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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] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: If I was closed off and, and carrying this burden and I wasn't open to the beauty, I would've missed my life. And that's what we fought to do is we fought to be cancer so we can live. And you're still living while you're, while you're in treatment. So feel the feelings more and get pissed, get scream at the ocean.
[00:00:18] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: I did it all. But also let yourself feel there's happiness there and know that you will get to the end of it.
[00:00:28] Amri Kibbler: Hi, I am 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 this space to share honest stories, expert insights, and meaningful support for families navigating life with cancer. If you're balancing treatment, caregiving, parenting, or just trying to hold it all together, you are not alone.
[00:00:52] Amri Kibbler: This is your space to connect, to heal, and to feel seen, and I'm so glad that you're here.
[00:01:01] Amri Kibbler: Today's guest on The Space Between is Sarrah Strimel Bentley, and y'all better get excited 'cause her story is. Out of this world, you're not even gonna believe. Um, what this woman has been through. She was a Broadway star on stage for 15 years, had an incredible career, met the love of her. Life was like on top of the world when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and we're gonna hear her story of how she navigated through treatment.
[00:01:32] Amri Kibbler: And her unique story to how she got to motherhood. This is like an on the edge of your seat cliffhanger kind of story. So get ready, let's get started. Sarrah, I wanna welcome you to The Space Between. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm so excited for this conversation.
[00:01:50] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: So am I, I'm so to be here with you, um, and share my story.
[00:01:55] Amri Kibbler: And your story is absolutely incredible. I just had the joy of being on a 20 hour flight back from Australia, and I had downloaded a ton of your podcasts, so I was like, okay, you know, I always like to listen to, you know, my guests, but I did a binge where it was like, I've got the time and I heard your story so many times, but every time I listened to it, it still brought up so much emotion in me and listening to you and like.
[00:02:23] Amri Kibbler: You're just warm and unique way of sharing and telling. There was always something new and something special that you were sharing in your story, and I think that's why people are so attracted to it, you know, and from all of the, the cancer survivors that I speak to, I think it's just the joy that you're still bringing to your story and the hope and all of that in every conversation.
[00:02:47] Amri Kibbler: It's just, it's really special.
[00:02:50] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Thank you. You know, it's what's interesting too is it's been five years now, right? So I've been cancer free for five years, oh no, five year, five and a quarter years at this point. And every time I tell the story, I remember different aspects because having gone through, you know, this multi-year journey of breast cancer and, uh, infertility and surrogacy, and all the uncertainty, all the pain, all the trauma.
[00:03:16] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: All the joy and all the love and all, I mean all of it together is that there was so much, it's like the biggest emotions you could feel in your life in such a, a finite amount of time that your brain and your heart can't comprehend them all. But going backwards now and, and looking back and, and, you know, speaking on, on it and advocating and doing all the things that I do now.
[00:03:35] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Yeah, each time I tell the story and knew. Memory surfaces. So it's just as important for me.
[00:03:42] Amri Kibbler: I feel the same way. I, and I realized when I was listening to all of your many podcasts, that we have lots of things in common. Not that I was a Broadway star because I can't sing or dance at all. Um, no,
[00:03:56] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: I weren't,
[00:03:57] Amri Kibbler: definitely not.
[00:03:58] Amri Kibbler: But we both were diagnosed and going through treatment during the pandemic, which is like a unique bummer. Right. We both went through IVF at RMA, which yay both resulted in us having babies. Yay. And like I'm so jet lagged. I'm like, what was the other thing? Oh my gosh. That our partners are both our rock and like helped us to get through this and to find joy in all of those things together.
[00:04:24] Amri Kibbler: So it also made it. It's like so much more special to me listening where I was like, it was triggering memories for me too. And I, five years later now, when I tell my story to people, always find new things where I'm like, oh my gosh. Wow. I'm just now kind of able to. Deal with that feeling or see it in a new light or understand why it was such a complicated feeling.
[00:04:46] Amri Kibbler: Because it is that, especially when you're talking about bringing in this unique motherhood journey that you had to where it's like everything that you wanted, you're getting at the same time that you're losing so much.
[00:04:58] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's very true. It's, it's, you know, two things can be true at once, and I think that I, again, you can be into the most painful, hardest thing, but at the same time, be the best moment of your life.
[00:05:11] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: That was wild. Yes.
[00:05:12] Amri Kibbler: Well, why don't you start from the beginning in case anyone hasn't heard your story. Tell us about your time as a Broadway star all the way up to your diagnosis.
[00:05:22] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Yes. Hello. Wonderful listeners of The Space Between, so The Space Between me, uh, telling my story and you listening. So, yes.
[00:05:31] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: I'm Sarrah Strimel Bentley. I am 44. I live in Brooklyn, New York. We have a house on Long Island. We split our time. We being my husband and I, which I just gave a spoiler alert, but, um, we've been here for 20 years. Myself, 20, my husband, a little less. Yeah. So I moved to New York City out of college. I'm from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
[00:05:56] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: I moved to New York out of the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music to Bianca Broadway. That was my dream. My dream was to sing, dance, and act on the great White Way, and I left college. Five credits short of graduating because the producers, the Mel Brooks musical called and when Broadway calls you, listen. So I, uh, went on tour and left school.
[00:06:19] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: I never graduated and I went on to do seven Broadway shows for 15 years. Then it was amazing and glamorous, and then I realized that there were other things in life to do and I really wanted to have agency. I wanted to. Rely on myself and I landed on opening up my own yoga brand and it started in the Hamptons in 2016.
[00:06:43] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: I, in 2019, signed up for another dating app, the league, and I met a man named James Bentley and we were 38. Both of us, our birthdays are two months apart. We fell in love and I was like, oh my God. Finally the man who I will have babies with. And then the pandemic happens, and James and I decide after only a few months of dating that we're gonna quarantine together with my parents in Florida, we're thinking it would be a week or two.
