Serena talks with Lana Jelenjev on the importance of community and rituals when returning to work after surviving breast cancer.

Links

• Lana's website
• Community Alchemy - Lana's Newletter

Welcome to I'm back today, I'm going to have a conversation with Lana

community health chemist, Y spirit, and my personal guardian engine.

We are going to discuss coming back to work after an injury.

The importance of communities and rituals.

And also we are going to explore post-traumatic growth.

Welcome to Lana.

So what means I'm back for you?

First.

It's a pleasure to support you on this is a very powerful way to tell our

stories and also to empower others students, to share their stories.

I'm very fortunate that you've asked and they're much yeah, very

much into the zone of thinking.

What is back for me?

I know and I'll put it in the context of my, part of my story was

when I was diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 37, that it was

such a pivotal moment in my life.

My mom passed away from breast cancer at the age of 49, and that

has really left a big mark in the way then I started viewing life, like,

okay, how do I really live life?

And I remember one instance where I was crying and telling my

husband or I don't want to live without, It's tied to my question.

Yeah.

How would it be to live a legacy rather than leaving a legacy behind?

And one of the very, I would say very precious memory that

I had a few years after where a friend of mine was at our home.

And then she started asking my daughter.

Oh, are you more your mom or you or your dad?

And then she started saying characteristics that she sees

in me and that wasn't there.

And I wasn't, I was just in another room, but I can hear the conversation.

He started telling me, oh, my mom is without my kids.

No, we, I don't want to die without my kids knowing who I am.

And at that time I teach for five and seven and my husband just casually asked.

So how do you want them to remember you?

And I was still crying oh no I don't know.

So, so that was from you is like a very big moment.

And I, it was a moment of really asking myself, what

does it really mean to live in?

What does it really mean to be in full expression of myself?

So that I'm back really is tied to that.

this and this and this.

And that's when I felt, oh, wow.

She knows me.

And she sees.

And that's one of the moments that I know for myself that I said, oh, I'm back.

And this is where for me, it's like when people see and hear and feel

my presence and the fullness that I can bring in those spaces, then

that's when I say, okay, I'm back.

Uh, So powerful and so beautiful.

I'm really interested in the legacy aspect because for example, when we

are coming back to work, it's really easy to forget that we are there.

We are present we can uh, Certain legacy.

And I was wondering, I was for you to come back to work and to find a

new professional identity after that?

Oh it did take a process and I did take long to get into that.

One of the biggest parts that, that I had to.

I would say understand for myself was what is it exactly that I

need in different situations?

So at that time while I was moving through therapy, I also took

non-violent communication trainings.

That started first with, oh, I want to understand myself.

And it was so powerful that I I also to trainings to be a trainer

because I felt that it was so crucial in understanding yeah.

How they want to show up.

And I know Carlos Saba from the Happy Startup since then sharing enough,

that idea of leading with needs.

And I don't, that's been a pivotal part of my practice of really checking

in with myself and asking myself, is this, is this how I'm feeling and is

this what I need at any given moment?

And to make that as a practice, because I'm like this checking in for

me, it was like, it's so fundamental.

And yet, I didn't even know how to do that.

Not until I was 37 and the boy through chemotherapy.

And there was a point where my husband was not home because he

had to go to work and already after chemotherapy, he stays with me.

So he had to go to work and I was so frustrated.

It was like, he's not even messaging me.

He's not even, well, they ask how I'm doing.

And then it felt like a brick in my head of like, not, I'm like, goodness, you're

37 years old and you're still waiting for another person to ask you how you are.

So I did this experiment for a year, were in, I had an alarm set

on my phone and that said for nine o'clock, 12 o'clock, six o'clock.

And anytime that alarm comes off, my only question to myself was checking moment.

How are you doing Lana?

How are you feeling?

And that became a practice for me, gave a practice to such a point that

we, I would say I also put feelings and needs cards in the toilet.

So for those who come to our house at that point, yes, we did have a

feelings and needs cards in the toilet.

