Better Than Before Breast Cancer with The Breast Cancer Recovery Coach

What happens when treatment ends, the scans are clear, and everyone expects you to feel grateful… but you don't feel like yourself anymore? My guest this week is Jondrea Phelps, a breast cancer survivor, author, speaker, coach, and founder of JP Empowerment and Flatties Wear. After her breast cancer diagnosis, mastectomy, treatment, and being told she was cancer-free, Jondrea discovered that the "...

What if October, the month that can feel like it belongs to everyone but us, held something just for you? Every single day of October, a woman living with metastatic breast cancer is being handed $500, no application, no criteria, no proof of need, just to go do something that makes her feel alive. My guest this week is Elissa Kalver, diagnosed 34 days before her daughter's first birthday, who sta...

How many times have you said, or heard yourself think, I did all the things? We follow the protocols, take the supplements, change the food, and quietly believe that if we just do it well enough, we will be safe. So what happens when the body does something we did not sign up for anyway? In this episode, I sit with three truths that sound heavy at first and actually set a lot of us free. The goal...

When the scan comes back clear, does the thought of cancer actually leave with it? For so many of us, the answer is no. The disease can be gone from the body while the identity of being a person with cancer quietly stays behind. This episode started with a question a friend asked me over dinner, one that made me look closely at what really happens to who we are after a diagnosis. Cancer can be som...

Why is it that you can know exactly what would help you feel better, and still not do it? You already know to eat real food, to move your body, to rest. Knowledge was never the missing piece. So what is? In this episode, I share the moment I realized I needed a lifeline, and the thing I come back to again and again: lasting change is not built on willpower. It is built on quietly becoming the pers...

How do you know whether it is time to push forward, hold steady, or give yourself permission to stop? Most of us never ask. We just keep pressing, adding the next hard thing, without checking whether we have the reserves to carry it. In this episode, I borrow a simple idea from metabolic wellness and show you how it maps onto the way we live, and I get honest about what it looked like to let mysel...

Some seasons feel less like a smooth path and more like a dark little roller coaster you did not buy a ticket for. I am recording this one from the middle of a wild stretch, and I decided to bring you along honestly, right where I am. I share the health scare that landed me somewhere I did not plan to be, and I do not tidy any of it into a neat lesson. What I really want to talk about is the diffe...

Have you ever looked at another woman's life and felt that quiet ache of why her and not me? Most of us have, and most of us judge ourselves for it before we ask what that feeling is really pointing to. In this episode, I open up about a recent day when I was just plain tired of being the person with cancer. I let myself feel it honestly, without rushing to a gratitude list, and then I found the q...

Have you ever said you wanted one thing, while quietly holding on to the very habits that keep it out of reach? Most of us have. We say we want peace and then overcommit. We say we want joy but promise ourselves we'll feel it later. This episode releases during a rare stretch of the year, and I want to walk into it with you. Then we turn it inward. Where in your life are you saying one thing and l...

What if being disease-free isn't the same as being healthy? Many of us think we're healthy as long as our scans look good or our lab work falls within normal ranges. But health is much bigger than a diagnosis. In this episode, I share a different way to think about disease, health, and healing, and why the choices you make every day have a powerful influence on how well your body functions and how...

Have you ever told yourself you'd get to it later, when there was more time, more money, more room? Most of us have. And most of us never stop to ask what the waiting is costing us. There is a question your brain reaches for first when you think about changing something in your life, and it is almost always the wrong one. In this episode, I offer you a different question, one that shifts everythin...

When was the last time you let yourself want something without immediately talking yourself out of it? So many of us learned early on to keep ourselves small. Then a diagnosis arrives, and that quiet voice telling you not to ask for too much gets even louder. Have you ever found yourself making silent deals, promising to be content with less as long as you get to stay? I overheard a conversation a...

When was the last time you felt truly inspired? This episode comes out the day before the 15-year anniversary of my first breast cancer diagnosis, and as I look back over these years, one thing stands out more than almost anything else. Not a diet, not a single protocol, but inspiration. For a long time, I thought inspiration just showed up on a good day. What I have learned is that I have to go l...

