RESILIENCE | Interview- Wendy Hammers - Pancreatic cancer survivor and thriver

@hope · 3mo ago · 0:33

1. Hearing the news

It. The first question is a hard one, but I really want you to drop us there, because a lot of people have been in the dumps and they're looking up and they know they need to be resilient, but they just can't imagine it. So I wanted you to take us to the day that you learned that you had cancer and what happened in those days, around that day. And I'm doing

@WendyHammers · 3mo ago · 2:05

This is a great place to start. Deborah, thanks for the question. Although I'd like to go back to a week before I actually got my diagnosis. When I got my like, you might have cancer diagnosis, being an eternal optimist, I assumed I would be one of the few who had been spared it, that my tumor was benign, because I knew I had a tumor

@hope · 3mo ago · 0:56

2. Relationships With resilience

Thank you for answering that. I want you to now talk about relationships at the core of resilience, because I want to tie them together, because I know who you are and I know that you are so committed to, excuse me, to relationships and friendships and nurturing them. And I think sometimes when we think about rising up from the ashes, we reach out for some hands to hold us. Can you talk about that?

@WendyHammers · 3mo ago · 4:57

But a lot of it had to do with reinforcing this idea that I could and would get through. What? My husband didn't really like the word cancer. No surprise there. He felt like he took a long time to find the love of his life, and now he thought he was going to lose me. And so he didn't really like that word. So instead of cancer, we just called it my special project

@hope · 3mo ago · 0:41

3. Mindset mantras

Thank you for answering that. And I want to move on to this idea of mantras, like things that you said to yourself that kept you from ruminating about other things. Can you talk to us a little bit about your mindset when you were rising from this news and going through this, all the treatment? Just some mindset stuff. It could even be just mantras

@WendyHammers · 3mo ago · 5:00

And when I was going through whatever I was going through and specifically with cancer, this definitely was true. I would say to myself, you're doing great, Wendella. I love you, Wendella, and I am not going to abandon you no matter what. I'm right here with you. Now. I know the swell listeners are pretty hip and I can get relatively graphic, so I'm just going to say that there were times that were related to pancreatic cancer

Swell Team

@Swell · now · 0:15

Welcome to Swell!

@WendyHammers · 3mo ago · 0:09

You just to wrap up. I would say whatever the problem is, self love is the answer. That's the place to begin to

@hope · 3mo ago · 1:27

5. Expiration dates

But that's the beauty of thought leaders like you, is that you can actually give us some gems around our relationship to our expiration date specifically. I'm not calling it death, because I don't even know if people want to talk about death so much, but we can talk about the concept of life not being forever. Um, but I just want to know, how has your vocabulary changed? What's your relationship to the shortness of life? And I just really appreciate your voice here

@WendyHammers · 3mo ago · 2:30

Well, I'd say you're spot on with this question, Deborah. I was not a person who thought much about death and my own mortality until I was faced with the premise of cancer. The concept of me as a cancer patient, I really hadn't thought about it much. And I did think it was something that happened to other people. But then again, I thought cancer was something that happened to other people, and suddenly I was that person