[00:07:16] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Go to Florida, it's three months. And it was a horrible time in the world. It was terrible. And in some ways it set me up for what was to come because there was also like, there was so much pain and I lost friends, and we all lost people. Yet I was falling in love and I was with my family and we had time of cooking and joy.
[00:07:37] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: And, and so there were these weird things happening at the same time. And James and I decided it was time to go back to New York together, move in together. We bought a house together in the Hamptons, uh, without ever seeing it. So that was kind of a commitment, right? And we had talked about the kids we were gonna have and my life, like I, you know, August 4th, 2020, we moved into this house in the Hamptons.
[00:08:01] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: I also moved into his apartment in the city
[00:08:04] Amri Kibbler: and it was like, man,
[00:08:05] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: all this, all that I wanted is finally here. All that I dreamt of all that I've worked towards. And then three weeks later I was walking down. There's a path to the beach. We live across the street from the water. It's beautiful. We were walking the dog.
[00:08:24] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: We have a Boston Terrier named Glory like we did every night at Sunset. And I had an itch under my armpit. I went down to SCR for the itch, and sure enough there was a lump the size of a walnut. I'm like, what the heck is this? You know, like I asked James, I'm like, have you ever felt this new couple in love?
[00:08:43] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Obviously he is touched my breasts more than a few times. And he was like, no, babe. I would've felt that. That feels big. It came outta nowhere. That's gotta be like a, a sister, a clogged milk duct. I don't know. You know something right? It didn't make sense. I never pregnant, but Bo was it. You know, we're like, it's nothing.
[00:09:02] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: So I call and make a telehealth appointment with my gynecologist. 'cause you know, we're still in COVID. It's August. And so she gets on the phone with me and she says, you know, you have no family history. You're only 38. You're very fit, you're very healthy. This is nothing but let's just get an ultrasound just to be safe.
[00:09:22] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Someone will call you to schedule it. Someone calls. They say, okay, so we're gonna give you your ultrasound on December 6th. I was like, whoa, it's August. They're like, it's the pandemic. Like that's as as much this is gonna, you're
[00:09:38] Amri Kibbler: like, no.
[00:09:39] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Yeah. They're like, they're like, you're, this is nothing. It's not, this is not important.
[00:09:43] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: This is just like to be sure. I'm like, something felt very off. I knew that.
[00:09:49] Amri Kibbler: Yeah. How were you feeling? Vi. When you found the lump? Yeah. And your doctor told you that this is probably nothing, what were you thinking? Like what was your intuition there?
[00:10:00] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: So what I was thinking was, you're right, definitely.
[00:10:03] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Sure. This is nothing, there's no way this could be something. I had a friend diagnosed with breast cancer I had run into right before the world shut down. I ran into her in Miami at a club, and I remember I hadn't seen her for a year, and I said, where were you? And she goes, oh, I had breast cancer. So I went to James.
[00:10:20] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: We were dating. And I said, oh my God, I read
[00:10:22] Amri Kibbler: my friend, she had breast cancer. She's 33. This is wild.
[00:10:26] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Little did I know, so I, I, I felt like, you know, my, my front brain was like, no, this is totally nothing. And all my friends and all my family, they're like, this is totally nothing. But when I would drive in my car alone, on my way to, you know, go teach yoga and stuff in the Hamptons, when I would go alone, I was like, this is, this is not nothing.
[00:10:47] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: I, I feel like this is, I'm really scared. I'm really scared. And, and it, and it, there was no standout factor that, that, it was like a deep knowing. I know my
[00:10:56] Amri Kibbler: yes
[00:10:57] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: so well
[00:10:57] Amri Kibbler: inside of you, and you're like, I know I'm too young. I know I'm too fit. I know I take too good of care of myself, but there's something inside of me that knows,
[00:11:06] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: yeah, that didn't want you, but I did.
[00:11:09] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: And so I, I set about calling and trying to get it pushed, and they could only push it to October and. I made the decision to voice displeasure to a client of mine who happens to just be one of the richest people in the country. And she said, how are you? I'm like, ah, you know, I've been better. She goes, what's going on?
[00:11:30] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: You're always happy. I said, well, I kind of found a lump in my breast and I can't get a test. And she said, and then she picked up her phone and she dialed and literally within a minute. She was on the phone. She goes, yeah, yeah, she's driving it. This was in South Hampton. She goes, I'm driving. She's driving into the city right now.
[00:11:49] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: She'll be on your table in an hour and a half. I don't care, you know, I don't care where you are. She'll be there. Got me into a private radiology firm. I had a mask, a sports bra on leggings and flip flops, and she put me in my car. She gave me a shirt, and I drove to this private radiology firm. I get to the door and they say, we do not take any insurance.
[00:12:16] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: I had insurance. So I'm like, what? And it's just, we don't take insurance. And I almost turned around and went back because I was like, I didn't work this hard to build this business to blow 20 grand, you know, or whatever. In my brain on this test, I probably don't need knowing that I needed it, you know, in in my, in my core, right?
[00:12:36] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: And so I took a deep breath and I walked through the door. I saved my own life that day. I got my ultrasound and they immediately, she was like, try to be stone faced, and she went into my armpit and I'm like, why did she go into my armpit? Because I didn't know anything at this point. You know, I was so innocent on this whole thing.
[00:12:59] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: I got on the phone, get her in a mammogram now, and then I'm like, whoa. I'm reading the room. I'm like, this is bad. Something is bad. So I start sobbing and then they ultrasound essentially my entire torso. And I'll come to find out later. She was trying to see if it had spread. Yeah. Because she, she knew what she saw, which was breast cancer.
