful that the zeitgeist is sort of including these messages of, you're not alone and you know, mental health is being talked about so much more, but I think there's a real difference between knowing you're not alone and feeling like you're not alone.
[00:41:05] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: And so I think I would also really encourage people to reach out. And as my book, you know, talks so much about, it's sharing our important stories is what. Connects us with community that is vital. It also allows us to shed feelings of shame if we have them and sort of work against the societal stigma that should just.
[00:41:35] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: No longer exist, and so it doesn't have to mean that you take to social media or get on a TED talk stage or get on, you know, a rooftop to share your story. It can be subtle, it can be simple, it can be tender, sharing with your neighbor, sharing with a friend, turning to a therapist, writing in a journal.
[00:42:01] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: Just so that we continue to move our feelings and our truths through us. Thank you. That was beautiful. Thank you so much for having me. And you know, this is, this isn't something I talk about very much, and I feel really honored that you are creating a space for women to delve into the complexity. And the deep grief that cancer brings.
[00:42:31] Dr. Jessica Zucker, PhD: Thank
[00:42:32] Amri Kibbler: you. I do feel like there's so many different layers to healing and sometimes listening to other people hearing their stories is the first step into joining community, finding a buddy, talking to your neighbor. Yeah. Sharing with other people, and then being able to give back yourself, whether it's.
[00:42:52] Amri Kibbler: Being a part of a walk-a-thon or talking to someone who's just been diagnosed. That really helps us to heal too. All of those things together. It's a long process. It sure is. Thanks so much for joining me on this episode of The Space Between if this show brought you comfort or a sense of community. I'd love for you to subscribe and share it with anyone who might need it too.
[00:43:14] Amri Kibbler: You can join the conversation on Instagram at thespacebetween_cancer.family and head to amrikibbler.com for more resources designed to support parents navigating cancer. Just remember, you're never alone. This podcast is here as a companion on your journey towards healing, growth, and connection.