Our Mission
This website is home for any piece of writing you want to share – sweet, tumultuous, devastating, hilarious, or even something that seems very simple.
It’s a place for a journal entry, MULTIPLE journal entries even, whether it’s something you just need to get down in words or a lived experience where you think someone else might be able to relate. A poem that expresses your feelings at any given moment. A letter you might want to write and not send.
You don’t have to start your own blog or make a big announcement about your writing. You can write under your real name or you can submit anonymously. You can submit for you, to get it off your chest, to talk about your chest! And, hopefully, to create a safe space for someone feeling the same way who may happen upon your story and, for just a moment, know they are not alone.
A breast cancer story doesn’t fit in a perfect square with a headshot neatly placed to its side. This journey is non-linear. It is incomplete, fascinating, and deeply emotional. It becomes a part of us, but it doesn’t define us. We are more than breast cancer. We are storytellers. We are voyagers. We are warriors. We are human.
Lindsay Lupi
I am a NYC theater educator, music director, pianist, health and fitness mentor, mom of two, and breast cancer survivor. Most of my life has been dedicated to creating safe spaces for young people to express themselves through music and theater. It has always been of great importance to me that the spaces I create with my collaborators are full of acceptance, support, and love. After my breast cancer diagnosis and subsequent treatment in 2019, I realized that the same sort of safe spaces I created for my students didn’t necessarily exist for me. I didn’t have time to run to therapy every day or join an acting class or sit quietly and meditate. When you work full-time, have two toddlers, and then have to deal with a breast cancer diagnosis on top of that, there’s not much time for anything else.
So, I thought, how can I create a safe space for folks on the breast cancer journey that doesn’t take up too much time, can be accessed at all times of day, and allows for expression both publicly and personally? That sparked the idea for More Than Breast Cancer. This safe space allows us to be imperfect. It’s a place where we don’t need to tie our stories up in pretty bows.
I felt my lump in January of 2019. In March, I was diagnosed with invasive DCIS Stage 1. In May, I had a lumpectomy. In July, after finding more questionable spots in my right breast and a clear left breast, my diagnosis progressed to stage II and I opted for a double mastectomy with immediate reconstruction. In August of that year, I started taking tamoxifen, which I will take for 10 years.
This is the story with the pretty bow. This story has a tidy beginning, middle, and end. These are the facts.
But there is so much more to my story: the swirling emotional experience of waiting for test results, having to make personal surgical decisions without any real medical knowledge, and a million and one day-to-day moments that I now see through an updated lens. There are days I want to scream from the rooftops in absolute despair and days I want to scream with absolute joy. When I get dressed in the morning, I wonder when the day will come that my daughter asks where my nipples are. I’ve become obsessed with fitness and with every move I make, I can actively feel the implants under my muscles.
Breast cancer is now a part of me, and of my identity. But, so is being a mom, a woman, a health and fitness mentor, an artist, a wife, an educator.