[00:13:16] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: And uh, I walked outta that office that day with an appointment with one of the breast breast. Flit one of the best breast surgeons in the world, and you know, the radi, the radiologist was like just in case, but she knew everybody. She
[00:13:31] Amri Kibbler: knew
[00:13:32] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: it was, or it was Labor Day weekend, so I had to wait the whole weekend.
[00:13:36] Amri Kibbler: It's always a holiday weekend
[00:13:39] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: before I could get my biopsy, which I got. Then on Monday, which before Dr. Drossman, who's, you know, diagnosed Katie Couric, she's again, one of the best. Before she went in and did like, I think over 10 needle sticks in my armpit and in my breast. She said, I'm gonna call you tomorrow and I'm gonna tell you something and I need to prepare you for that.
[00:14:00] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: I'll never forget I had my you, my breasts out. Jane is folding my arm over my head and I looked at her and I said, I have breast cancer. And she goes, yeah, you do. She goes, I know what this is, and I'm sobbing. They proceed to do the biopsy as I'm like life flashing before my eyes. Then the next day, September 1st, 2020, I would get diagnosed with stage two invasive ductal carcinoma, breast cancer.
[00:14:26] Amri Kibbler: And so you just said James was holding your hand, so he was with you in the biopsy. So you guys were still in a pretty new relationship when all of this was going on. I mean, this is super heavy.
[00:14:36] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Nine months. Nine months in. And why I I, I go back to what I had said a few minutes ago, which was that. You know, we went through a global pandemic.
[00:14:44] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: We moved in with my parents. He and I experienced a relationship issue very early on where I had a choice to forgive him for something. I chose you and we worked, we worked through some really kind of gnarly stuff. And so by the time this happened, it almost felt like, and James will tell you the same thing, he was like.
[00:15:06] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Let's do this, you know, but I had a fear of like, oh my God, he's gonna leave me. Obviously, you know, I'm, I'm broken, I have cancer, and this was before I even heard of any of the fertility, you know, fertility stuff that goes along with the breast cancer diagnosis. But yet, that man was like in the foxville with me from the very, very second I got off that table.
[00:15:28] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: After that ultrasound, he was back in the Hamptons with our dog. He took himself on a train. Got right to the city, you know, and just held me all night as I cried.
[00:15:38] Amri Kibbler: It sounds like every month of your relationship was like three years.
[00:15:43] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Well, they say, right. They say COVID was what, like 10 in one? Wait, it like adds 10 years to our relationship or something.
[00:15:50] Amri Kibbler: It, it felt like it. I mean that, and I also find like I talk to so many people who have either had their relationships totally blown up because of cancer or just completely like brought them so much together or people who have even gone through divorce in the different ways that I just find that it, like, it really magnifies what's really in your heart and who you are, right?
[00:16:13] Amri Kibbler: It like it shows your true self. Like if you are that person that is really there and you're in it. It just like that is who you are and it becomes like a hundred fold. And it sounds like that's what happened with you and James.
[00:16:28] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Oh yes. Yeah. I mean certainly because in that moment of fear and panic, every time he had an opportunity to peace out, he showed up.
[00:16:38] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: And the one crystallizing moment, which I do talk about a lot, and I usually can't do it without crying, so here we go. Um, was. Yeah. As I get diagnosed with cancer, I see the best breast surgeon in the world, Dr. Issa Port. She gets me a plan and she's like, this is what we're gonna do. And so once we devise our plan, the next breath, she said, you two look like you're madly in love.
[00:17:04] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: I think I was actually sitting on his lap when she walked into the room and we said, yeah. And she goes, do you want kids? And we both were like, yes, we do. And she said, okay. You're gonna go, I'm gonna make you an appointment today. You're gonna go to RMA and you're gonna meet with Dr. Erman who was golfing because we were still at a holiday.
[00:17:28] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: pre-K. Well, he was like not there. He was like on a golf trip. So I ended up in the office of Dr. Er, Ken Buk, who would later, you know, become the man that would change my life. One of the many people involved in bringing, uh, a child here. Yeah, he looked at me and he has this very thick European accent and he was like, you know you can do, you can freeze your eggs or you can freeze embryos together.
[00:17:55] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: What do you want to do? You know, embryos better for you. You know? And I looked at James 'cause I'm like, okay, now we really are truly putting all of our eggs in the James basket, right? Like, don't put all your eggs in one basket. We are.
[00:18:09] Amri Kibbler: You really were
[00:18:09] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: every single opportunity for me to be a biological mother, right?
[00:18:14] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: A mother of a biological child. I looked at him and James without a beat, just those embryos. See, I'm crying. I'm doing it. It's crying. I know.
[00:18:25] Amri Kibbler: I'm just like imagining you holding your breath, asking that question and looking at him and being like, please say embryos. Please say embryos.
[00:18:32] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Please say embryos. A hundred percent.
[00:18:34] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: And so he did. Then I said, okay, embryos, now don't you think for a second in the next, well, the weeks that followed might have my double mastectomy, and with my drains still in from that, we started the shots for IVF. I mean, it was bam, bam, bam, bam, bam. No time to waste in those weeks before we started our IVF process while I was going through healing from just, you know, a casual double mastectomy.
[00:18:59] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: There were nights where he was like, are you sure you don't wanna just freeze a couple eggs? And I was like, are you not sure about me? I said, you know, upset. And he goes, no, baby, I'm sure I love you. This is, I'm all in. And I was like, what do you mean? You know, so, so this, you know, it did, it obviously was, he just wanted to make sure that I was sure and I just wanted to make sure that he was sure.
[00:19:24] Amri Kibbler: Yes. And he must have just been like holding so much together trying to understand where you were and all the things that you're going through and what's happening, and like thinking about the future and like all of those things. It's so many things to hold together in the same time, in this like new space where you love each other so much and you both want the best for each other, but it's like you couldn't even have.
