#459 Building a Life That's Better Than Before Breast Cancer™ with Cheri Henderson#459 Building a Life That's Better Than Before Breast Cancer™ with Cheri Henderson
The Breast Cancer Recovery Coach
Breast cancer thriver Cheri Henderson talks with host Laura Lummer about shifting from people-pleasing to genuine self-love, using tiny mindset and lifestyle changes to build a life that feels better than before cancer. Their conversation touches on community, vulnerability, and finding joy alongside grief while living with metastatic disease.
59:30•17 Apr 2026
Building a Better Life After Breast Cancer with Cheri Henderson
Episode Overview
- Tiny, consistent shifts in habits and thinking can build up over years into major life change after breast cancer.
- Creating space—quiet moments, saying no, turning off constant noise—helps you hear and trust your own intuition.
- Self-love is shown through actions like nourishment, rest, and honest decision-making, not just surface-level self-care.
- Receiving help from others allows love and support to flow both ways and can be deeply healing for everyone involved.
- Community and group coaching can provide connection, tools, and courage that are very hard to generate in isolation.
“You can hold joy and grief in the same hand at the same time.”
Get ready to be moved by real-life accounts of rebuilding life after breast cancer, as coach and host Laura Lummer talks with two-time breast cancer thriver Cheri (Sherry) Henderson. Aged just 39 when first diagnosed and later living with metastatic breast cancer, Cheri shares how she shifted from being a self-described “recovering people-pleaser” to someone who intentionally creates space, trusts her own voice, and builds a life that genuinely feels better than before cancer.
You’ll hear how Cheri went from squeezing radiation sessions into her lunch break so she wouldn’t “inconvenience” anyone, to recognising that self-love isn’t bubble baths and candles, but feeding herself well, resting, advocating for her needs, and giving herself permission to change. She explains how writing a letter to her “old self” and joining Laura’s coaching programmes helped her release the pressure to go back to who she was before, and instead welcome who she is now.
Cheri talks practically about micro-changes: fasting before chemo, adopting a ketogenic lifestyle that eased brutal nausea, and protecting white space in her week. She describes learning to hold “joy and grief in the same hand at the same time,” finding comfort in sunlight through the blinds on tough days, and slowly replacing harsh self-talk with kindness. Group coaching and community feature strongly here too.
Cheri admits she “wasn’t a joiner”, yet found deep friendship, courage, and inspiration in a group where women talk less about side effects and more about dreams, creativity, and how they want to live. If you’ve ever felt you should be able to cope alone, or that you must get “back to normal” after treatment, this conversation might gently challenge that. What if small, consistent acts of self-love could open the door to a life you actually enjoy living now?
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