#471 Life After Breast Cancer - How to Dream, Believe, and Build Your Future#471 Life After Breast Cancer - How to Dream, Believe, and Build Your Future
The Breast Cancer Recovery Coach
Laura Lummer reflects on life after breast cancer and questions the belief that women must stay small and only be grateful to be alive. She blends research, personal stories and spiritual perspective to show how gratitude can sit alongside dreaming bigger and building a future you’re excited about.
27:07•17 Jul 2026
Life After Breast Cancer: Allowing Yourself to Want More
Episode Overview
- Gratitude for surviving breast cancer can coexist with wanting more from life; they are not mutually exclusive.
- Many women internalise messages to stay small, and those beliefs can intensify after a serious diagnosis.
- Research on approach vs avoidance motivation shows that moving towards what you want creates more positive emotions than constantly trying to avoid loss.
- “Restricted entitlement” – feeling undeserving and asking for too little – is linked with lower wellbeing.
- A simple first step is to honestly complete the sentence, “If I let myself want more, what I would actually want is…”, and allow that desire to be real.
“Gratitude and wanting more are not opposites. They are not enemies. You do not have to choose between them.”
Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? Swap “sobriety” for “life after breast cancer” and you land right in the heart of this conversation with coach and two-time survivor, Laura Lummer.
Aimed squarely at women living through or beyond a breast cancer diagnosis, this episode talks about the quiet deals many make in the scariest moments: “Please just let me live and I promise I won’t ask for more.” Laura gently but firmly questions that unspoken rule, asking whether gratitude has turned into a cage that keeps women small.
She shares a vivid memory from her teenage years at the kitchen table, where an aunt’s comment about needing “a rich man” planted an early message about staying in your lane. Rather than painting villains, Laura points out how earlier generations of women were simply working off the only map they were given. The real issue, she says, is how many of those maps still run our lives.
From there, she blends psychology and a bit of “woo-woo”, talking about research on approach vs avoidance motivation and the idea of “restricted entitlement” – wanting too little and feeling undeserving of your own needs. Her central message? “Gratitude and wanting more are not opposites.” You can be deeply thankful to be alive and still dare to dream of a bigger, richer future. The tone is warm, conversational and often funny, even while tackling fear, mortality and long-term illness.
Laura keeps things practical with a small homework exercise: finish the sentence, “If I let myself want more, what I would actually want is…” and just let the truth land on the page. If you’re rebuilding life after breast cancer and feel torn between being “grateful” and wanting more, this episode might be the nudge that helps you write a new map. What would you let yourself want if you stopped playing small?
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