[00:19:47] Amri Kibbler: At that point guessed where you were going and what was gonna happen. When you really at thought that point, you probably thought like, okay, we are in the thick of it. This is the punchline of the story. But no, the punchline of the story is even still to come at that point. Like you were just finding out that your fertility was affected and that you're gonna have to go through this process.
[00:20:08] Amri Kibbler: You had no idea what was gonna happen. No, I was, I was sitting on the edge of my chair waiting for you to, to continue with the story.
[00:20:14] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: I know. I was like, let me just like, I'll, I'll railroad through it. No, what I didn't know at the time, neither, which is a whole nother thing. I didn't know when we were going through all this, but he knew the cards in his pocket is, he had been shopping for rings since July.
[00:20:28] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Okay. So he'd been shopping for rings before breast cancer was a character here. And I didn't know that when I was sitting in the fertility office. You know, so him saying embryos and me trusting that he had already,
[00:20:40] Amri Kibbler: he'd already made up his mind. He was in.
[00:20:42] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Yes, yes. And I didn't know that because we didn't get engaged until I was bald, mid chemo in December.
[00:20:48] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: So to go back double mastectomy, start the IVF at RMA with a different doctor. First round of IVF, I get like 12 eggs. We make one PGT tested healthy embryo, which means one embryo that was genetically normal, that would be a good candidate to have a baby with. So we froze that embryo second round. We went dead ahead into as soon as we could.
[00:21:17] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Same thing. Got a ton of eggs, came out with one embryo. That was PGT tested, abnormal. So two rounds of IV F1 embryo. Dr. Buk asked me, he said, and, and this embryo, by the way, I don't know if you guys listening, you know, I know this is primarily a cancer, you know, driven podcast. I don't know how much fertility we talk about here, but like, they grade your embryo.
[00:21:43] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: So the embryo was graded day seven AC embryo, which apparently it's just fair quality, you know, not
[00:21:50] Amri Kibbler: a just fair quality mean, because I heard you saying that.
[00:21:52] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Yeah.
[00:21:54] Amri Kibbler: I don't even remember what quality. I feel like I had some really good quality embryos that didn't pan out, to be honest with you. Right. So what did they say to you when they, they used the word fair quality,
[00:22:06] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: right?
[00:22:06] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Well, yeah, you and me both. That's all they said. Fair quality. And you know why? Thank God he didn't start talking numbers. And thank God I didn't start Googling numbers. I mean, I did. Listen, I did some deep dives on day seven, eight, da da, da. But I also didn't go so deep, and I subscribed to this mantra from most of this experience, which was, I honestly didn't wanna know too much.
[00:22:30] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: I wanted to get through it. I trusted my team, I trusted the science, I trusted my support system, and I didn't wanna start going down a rabbit hole, which would only really completely make my mental state that much, that that much, uh, more unstable, right? So day seven means, you know, the ac, the A is whatever the, the, you know, the, the embryo itself.
[00:22:56] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: And one is the, the sac around it, right? The amniotic sac. So each of these grades means that they have a percentage chance of working. Instead of me finding that out, James and I are like, listen, we have one Rio. This is our chance. We have one chance to have a baby. And I was like, well, obviously this baby's name is Chance.
[00:23:17] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: So we named our embryo Chance. Dr. Boy asked, do I wanna know the sex? And I said, certainly. And we knew it was a boy. So we have Chance the boy embryo frozen in Midtown.
[00:23:30] Amri Kibbler: I teamed up with Stacey Igel and Elyse Ryan to create S.E.A. Waves of Support. Healing Selenite bracelet sets. You keep one and gift the other to someone facing cancer or life's challenges.
[00:23:41] Amri Kibbler: A powerful reminder, they're not alone. Learn more at seawavesofsupport.com. Um, so what did you think was gonna happen next? Did you think that you were gonna go through the IVF process and. Carry the baby and all of those things.
[00:23:58] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Yeah. So I,
[00:23:59] Amri Kibbler: at what point did you find out?
[00:24:00] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Yeah, so I had known that surrogacy would might be a possibility that there's a possibility that I might not be able to carry this one embryo because my friend who I referred to earlier in Miami at the club when I got diagnosed, she was like mid surrogacy journey.
[00:24:21] Amri Kibbler: It's just crazy though that you had a friend who went through something so similar before you, because I'm sure before you started on your cancer journey, you probably hadn't seen even very many women who went through breast cancer that seemed like you, like this was probably something so far from your mind.
[00:24:40] Amri Kibbler: And then here you meet someone who's in your universe around your age going through breast cancer and also the the fertility journey and using a surrogate.
[00:24:51] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: It's
[00:24:51] Amri Kibbler: what are the chances
[00:24:53] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: there? What are the chances? The word chance now resonates so deeply in my life. I always am like chances because at this point in 2020, women were using their social media platforms and the way they are now to talk about breast cancer or female health or fertility or infertility.
[00:25:12] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: And so I desperately scoured the internet for hashtag breast cancer for girls that look like me. Young, younger women. Women who maybe on the backend are showing that they're living a healthy full life. Women that have children after, I couldn't find a lot. And so, yeah. What are the chances that my friend, now that we're talking about this, and unfortunately now that the cases of breast cancer and young women are just rising and we have hypotheses, why?
[00:25:39] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: But we don't know for sure. I have so many friends of mine before and not breast cancer friends, friends, long-term friends that are getting breast cancer, college friends, high school friends. I mean, it's happening all around us. So I guess the chances now are one in eight that I would know someone. But yeah, it was, she was a big source.