And the question of how are you feeling today?

So for me, that, that became one of the crucial pillars of, you know, there's

this chunni into myself to really figuring out how I'd wanted to uh, was checking

in with myself on a regular basis.

And understanding of, is this the course of action or is this the

way that I'd want to go about it?

Or even if it's this a project that I want to say?

Yeah,

And it seems like our, it one that you set for yourself.

And I feel that sometimes we need the rituals and we need community.

Also from our ancestors, from our history, from our an ancient knowledge to

being able to cope with life, actually,

definitely, especially with and a healing is not something that we need,

that we need to do in isolation, in a needs to accommodate within communities.

Given that I'm a Filipina, who's not reciting here in the Netherlands.

At that point I had, yeah, I had friends.

I had acquaintances.

I had people that I would say, okay, I know them.

But they came to a point where are they?

The type of people that I would easily call at 3:00 AM when I

needed to be rushed to the hospital and the kids are left at all.

So there's that, that happened at one point.

And that made me realize the importance of really deeply connecting with people

and how to nurture those relationships.

So community's definitely a big piece of that.

And then when we, especially when we're looking at, going back to

work for in the times where we're still in the healing phase or.

It's important that we have that support available for us.

And if for me, one of the things is I didn't have that ease in

Esau they did to make it happen.

And I decided to figure out, okay, how can I find the support that I

needed and be able to articulate what type of support is needed?

It's also crucial.

So yes, community is important and rituals are important because it helped

me ground myself to my intentions.

It helped me to to say, okay, if the, in my full yes is crucial to my

healing, how can I practice this more?

In what ways can I yeah.

In what ways can I find, pockets of practices where this in show up.

So having certain rituals help me in reminding me to my intestines

and also really anchoring me to them

and being in your fullness when you are not, well, it could be really hard.

And So I'm wondering how can you have the courage to be your fullness

when you are not well at all?

Oh, well, that's a, that's an interesting question.

And that I would say I struggled with at the start.

I struggled a lot with the idea of.

I am enough.

Mainly because again, art, yeah.

Art culture, part of what they've seen in society, part of what I've

experienced with my mom, yeah.

That, that there's a brokenness that we attached to illness.

And I had to navigate into that finding fullness.

Like one thing that I remembered was I even wrote a blog post about it at

that time, like finding success and what's the measurement of success.

And I realized that success is arbitrary and success at that time when I was going

through chemotherapy and where I didn't have energy at all, meant that I can

go downstairs and be with my kids for 30 minutes and make them laugh and, and

be there for them for that period, for that 30 minutes that I was with them.

And that was success.

Uh, So the old me would be judging it as, oh my goodness.

On that.

You're not good active.

, you're not doing these how they're expanded that people are expecting you

to do so for me, the feel fullness, I had to reframe it for myself.

So I think to really get in that, oh I am full I am.

And then the illness is a part of what I'm going through or what

I went through, but it does not define mindfulness as a person.

So for me, it was really shifting that narrative for myself, helped

me to realize that, oh, the things that I was holding on to.

And the paradigms that I had around illness around productivity around success

have been predefined for me by others.

And that I have the agency for define it for myself.

And the word success is really linked to societies and standards.

What is needed or seem needed in the work environment.

And it's true.

Sometimes coming back to work and be successful on just means to be

back and to be there and to show up.

But I think the working environment is not ready yet.

I think we need to do any healing process so far the working

environment, but what do you think?

Yeah, this is for me, this integration back before, it's something that we need

to build in our systems, whether it is in the working meant, whether it's in the

school settings, whether it is within the home and Ironman and within ourselves.

I remember that there was really.

Desire in me to understand how do I redesign life after breast cancer?

Because I really had to question a lot of things and that questioning

comes in many different forums.

Like.

That time do not put me in a grocery, mainly because I'll be there more

than an hour, looking through labels, looking at stuff and judging it, will

this be good for my body or will this not be good for my body eventually

going out and not buying anything because I'll just be like, overthinking.

