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Amy Austin returns to The Burn for a second visit. Amy was diagnosed with Stage IV de novo breast cancer at 34 after initially being misdiagnosed with a complex benign cyst.
In this episode Amy reads her poem “In Praise of Quiet Advocacy” from the 2024 “MBC: Advocacy” issue of Wildfire Journal. Her poem is about the role of “quiet” advocacy in supporting individuals living with metastatic breast cancer (MBC). April and Amy will discuss what quiet advocacy means, the importance of being seen and seeing other young breast cancer patients, and the impact of friendships when sharing an MBC diagnosis. Amy will also share how her poem came to be with the support of another MBC friend, and the writing prompts that are all around us.
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More From The Burn
Today's storyteller brings us inside the architecture of a life built for achievement — degrees, titles, rooms where decisions are made, a carefully calculated climb through the ranks of academia. Breast cancer forced her to stop. This is a story about what happens when the scaffolding you've built your identity around suddenly can't hold you anymore — and what you discover when you stop climbing long enough to ask: what is worth, really, if it isn't this?
This conversation explores self-worth beyond achievement, identity shifts after cancer, redefining success, balancing ambition with self-care, navigating long-term survivorship challenges, and finding purpose and meaning in life after diagnosis.
Today's storyteller brings us somewhere most breast cancer narratives don't go — into the messy, funny, vulnerable, and ultimately tender territory of sex after surgery. This is a story about a Frankenstein-ed body, a 24-year-old on OKCupid, naked takeout from a Taiwanese restaurant, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. It's about the very specific calculus of figuring out what your new body can feel, and who you trust to help you find out.
This conversation explores sex, intimacy, and dating after cancer; learning to accept a changed body; realizing that other people aren’t judging us as harshly as we judge ourselves; cancer becoming one part of our identity rather than our whole identity; ongoing anxiety in survivorship; and the changing challenges of survivorship over time.
Today's storyteller brings us into the quiet, exacting world of tiny things — and what it means to build something beautiful when the larger story of your life has gone completely out of your control. This is a piece about chemo brain and lost words, about a miniature garden assembled with tweezers and a glue gun while a wound vac churned beside her, about what happens when you can no longer offer the people you love the story they want to hear.
This conversation explores chemo brain, finding comfort in small things, friendship, uncertainty, redefining health and wholeness, resistance, creativity, finding your own cancer story, and how cancer changes your perspective on life and the future.