[00:25:59] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Her name's Victoria, and she was a big source of wisdom for me in this journey. So I didn't know going into chemo, I knew I had one embryo, and my oncologist said, listen, eight rounds of a CT chemo, hard, poor, hardcore chemo, we're gonna give you a shot that shuts your ovaries down to protect them during chemo.
[00:26:19] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: 38. There's a chance on the back end of chemo, we may have some fertility left. You might have some eggs, you know, in there you might have some follicles. We're gonna wait a year-ish. You know, after you're done with your active treatment, you'll go back to RMA to Dr. Bull and we'll look, we'll do another round of IVF,
[00:26:38] Amri Kibbler: right?
[00:26:39] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: And we'll talk about what's next. So we did that. A year after active treatment, I went to RMA, and this may be a pivotal one. This might have been the hardest day of his entire
[00:26:52] Amri Kibbler: experience.
[00:26:52] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Lemme tell you, I went through a double mastectomy. I went through eight rounds of a CT chemo, 28 rounds of radiation, three years of hardcore meds after that to keep me from recurring.
[00:27:04] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Three more surgeries after that. And the day I went back to RMA to see if there were any followup was left. I looked at the screen during the ultrasound that instead of, I call your ovaries chocolate chip cookies, each ovary is the cookie and then your chips or your egg follicles. And I had no chips. It was just a black.
[00:27:25] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: And I knew, and I'll never forget looking at that screen and looking at Dr. Luc and I love him because just straight up Eastern European honest, and he was like, we cannot do another. He goes, we can. He said, we can do it. But nothing will happen. And it is a waste of your
[00:27:41] Amri Kibbler: time and your energy and your, it's a way, it's
[00:27:44] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: just not, it's not happening.
[00:27:47] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: And I went home that night and I cried so hard in our, we had, we were living in a high rise down the street. I, I had wailed and James held me security was called 'cause they thought someone was getting injured in our apartment. And it was me just like mourning all of it.
[00:28:03] Amri Kibbler: Your heart was just breaking,
[00:28:04] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: broken.
[00:28:06] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Like bro, I, again, I cry now thinking of it. It's like it was, it was because then I knew I had one chance, like before I was holding on to
[00:28:15] Amri Kibbler: there could be hope, like maybe there's a few left, like maybe we could do another round. Maybe there's gonna be another one.
[00:28:22] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: It's interesting that you said that could be hope.
[00:28:24] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: There could be hope because the second round of the IVF where we got the embryo, that wasn't normal. We prayed on every needle, every stick of a medication. We prayed and we're not like big religious people, but we prayed to have a girl in this second round and we named that girl. We named the embryo that we got.
[00:28:47] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: That wasn't nor, we didn't even know if it was a girl, but we just, in our hearts, we named it hope. Oh my
[00:28:55] Amri Kibbler: gosh,
[00:28:56] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: and hope. And so ho. Had to be discarded. Right? They use that word, which is why we don't, you know, it's a whole nother conversation about peoplehood of embryos, but to Wow. To me it was hope. And I found out on a podcast with Dr.
[00:29:13] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Only a year ago. I finally asked him, I said, Hey, that embryo that wasn't on, was that a boy or a girl? 'cause he's looking at his screen on my chart and he goes, you want me to tell you right now? And I said, yeah. He goes, it was a girl.
[00:29:25] Amri Kibbler: Oh my God. Oh my gosh.
[00:29:28] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Yes. So hope is like our guardian angel up here, right?
[00:29:31] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: So we have hope, who was our other embryo. And you know, she's a, she's in our lives. Trust me. I talked to her. I'm like a little woowoo guys. Who's listening? I'm a woo woo hoo.
[00:29:42] Amri Kibbler: I, I'm on the same Woohoo. Train with you. All of the prayers, all of the crystals, all this, everything
[00:29:48] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: all.
[00:29:49] Amri Kibbler: No, I'm denominational. I'll take any help I can get.
[00:29:52] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Right? All of it. No, all of it. I pull from every religion, every which way, every, yes. So, yeah, so you know, that night we have one, one embryo chance is frozen. And then I went back to my oncologist and I said, okay, there's nothing left or no more IVF, no more, nothing. I said, what? What do we do now? And I said, can I carry this baby?
[00:30:16] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: And she goes, Sarah, here's the deal. At this point now I'm 40. Okay? So I'm 40 years old. I have one embryo that's fair quality. I cannot, in her words, with her blessing, try to do an embryo transfer until I'm 43 because she wants me to be on my meds for five years because I had a very high risk, very gnarly tumor.
[00:30:45] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: DNA goes very like aggressive. She goes, if you want, you know, I'll let you try to carry a baby at 43. So now I have no ovaries. Oh, they chip my ovaries out after they realized, you know,
[00:31:00] Amri Kibbler: you know you don't need those anymore.
[00:31:02] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: No, there's nothing there. And I have a genetic mutation where I am predisposed to ovarian cancer.
[00:31:08] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: So you know, we don't need 'em. So I have no ovaries on, you
[00:31:13] Amri Kibbler: know,
[00:31:13] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: 40, well, we 43 at one embryo. She's like, why would you, that's really just not, can you do a surrogate?
[00:31:20] Amri Kibbler: And I was like,
[00:31:21] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: fuck. So I said, I can't carry this kid. She goes, you can, but you've never been pregnant. This is not the ideal environment at this point.
[00:31:31] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: And I said,
[00:31:31] Amri Kibbler: oh, with one shot.
[00:31:33] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: I was not, can I curse on your podcast?
[00:31:36] Amri Kibbler: Yeah, sure. Go ahead.
[00:31:37] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: I was not fucking around. I was like,
[00:31:38] Amri Kibbler: no.
[00:31:38] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Yeah. One away, one shot with the love of my life. Why I'd waited this long for, yeah. So we then, you know, then we knew it was time to find. This angel
[00:31:51] Amri Kibbler: and how do you find a surrogate?