And that was really a struggle for me.

So this reconfiguration back to society due to our work is very crucial

because for me, what I felt and what I've experienced was there so much

support for people while you're in the thick of it while you're within the

medical field, and then after that, you're just left to your own devices.

Whereas.

As far as I've read there's actually more pieces of depression after

treatment because that's when the support is no longer there.

And people expect that.

You're out of treatment, so you're okay now.

You can just go back to whatever it is that you're doing.

So for me, meet integration needs to be a crucial part of our systems,

especially the working system.

The work environment needs to provide that soft landing where people can meet

themselves depending on how their time, their energy, their focus, uh, Our at

that given moment, because you cannot just expect someone who has gone through

a very painful, oftentimes traumatic life event and expect them to say here, here's

your pilot board, come on, do this now.

Um, So for me, what makes a human centered work environment is when we can add in the

soft landing spaces for people, especially for people who have gone through a lot

and are needing in a needs, needs a work through to also add into their fullness.

It also needs the support of colleagues for that and how the work

field, wherever you're, wherever you are and support, that would be

tremendous in one's healing process.

And then wondering if this is also connected to the notion of

post-traumatic growth for you.

Yeah.

Oh one of the things that I realized again that this narratives, right.

And the language was this idea of PVC post-traumatic growth.

And I only came across that mainly because I was struggling with

what is gone, what's happened.

And I was like, what happened in my life?

Fucking boundaries where, before it was not there.

Uh, So I started filtering through friendships, losing some and

gaining a lot in the process.

I started really considering what spirituality meant for me.

And at that time, I think I have an idea of what is going on, People

expected for me to go back to normal.

And what I was thinking at that time was like, there's no going back

in RMO for me because that old me had played a role in any of the.

So, so that cannot be my path.

So who's the new me.

And yeah the learner that I was, yeah.

That I am, I got into reading about post-traumatic growth and.

Oh, this is me.

This was a process that I fit through that I needed to set the boundaries.

I needed to say no to friends before and cultivate other relationships if necessary

in the understand, the difference between religion and spirituality.

And so maybe aspects of the things that I started shifting.

I realize it was because of post-traumatic growth.

Yeah.

It has been a traumatic experience for me and for my family, for my

loved ones and that they were, amidst the pain and needs the struggles.

There's also growth that is available in the process.

It does not take the trauma.

It does not take the pain away.

It only shows that there is.

Learnings and strengths that are inherently there and that we can

take from in this situations.

It's a beautiful Lana.

Any, it gives me hopes, not only for myself, but for other people.

Do you want to give a last message to everyone with listening right now?

If there's something has helped me a lot in my own healing in my own is to really

tune in with, and what's alive in me?

It's so easy to fall into despair.

It's so easy to fall into.

Oh, this is not working.

And the deficit, we see the deficits we see what's not there.

And I just wanted, invited everyone start also really in our strengths.

The start also bringing what's already there that we can celebrate.

So instead of be so immersed in, what's not working, how can we also amplify

in our language, in our conversations, in in how we interact with each

other and how interact with it?

How can we leverage more of surfacing what's already there.

If we can get into the space of, you know, harvesting our strengths,

harvesting the potentials that are already there, obviously even just the thought

that we're breathing and we're here.

Even if it's just that, that you can find something to celebrate, take

that in, take those micro moments of celebration and take it in as much

as you can as many doses as you can.

To help guide you through your healing for you to be back and a, not with

what society is telling you to be.

And this is also why I love the definition of labor Scalia about love.

Love is the process of me leaving you gently back to yourself.

So how can we start loving ourselves so that we can lead ourselves

back to us, to our essence?

thank you.

Thank you so much, Nana.

My pleasure.

Really was my pleasure.

thank you for listening.

If you enjoy this episode.

Please share it with others, with friends, the needs to hear

this meaningful conversation.

For more information, you can visit the website, serenheart.com.

You have the link in the description

Thanks again.