Kate’s Story: Embracing Life

On a summer afternoon in Wisconsin’s Northwoods, a popular rustic vacation destination for those escaping the daily grind of city life, Kate watches her children and their friend standing at the end of a dock on the rural Berry Lake.

From the large screened-in porch, where sometimes Kate’s kids will sit at a round table and finish their homework, they can hear the call of loons or watch the sky and lake changing colors from blue to bright pink.

It’s an idyllic vacation picture—one that Kate made happen for her family on a permanent basis when she decided to relocate there in 2018.

“I’m serious about not taking it for granted,” said Kate, a Chicago native who has lived with metastatic breast cancer since 2010. For the past nine years, she has navigated an ongoing and brutal regimen of treatment while also raising three children.

Kate and her husband had also found themselves acting as part-time caretakers of the lake property after her parents died, feeling torn between life at the lake and life in the ‘real world,’ never fully experiencing the joy of either. Making the decision to live full time at the lake seemed like a faraway dream—until her trip with A Fresh Chapter (AFC).

“It really had a lot to do with going to Peru with A Fresh Chapter and taking time out from my life to get a clear picture of what really mattered,” Kate said.

A deep sense of loss

In 2010, when Kate was just 32 years old and her oldest child was 7, she was diagnosed with Stage IV metastatic breast cancer after a “boil” under her arm resisted antibiotic treatment. Since then, she has endured aggressive treatment that has included multiple biopsies, scans, surgeries, countless infusions of chemotherapy and more than 80 radiation treatments.

Even more painfully, Kate’s diagnosis came a year after her mother had died of pancreatic cancer, and would be followed by the deaths of her father and her younger brother in 2013, just 52 days apart.

“Joe was the hardest loss and still is the hardest. He was my best friend and closest sibling. And he was my biggest cheerleader through cancer treatments. And he never really got the chance to fight at all. I was with them both when they died. It’s a lot of grief when you have to say goodbye and you can’t do anything. It’s such a deep sadness and such a deep loss.”

The lake property had always been an integral part of her family’s life and legacy. Kate’s father began visiting the family-owned lake cottage in Gillett, Wisconsin in the 1950s, riding north with his family from Chicago. “He was one of 12 kids, so to come up here was a big deal—and it was special to be in nature, the Northwoods, to have that space. He always had great memories of coming up here.”

Kate herself grew up camping at the property, and in 2002, she and her husband Brian were married along the lakeshore. “There was absolutely no other place I would’ve gotten married.”

 After Kate’s parents passed away, she and her brother became part-owners of the property. Kate and her husband eventually grew torn between giving up a family treasure or adding a long commute to Brian’s job.

Stepping out of her life

Kate had a couple of friends who participated in AFC trips, and after some initial reluctance, she signed on for the Peru trip in 2017.

“It was just terrifying to miss two weeks of the kids’ lives,” Kate said. “There was every excuse—and I think it was fear, to find what I might find. I thought it would be just about cancer, and it was really more about grief, and processing so much more than just cancer.”

With every step of the trip, Kate felt like she was unpacking something. One particular moment came after the physically difficult hike up Machu Picchu – the iconic and ancient bucket-list location that had attracted Kate to the trip in the first place.

“I physically struggled with the climb and I felt such shame and so broken down, and it was angry. But the tribe accepted me and gave me this grace even though I was mad as hell. It was just being able to break and not feel judged or shamed. There was just something really liberating about that moment that catapulted me into viewing things differently,” Kate said.

Kate realized it was okay to not be okay, that she could experience grief and emotional pain while allowing herself the space to draw boundaries without guilt.

“It was the first time in my life I wasn’t a sister, a wife, a mother, a daughter or a friend. I could just figure out who I was, and that I needed to change things to keep going.”

One of those changes was deciding to make the leap into a new life on the lake with her family—without worrying that it was the wrong decision or the wrong time.

“In Peru, I had two weeks of basically no contact to marinate with it. When I came back, Brian was exactly on the same page even though we hadn’t really had contact – it was kind of wild.”

New life on the lake

“Sometimes I think you just need to be shaken out of your environment because you can’t help but live in the confines of what you’ve constructed,” Kate said. “This group of people embraced me with no expectations. So it was easier for me to give myself a little more grace.”

Since the Peru trip, Kate has kept a close-knit circle of her fellow “pachamamas” – a term for the Earth goddess of the indigenous Peruvians. Some have spent time with Kate at her special lake home. “I always feel like I can just reach out to them when I just need some good vibes. You feel such a sense of loneliness through grief, through cancer, and then to feel that kinship—it’s so powerful. And it’s OK to sit in the mud.

“I needed someone to believe in me, and this group did. And it just propelled me to be able to do things I never would have been able to do. I wasn’t really partaking in life. It was like… standing back… waiting for the other shoe to fall. And the other shoe’s going to fall whether I partake or not.”

Kate’s life at the lake has also injected new life into the activities that matter to her and to her family, including volunteerism, making it easier for her to give back even in the midst of ongoing cancer treatments.

For example, Kate and her family participate annually in the Sole Burner 5K Walk/Run fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. She and her kids sell items or volunteer for Little Pink Houses of Hope. They volunteer for Ruby’s Pantry in her town, and Kate acts as an AFC ambassador for potential new participants.

“I think for a long time I didn’t feel like I deserved to live, or that I was biding my time. At a certain point, you give up and start thinking that you’re not really living. And in Peru, I felt like I have some life left in me.”

*To learn more about Kate, visit her blog, A Terminal Case of Hope here: https://aterminalcaseofhope.com/