[00:31:53] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Oh boy. Again, thank you, Victoria, for leading me through this wonderland of things. You interview agencies if you don't have an immediate family member or a friend you know that wants to carry for you, which is a whole other pile of stuff that comes with that. Um. Guilt if it doesn't work, you know, whatever.
[00:32:16] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: You find an agency and you pay the agency 25,000 to $40,000 to match, make you and your husband and your partner or wife with the person that is going to carry your child. And so we interviewed agencies. Some of them were bad used car salesmen.
[00:32:37] Amri Kibbler: Who
[00:32:38] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: would prey on your fears that you, they kept being like, you only have one.
[00:32:43] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: If you do the VIP experience for an extra 60, what is
[00:32:47] Amri Kibbler: a VIP
[00:32:47] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: experience? Oh, this was why y'all, so this is a very well known agency that I know people have used them. You know, the director of this agency. She's like, okay, this is the cost. But for an extra $60,000 you could do the VIP journey. And of course, I'm sitting next to James.
[00:33:08] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: We're on a Zoom call. I said, what's the VIP journey? She said, well. You'll get a top of the line surrogate. What? So then I, I kind of leaned back and I said, top of the line. And I, in my brain, I'm like, so what? For $40,000, we're gonna get. Bottom of the, it's as a human being we're talking about.
[00:33:30] Amri Kibbler: And if they think they're bottom of the barrel, how did they accept them into their agency?
[00:33:35] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: This is what I mean. There is no, how do you categorize this in her brain? What was she was trying to say is that we would get an experienced surrogate, which by the way has no bearing on whether they get pregnant or not, and we would skip the lie, so we would cut all the other families. So I was like, this is not the agency for me.
[00:33:54] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Absolutely I'm not, you know, and she kept like, fear mongering me. I'm like, what? This is insane. But we found an amazing agency out of Boston. They're the oldest surrogacy agency in the country, CSCD Center for surrogacy and and donation. And we trusted them, they were honest and they knew what they were doing and they started matching us.
[00:34:15] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: And we matched with a woman from Boston who was 21. We went through the process of flying to New York and having all the tests and doing all things, and she was actually living in the city my husband was born in. So for me, I'm like, oh, this is it. This is the person. And like physically, there was a very stringent set of things that she had to match from my doctor because we did only have this one embryo, right?
[00:34:43] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Like more than usual. There was a very specific set of, of, of things that needed to, to be present. And so she was this to me, I'm like, this is the unicorn. And then she ghosted us. She disappeared. She ghosted the agency and I was heartbroken. 'cause we're, now, we got ghosted the summer of 22. So we had started working with fur in the beginning of 22, so now we're like two and a half years into this journey.
[00:35:18] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Right.
[00:35:19] Amri Kibbler: And just invested so much time and so much of your heart and so much hope into this person.
[00:35:25] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and also everyone's like, are you gonna start, are you gonna talk to any adoption agencies? 'cause for James and I, and this is a very personal decision for every couple. If our embryo didn't work, the logical to people, next step would be to get an egg donor, right?
[00:35:42] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: So we have a baby, we can make embryos that are James' DNA, and then a donor that perhaps looks like me or toxic, whatever it is. That's important to us, and we spoke and to James and I as well, but more so James. He was very much, I don't want a baby that is like half us. I don't want you to feel like it's missing you.
[00:36:04] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: I would rather have a baby that we adopt and that we raise together, you know, as our own. And I agreed, but I didn't start. I'm like, why don't you make sure, you know, in case this doesn't work? And I said, there is no, this is working.
[00:36:18] Amri Kibbler: You can't, you, you're, you're in it
[00:36:20] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: a lot. I know a lot of people that actually were doing it all at the same time.
[00:36:24] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: I just wasn't. I was all, all, again, all the eggs in one basket. I'm also counting time in. I'm counting down to the day where I find out if this embryo is gonna be our baby or not. So every day that goes by is another day longer. I have to wait for either the best day of my life or the worst dream of becoming a biological mother, which I've had forever.
[00:36:46] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: This is what's gonna happen. So yeah, and the ghosting of the surrogate really knocked me down.
[00:36:53] Amri Kibbler: So what happened then? How did you find your right surrogate,
[00:36:56] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: or, here's the best part. I mean this, I mean, you can't even write this strife, this woman. Go Sadine. She called me a month later and told me why, because her fiance of her very, and also they had a very young 1-year-old left her up and left her one day and she's crying, I'm fine.
[00:37:15] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: And she's like, I was terrified to tell you Sarrah, but I couldn't do this all. I said, I wouldn't have let you to be honest. So, you know, I gave her my blessing. She was really brave to just a month later show up call. And so the agency says, you know what? You know we're looking for this per, it's gotta be a unicorn.
[00:37:34] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: 'cause you have all these stipulations, right? They go, we know the perfect woman and she would love you and you would love her, but she's already matched. But her couples in London and they've kind of ghosted her too. So let me call the couple and see what the heck's going on. They're dragging their feet.
[00:37:54] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: She really wants to, you know, make this happen. And sure enough she got ghosted by her intended parents. We got ghosted by our surrogate, he calls overjoyed. A couple months later in October, we got ghosted in, um, like early August. Mm-hmm. Calls in October. Okay. They've unmatched, she wants to meet you and her name is Whitney and she was in Richmond, Virginia.
[00:38:21] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: So we went, we met her. And she was a bubbly, gorgeous beam of light human being with a great sense of style. Not that it matters, but to me. But
[00:38:32] Amri Kibbler: you know,
[00:38:33] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Adam, we had Mexican food, a margarita, and we decided then and there that this is what we were gonna do together. And um, you know, the rest is history.
