Author ‘pays it forward’ with new book: Signing set for Oct. 17

SALISBURY — When she heard the words cancer, Travis Brady said her reaction was utter disbelief.

Now, in remission and eight years out, she has written a book entitled “Make Room for Healing: 40 Tips from a Breast Cancer Survivor,” which she said is a way to pay it forward.

“The book is not a memoir,” Brady said. “It’s really about the tips and tricks and things that helped me get through treatment because I knew I wanted to pay forward a way to make going through breast cancer treatment easier for people that we love. That’s really my mission.”

Raised in Salisbury and serving as vice president of HR for Hedrick Industries, Brady, along with her husband, David Grose and three-year-old daughter Grier, who now live in Chapel Hill, were living in Northern California when she received a diagnosis of breast cancer. This was just five days before they were to move back to North Carolina.

Brady said when she thought about returning home, she said, “I didn’t think I would start my first year off with breast cancer treatment,” but she did feel fortunate to have had family and friends for support plus Duke University and UNC hospitals.

Her mom, Judy Newman, “was right there helping us out every step of the way,” she said.
Newman died about two years ago, but her stepfather, Hank Newman and her dad and his wife, Alice and Burl Brady, are still in the area.

In addition to family support, she said it extended beyond Salisbury as she had joined the Peace Corps and lived in Yemen, as well as in New York and California. Therefore, their support network was spread out with people helping in different ways.

“I was really overwhelmed in the best sense of the word with how many people showed up for us,” she said.

Because of where her cancer was found, under her armpit, she said, “it never even occurred to me that it would be breast cancer.” She just thought it was a swollen lymph node until she had her initial biopsy in California and afterward a lumpectomy at Duke and the diagnosis came back as Stage 3A, estrogen positive, progesterone positive cancer.

“It had traveled to five of my lymph nodes,” Brady said. “So serious, aggressive and something that really took us back.”

She recalled the first biopsy and the doctor telling her it would just be a bump in the road; however, after two more biopsies and surgery, they realized how much more serious it was.

A meeting with the oncology team resulted in the recommended treatment of Chemo 2, which she said is a middle of the road protocol, not the most and not the least.

While thinking what to do, Brady said she received a call from an oncologist friend who reminded her to get a second opinion, something she had not thought of doing since she was getting help from a top 100 doctor.

She searched for another doctor to get that second opinion and learned this doctor’s treatment plan was Chemo 3, a more aggressive type. The doctor told Brady she was young and except for this, she was relatively healthy and she needed to “hit it with all you’ve got.”

Getting that second opinion is something she covers in her book, something she said is “so vital because at the very best you go to somebody else and they recommend the same thing,” or you face a situation similar to hers where two leading cancer doctors suggest two different treatments, and then “I have to make a decision on what feels right for me,” she said.

This is what she did as she thought about it, and having a three-year-old at home, Brady agreed with the doctor and took that second opinion.

It was while she was talking with her oncologist friend that the title of her book came about. As they talked, he said he “could tell that I was going to try to do treatment like I do a project at work. I try to plan it out, have it detailed, know exactly what is going to happen, and he was like, ‘Travis, you have to make way for treatment.’”

Going through this treatment process, Brady said she realized that she had “the opportunity to heal things that had been broken, were not cared for in myself. So that’s why it’s more than make room for treatment, it’s make room for healing,” and thus that became the title.

While going through her cancer, Brady said she didn’t use the words fighting or focus on fighting her cancer, but used a different approach. This started, she said, after having surgery, with drains still in and she in her pajamas everyday. It was then that her young daughter looked at her and said, ‘oh mama, are you sick?’

Being in her pajamas signaled to her daughter that something was wrong.

And while the chemo made her feel horrible, she thought in that moment she didn’t feel sick when it happened, she wasn’t sick from the surgery, and she said, “I took that to heart and started thinking of myself as healed and well. What I realize is that it never resonated with me to say that I was a fighter. It never resonated to say I’m battling because if I am to say that, that means I’m battling myself and ultimately that’s the thing I need to heal.”

Diagnosed in April 2016, she finished her treatments one year later. October rolled around and many continued to reach out asking if she would speak to a loved one going through cancer. It was then she decided to write one thing everyday that helped her get through treatment, she said, which she did on her blog.

Conducting research for a business idea centered around supporting cancer patients, she talked to breast cancer patients to gain an understanding of what would be helpful to them and if her business would be helpful to them.

Her blog disappeared, and she also discovered her business idea was not going to work, but did learn through talking with the patients that what people wanted when they are diagnosed are positive stories and something that reassures them.

After letting her business idea go, she said, “I woke up with the idea for the book and how to organize it.”

This is what Brady said she wished she could have had, “something that reassured me about my treatment and about the fact that I’m going to survive. So part of writing the book is a way to pay it forward, all the tips and help that I got.”

The book contains 40 tips spanning over five sections, Brady said, with the first part dealing with Support, things you do now. The next section is called Prepare, which covers “things when you are getting ready for dose day or getting ready to see your doctor.” Section three is Nourish, nutritional practices she feels helped her. The next section is titled Heal, which centers around things one might not have considered trying previously but is now willing to try. And the last section is Enjoy, which speaks to “cultivating practices that bring me joy,” she said.

Brady said the first couple of years out from diagnosis and treatment, cancer was on her mind many times a day, which is the case for most cancer patients. Now, being eight years out, cancer isn’t something she thinks about every day anymore, “which is a great thing,” she said. However, she did say there are lessons she has learned or been reminded of from the experience.

At the end of her book, Brady said she did something unusual, “and probably one of the things that I think makes it really different is I write a thank you note to my cancer.”

She pointed out that she had forgotten to take care of herself physically, emotionally and “in terms of my joy, enjoyment. I really was trudging through, and the cancer allowed me to reset.”

One of Brady’s joys is dancing, and said, “I need to make some time for that” telling that she forgets little things like this.

When speaking about the book and the stories she heard, she said, “what has encouraged me is that it has actually given me more license to live the life I want to live.”

The book, published by Hay House, a division of Penguin Random House, was launched Oct. 8 and can be ordered at multiple major retailers by visiting travisbrady.com.

On Oct. 17 from 4-6 p.m., Brady will be at South Main Book Company, 110 S. Main St., Salisbury for a book signing. Copies of her book will be available for purchase, plus a reading from the book.

The book will be available in the store afterward for those interested in purchasing a copy at a later time.

In her book Brady points out people, products and places that helped her get through treatment and some of those product companies offered to sponsor her book tour. Therefore, there will be a gift basket of featured products raffled off at the event as well.

Just as Brady said the writing process was cathartic for her and helped her process what she had been through, focusing on ways to support herself and help her health and focus on healthcare, she said it “really gave me something I could control in an uncontrollable situation.”

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