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Most people, when they get a cancer diagnosis, think about survival. Lauren Huffmaster did too, until she realized that surviving and living are two very different things.
Lauren Huffmaster is a metastatic breast cancer survivor and the founder of Adventure Therapy Foundation, where she’s working to reimagine what the cancer experience can look like. Through her work as a speaker, author, and podcast host, Lauren invites others to find meaning, connection, and even joy in the midst of hardship.
Melanie and Lauren first connected through a shared experience of moving through life with cancer, and that shared ground gives this conversation a depth that’s hard to manufacture. Lauren opens with what it actually took to learn how to live with a diagnosis that never fully resolves, and how that process became the foundation for everything she now builds for others.
Much of this conversation is about grief, and not in the way most of us have been trained to think about it. Lauren describes grief as something that layers through everyday life in ways people rarely stop to name: a future that no longer looks the way you imagined, an identity reorganized around a diagnosis, relationships that quietly shift or disappear. She calls these “pinpricks of grief,” and makes the case that unacknowledged, they don’t go away. They accumulate.
Melanie draws that framework directly into the human services field, particularly for families of people with disabilities who carry years of unprocessed grief that the people supporting them rarely think to address.
Lauren also introduces irrational optimism, kinship groups built around shared interests rather than shared diagnoses, and the story behind her children’s book The Adventure Jar, written because cancer is never just one person’s experience.
Melanie closes with a reminder that lands for anyone doing this work: people are often grieving more than we can see, and presence, the genuine kind, is the work.
Topics covered in this episode:
- Grief beyond loss of life: identity, future plans, and relationships
- What families of people with disabilities carry that often goes unaddressed
- Irrational optimism and why the stories we tell ourselves matter
- Kinship groups and shared interest as a path out of isolation
- Asking for help when the need is long-term
- Dreams, courage, and declaring what you believe in
Guest: Lauren Huffmaster, Founder, Adventure Therapy Foundation
Host: Melanie Basil
Connect with Lauren:
- Adventure Therapy Foundation: https://adventuretherapyfoundation.org
- Podcast — Adventure Found: https://adventurefound.org/podcast/
- Instagram: @Lauren Huffmaster | @adventuretherapyfoundation | @canceringcollective
Lauren’s Books:
- Cancering: Exploring the Seasons of Emotional Healing — https://www.amazon.com/Cancering-Exploring-Seasons-Emotional-Healing/dp/B0D6XCGMM3
- 20 Shades of Grief (contributing author) — https://www.amazon.com/20-Shades-Grief-Impacts-Experience/dp/1969864117
Free Children’s Book — The Adventure Jar:
https://www.expose-mbc.com/free-mbc-childrens-book
More from A Side of Hope:
https://linktr.ee/sideofhopepodcast