[00:38:43] Amri Kibbler: And I feel like I've said this a thousand times while we've been talking, what are the chances, what are the chances of all of these things, of all of these stars aligning?
[00:38:51] Amri Kibbler: And honestly, if you were writing this for Netflix, I'd be like, okay, that could not really happen.
[00:38:56] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Right? So if anyone's listening for Netflix, let's make it happen. Yeah. Yeah. So we matched with Whitney, and then my doctor denied her. What? Yeah, because she had had two miscarriages instead of one, and that knocked her out of the running.
[00:39:11] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: In his mind, he didn't want anything. If this didn't work, he didn't want us to ever go back and say we could have done better. So I got a second opinion from a friend who was a fertility specialist. Very good one, one of the best two. And she like gave it to me straight. She's like, if this doesn't work, it has nothing to do with her.
[00:39:29] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: She's wonderful, Sarrah, everything on paper, she's wonderful. So she had one more miscarriage. She has two healthy kids. It's your embryo. If this doesn't work, it's your embryo. And I was like, thanks. But also I knew this was the woman. So I went back and I told Dr. Eu and I'm like, this is who we're going with.
[00:39:46] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Sorry. I know it in my heart. So we did the transfer Easter Sunday where we did a Monday, but Easter Sunday she came to New York, um, of 23, did the transfer, did the two week wait? I don't drink anymore, but I was drinking a lot of wine. 'cause it was like, how do you hold this day that's about to come where you're gonna find out if it's everything you ever wine or you're gonna, you know, never have this opportunity again.
[00:40:18] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: And, and we got a phone call from the head of the surrogacy agency that she's pregnant. The miracle had happened.
[00:40:28] Amri Kibbler: You brilliantly recorded this into the most emotional, and I, I saw the video when it first came out and I was like, oh my God. Yeah. Like, so happy. And then when we were reintroduced watching it again and I'm like, just so happy for you and that moment that you had and that you were able to record it so you could even see it happening for yourself too.
[00:40:51] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Yeah. And, and I'll explain why. So I. When I had breast cancer, did the breast cancer diaries. 'cause I wanted any woman that's ever diagnosed to look at these stories when I went through breast cancer and know that they're gonna be okay. They're gonna get it real. They're gonna know that there can be love, there can be engagements while you're bald.
[00:41:09] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: There can be, you know, you can have sex during what, you know what I mean? Like I want them to know that life is happening and joy is there. And I also want them to know that there are hard days like I wanted to talent like it was, and I was committed to honesty in this. So I did the surrogacy diaries as well and they began when we began the surrogacy process.
[00:41:30] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: So I knew that no matter what that phone call was, that the surrogacy diaries would have to reflect that because that's real life. And so I set up my camera
[00:41:40] Amri Kibbler: knowing that
[00:41:41] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: I was gonna post whether it was what it was, which was ended up being every time, I can't even like think about the video without
[00:41:50] Amri Kibbler: crying.
[00:41:51] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: And, uh, or it was gonna be me on camera and probably what would've been like one of the hardest moments of my life. Yeah.
[00:42:00] Amri Kibbler: That is so brave to put yourself in the most vulnerable position I can possibly imagine, knowing that you have no way of knowing what's happening and you're allowing people to, to be there with you and to share it in this either greatest moment of your life or probably the worst moment of your life.
[00:42:19] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Yep. I committed to it, right? And I knew how important those breast cancer diaries had become to, to women who reached out every day. And I wanted to be the same kind of advocate for the journey of the fertility portion post on, you know, on on onco fertility journey.
[00:42:37] Amri Kibbler: And so what has your motherhood journey been like now?
[00:42:40] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Yes, guys. So the baby came safely and helpfully at 10 pounds. It's like motherhood is so everything. I keep saying that like you would never get to experience something. This I'm crying again. Gosh darn it. I love feeling all the feelings. It's great. You would never get to experience something this magical without it being this hard too, because you don't get things that great.
[00:43:09] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Right? Like. They don't come.
[00:43:11] Amri Kibbler: No, you have to, you have to work for things that are that great and like you just learn that in the, the years coming up to that with all of your journey that you went through with cancer and like the emotional rollercoaster. But it doesn't stop when you go into motherhood.
[00:43:27] Amri Kibbler: It's like on a daily basis, the highs and the lows.
[00:43:31] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Yeah. It's the greatest gift I could ever be given and I. I do go back in the really hard moments. Some of the times I lose it, but a lot of the times when he won't nap and he is screaming. And yesterday he had an orange and he said, open please. And then I opened it and then he lost his mind.
[00:43:50] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: And then I gave him an unpeeled orange. And in one hand he had the peeled orange and the other, he had the unpeeled and he was still crying. And I was like, I like, yeah, like, and then I stopped and I just like sat on the ground with him and looked at it. And I was like, I just took a brat. And I'm like, you're a miracle.
[00:44:07] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Like you,
[00:44:08] Amri Kibbler: you're a miracle.
[00:44:09] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Every prayer of millions of people prayed with us. Everybody that followed my journey to get him here we're praying. So I'm like, Jesus, like you are the product of every prayer in the world together. And so, yeah, like I, I, you know, it's like. He's got a lot of legs to stand on. He is like, look lady, I have a miracle.
[00:44:27] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Whatcha are you gonna yell at me? You're gonna yell at a miracle. And I'm like, oh gosh. But yeah. And so lucky every single day, like, like you said, you couldn't have written this. And, and so I remind myself of the gratitude I have for this experience I get to have as a mom and it's just, and that I get to be here, right?
[00:44:48] Amri Kibbler: Yes. And you've created a 5 0 1. In Chance's name, right?
[00:44:53] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Yeah. Well, yes. It was called a damn good life. Um, so I, I created, I renamed it, I created, um, co-founded with Victoria, who I was talking about on this podcast.