July 2026 marks 15 years since my first breast cancer diagnosis. When I sat down to plan this milestone month, I had all these celebratory ideas, and then life happened. I lost people I cared about, a few clients passed, and right as I went to record, our dog of 14 years died. I want to be honest with you from the start. Life is hard, and life is wonderful, and most of the time both are true at on...

Your body has been talking to you your whole life. The question is whether anyone ever taught you to listen. In this episode, I want to widen the lens on how you read your own body. We have lost so much of the generational knowledge our mothers and grandmothers once passed down, and now we tend to wait until something hurts before we pay attention. But your body speaks in subtleties long before th...

This Father's Day episode is personal for me. I lost my brother to testicular cancer in 1993, and that loss taught me how dangerous it is when we do not talk about the cancers that catch our loved ones off guard. So I am honored to share this conversation with Jake Messier, a stage four metastatic male breast cancer advocate known on social media as The Guy With Stage Four Breast Cancer. Jake foun...

June is Mental Health Month, and in this episode, I want you to hear something clearly. Your mental and emotional health is not a side note to breast cancer or to life after it. It deserves to be a priority, right alongside your physical health. I share a recent stretch of unrelenting pain that pulled me away from my walks and workouts, and how quickly that started to weigh on me mentally, because...

What do I even eat? If that question has ever stopped you in your tracks, this episode is for you. So many of us cycle through the same handful of foods week after week, then feel guilty for not eating more variety. And when we try to fix that, it often turns into more recipes, more shopping, and more pressure to find the perfect anti-cancer diet. In this episode, I want to take that pressure off....

Last week there was no podcast episode. For the first time in a long time, I simply didn't have the physical or emotional energy to show up behind the microphone. After navigating one of the most challenging health seasons I've experienced since my stage 4 diagnosis, I realized I couldn't just move on without talking about what this experience taught me. The lesson was acceptance. Not giving up. N...

What is the most important thing I've done to support healing after breast cancer? Mindset work. Not positive thinking. Not pretending things are fine when they're not. Not forcing affirmations I didn't believe. I'm talking about the work of examining what I believed was possible for my body and my future and learning how to update those beliefs. In this episode, I share why mindset work became th...

In this week's episode, I want to invite you to think about your body differently. What if your cravings, fatigue, bloating, brain fog, and energy shifts are not signs that your body is failing you… but signs that it's trying to communicate with you? After years of working with metabolic health, blood work, and nutrition genomics, I've realized something important. The problem is not the informati...

What if you didn't have to wait for something to go wrong to grow? In this episode, I'm sharing why so many women stop reaching for support once life starts to feel stable and how that pattern quietly keeps you stuck. We talk about the difference between the discomfort of crisis and the discomfort of growth, and why choosing growth creates a completely different life experience. I also walk throug...

Emotional pain is not just in your head. It is happening in your body. In this episode of the Nutrition After Breast Cancer: Just the Facts series, we look at the connection between emotional and physical pain through both lived experience and research. When you feel exhausted, overwhelmed, or stuck in a loop of thoughts, there is a biological reason for it. Your nervous system is responding exact...

Cheri lives in Duluth, Minnesota with her adventure partner, Brent, along the stunning shores of Lake Superior. A two-time breast cancer thriver—first diagnosed with Invasive Ductal Carcinoma Stage IIIA in 2019 at 39 years old, and again with Metastatic Breast Cancer in 2021 at 41—Cheri continues to live life with strength, joy, and purpose. She leads an active, outdoor-centered lifestyle and seek...

What if your thoughts were creating physical changes in your body? In this episode, we are looking at the science behind mindset and how your brain, your expectations, and your thought patterns influence your health in very real ways. From negativity bias to the nocebo and placebo effects, I break down the research that shows how your mind impacts stress, symptoms, and healing. You will learn why...