[00:45:04] Amri Kibbler: Oh my gosh.
[00:45:06] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Her and I said, we wanna do something that hasn't been done yet. 'cause there was support for egg freezing, financial support for egg freezing.
[00:45:13] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: There was financial support for helping women get to and from treatment. Financial support. Five under 40 is an amazing organization that helps with it. Under 40, get wigs, get counseling. And so these things existed, but what didn't exist was how do you pay $150,000 and can't put it on credit. That's the average cost of a surrogacy journey.
[00:45:37] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: So imagine going through cancer, imagine going through all these rounds of IVF and then imagine not being able to afford. To bring the baby here. Like that to me would be soul crushing.
[00:45:47] Amri Kibbler: It's a tragedy.
[00:45:48] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Yeah. So we were like, okay, that's what we need to do. And then another breast cancer survivor, who was our friend before Annie, um, joined up.
[00:45:57] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: So the three of us started a damn good life. 'cause my company is called Damn Good and Co. So, you know, we built off what I had built and then, you know, the BlackRocks of the world don't wanna give a check to damn good life. So we change it to A Chance for Life. Um, and we raise, um, $150,000 at this point annually.
[00:46:18] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: We'd love to raise more than that, so we can give more than one family a baby. But, um, we pay soup to nuts, everything. So we give you all the money you need to get this done and get this baby here. And our first couple took them two years to match and get to transfer. But the most exciting news is, I just announced it today actually on Instagram, is that.
[00:46:41] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: They have the heartbeat of their baby that I announced. Yes. The, the surrogate got pregnant. I announced it, people flipped out. That was before Christmas, but now they heard the heartbeat. So the baby is safely on the journey here. And yeah, and that, and to, to say that we helped literally like
[00:47:01] Amri Kibbler: bring this baby into the world.
[00:47:03] Amri Kibbler: Yes. And give, give hope, and then give them a chance. All those things together, hope is
[00:47:09] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: a chance.
[00:47:10] Amri Kibbler: Oh, it's so incredible hope and chance. And so how can people donate? Do you do just like, is it fundraisers or can they just donate online?
[00:47:20] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Yeah, please give us your money if you have any. No. So we have a website, achanceforlife.org.
[00:47:28] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: You can also donate. I mean, the links are everywhere. They're in all of my social media files to go, and it's right through the website. Also, we do fundraisers. We don't have one on the calendar right now, but, uh, you can get all the updates by following me on my page, which is Sarrah Strimel Bentley on Instagram and on TikTok.
[00:47:48] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: And, um, we have A Chance for Life profile as well, so we, we don't starve you of any opportunities to hear about what we're doing.
[00:47:55] Amri Kibbler: And is there any last words or advice that you wanna leave for anyone that's just been diagnosed with cancer?
[00:48:03] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: You know, I have this concept, I, I call it joy mining, right? So it's like it's not toxic positivity 'cause that I can't stand, I don't know if you've listened to this whole podcast, you could probably tell I'm not that girl, but I am a very joyful person and you can still.
[00:48:19] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Find joy. Even during your cancer journey and in survivorship and beyond, sometimes it feels harder to find, but it's there and you can still live your life. 'cause I always say I'm like those years of my life I spent in treatment and in the unknown of am I gonna be a mom? You know, biological mom, mom, biological child.
[00:48:44] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Uh, so much happened there that was so beautiful. And if I was closed off and, and carrying this burden of like, and I wasn't open to the beauty, I would've missed my life. And that's what we fought to do, is we fought to beat cancer so we can live, and you're still living while you're, while you're in treatment.
[00:49:02] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: So, you know, I just encourage everyone to like, just feel the feelings, mourn, get pissed, get scream at the ocean like I did it all. But also let yourself feel there's happiness there and know that you will get to the end of it and you know, God, God willing, we that you will have a long, wonderful life ahead.
[00:49:24] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Yeah,
[00:49:25] Amri Kibbler: that is such good advice because you're right. You don't wanna miss all of the like, happy moments and all the great stuff that happens, even when you're feeling like super crappy, right? Like you could blink and you're gonna miss some of that great stuff too, and allowing that joy to really help to carry you through.
[00:49:42] Amri Kibbler: I think it's like a, a superpower.
[00:49:45] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Yeah, I agree.
[00:49:47] Amri Kibbler: Well, oh my gosh, I can't even believe that an hour has gone by.
[00:49:51] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Or I want, all I did was talk and I was like, AMRI, I want you to talk too, girl.
[00:49:56] Amri Kibbler: Oh my gosh, your This story is so amazing.
[00:50:00] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Thank you. I know. I couldn't have written it. Trust me. I like didn't see that coming.
[00:50:03] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Like, I was like, all right, I'm gonna like get married to this guy. We'll have some kids life will,
[00:50:08] Amri Kibbler: this will all be great and we're gonna live our fantasy life.
[00:50:11] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: Yeah, yeah. But you know, that's the thing is like. What you don't see coming can change your entire life, you know, in, in, in ways you will never even understand until it, it happens.
[00:50:23] Sarrah Strimel Bentley: And I now like, this is my purpose. I, I, I do motivational speaking, I moderate panels. I advocate for women who come after me, and that is my passion and that is my full heart. So, yeah, make your master message as Robin Roberts would say.
[00:50:38] Amri Kibbler: Amazing. Well, if this podcast has inspired you or uplifted you, give us a a like and a follow and give us a review on Apple or Spotify or YouTube and you can follow us on Instagram at thespacebetween_cancer.family.
[00:50:58] Amri Kibbler: 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. 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.
[00:51:21] Amri Kibbler: Just remember, you're never alone. This podcast is here as a companion on your journey towards healing, growth, and connection.