By Debbie Gardner
dgardner@thereminder.com
For patients who’ve faced breast cancer, there’s three stages to life. Before you had breast cancer. During treatment for breast cancer. And life after treatment for breast cancer.
For Cindy Sheridan Murphy, founder of the West Springfield-based nonprofit support organization Each Moment We’re Alive, it was the “after” that was the hardest part.
“During my treatment … when you have cancer … you have a nurse navigator that takes you through the steps of the program, Sheridan Murphy shared with Prime. “After treatment I found you have no one.”
Cindy’s cancer journey
Sheridan Murphy was a 53-year-old dental hygienist and athlete back in 2014 when she came home from a day out exercising with friends and “felt like, this soreness in my breast” and subsequently found a “lump the size of a golf ball.” That lump expanded to the size of an orange by the time she made it to a doctor’s appointment the next day at 4:30 p.m. After an examination and some tests, she was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer.
It was her second breast cancer diagnosis. At age 49, she’d had two lumpectomies, and was told she was “fine,” Sheridan- Murphy shared.
At first, she thought treatment for her second bout of breast cancer would be straightforward as well. “I was thinking mastectomy and I’d be fine,” Sheridan Murphy shared. “But it turned into chemo, radiation, reconstructive surgery and more treatment” as it was discovered the cancer had this time spread to her lymph nodes.
When treatment ended Sheridan Murphy said she was “emotionally wrecked… I had lymphedema and couldn’t return to my work as a dental hygienist. I had challenges both emotional and physical” yet there was no support system as there had been while she was going through her cancer treatments.
“That’s when I hit rock bottom,” Sheridan Murphy admitted. “I felt alone, I suffered with self-doubt.”
Finding strength, and sharing it
In addition to her work as a dental hygienist, Sheridan-Murphy was also a longtime youth soccer coach as well as a life empowerment coach. Seeking a way to move forward after her cancer treatment, Sheidan-Murphy said she fell back on her training and “started coaching myself, dealing with the vulnerability, what I valued and my vision for the future.” Empowered by her own progress overcoming her challenges, in 2016 Sheridan Murphy volunteered to help facilitate two breast cancer support groups, one at the Cancer House of Hope and another for Survivors Journeys.
At one of the meetings, Sheridan Murphy approached a doctor associated with the support groups and pitched the idea of forming a group to support women after breast cancer treatment ended.
“He said, ’give it a try’ and I reached out at a support group,” Sheridan Murphy said. Ten women joined her in a yoga room at Cancer House of Hope to talk about life after breast cancer treatment.
“The stories were the same… “I feel alone … I’m depressed … my life is so much different and I don’t know where to go. Everyone is kind, but they don’t get it,’ Sheridan Murphy said.
“We had changed but the people around us hadn’t changed. It felt like a square peg fitting into a round hole,” Sheridan-Murphy said of the feelings expressed by the group.
“When treatment ends your hair comes back and people assume you are better,” Sheridan Murphy continued. “But the emotional scars are still there, the physical scars are still there.”
Finding her calling
The 10 women met for eight weeks, and during that time Sheridan Murphy realized “There were a lot more women out there struggling with their identity and moving beyond cancer.”
During that same time period Sheridan Murphy was also looking for music for a silent video she had created about her cancer experience for Motives Cosmetics Breast Cancer Awareness Campaign in 2015. She came across Connecticut-based songwriter Debra Lynn Alt, who had written a song to accompany the photographs taken by her friend, Monica Schwartz Baer, who lost her battle with breast cancer. That song, and the photos became part of a musical photographic story inspired by cancer survivors, and a book and CD titled “Each Moment We’re Alive.”
“Please don’t offer sympathy, it’s hard for me to hear how you feel sorry…” Sheridan Murphy quoted from Alt’s song. The words, she said, reflected what the 10 women in the group expressed about their experiences.
“What we felt was a lot of people, when you tell them you have cancer, they give you puppy dog eyes, and that’s not what we want,” Sheridan Murphy said.
“I want to hear about your day, what’s going on with you, not about my cancer,” Murphy continued, explaining that the women she worked with wanted the focus on “normal conversations” of what’s happening in life. They wanted to focus on living, not being cancer survivors, she said.
Finding a like-minded spirit in Alt, in April of 2018 the two women joined forces, forming an LLC with the goal of supporting breast cancer survivors. The women chose to named their organization after Alt’s project honoring her photographer friend, and Each Moment We’re Alive was born.
In 2019 Sheridan-Murphy and Alt decided to convert Each Moment We’re Alive into a nonprofit “because I felt strongly about keeping services free for cancer survivors,” Sheridan-Murphy explained. Since then, all their programming for women going through cancer treatment, and survivors, is provided at no charge to clients.
Forging a path to help others
Sheridan-Murphy explained she used the experience working with that initial 10-women group to craft the nonprofit’s signature Living A New Day Survivorship (L.A.N.D) program, along with survivor-facilitated support groups for breast cancer and subsequently, women who had undergone treatment for other types of cancer. There is also a private Facebook group for cancer survivors, Circle of Angels Continuous Support” where Sheridan-Murphy said individuals can find someone to talk to for support at any hour of the day or night, even “at 3 a.m.,” and a page of links to other breast-cancer related resources such as the American Cancer Society and Rays of Hope.
Recently, Each Moment We’re alive has also launched a program for employers designed to aid them in helping employees going through cancer treatment, or the family of cancer patients who are involved in their care.
“Everything I developed is people asking and researching and finding out yeah, there’s a need for that,” Sheridan-Murphy said.
According to the “Each Moment We’re Alive” website “L.A.N.D – Living a New Day, A New Norm is a guided program that offers you a step-by-step process, paired with knowledge and skills to create positive outcomes for living a sustainable future. It is based on the premise that life after a cancer diagnosis is simply different, and you can not only survive but thrive in the new norm.”
Sheridan-Murphy further explained how L.A.N.D works, “It’s an eight-week program that when [women] are done with their treatment we welcome them in and really help them accept and create a vision for their future,” she said. “If they’re stage 4, it might be getting together with girlfriend for coffee, helping them with what they want to vision now. For others it might be what they want in three, maybe five years,” Sheridan-Murphy said.
The COVID-19 ‘gift’
Sheridan-Murphy said when the world essentially went into lockdown in early 2020, it “changed everything” about how – and where - Each Moment We’re Alive offered support.
From weekly in-person support meetings –the breast cancer support group, for example, met the first and third and Tuesday of every month –Sheridan-Murphy said Each Moment We’re Alive had to figure out how to take that help online.
The move to Zoom, she said, actually turned into a blessing of sorts.
“As we were getting through the pandemic and creating our support groups and resources, we had women reaching out to us from all over the U.S. all looking for this kind of support,” Sheridan-Murphy said, adding they soon had virtual attendees from states such as Michigan and Florida. “The difference is we offer live support, you speak to one of our facilitators, licensed social workers or coaches, you don’t just get handouts.”
Evan as the threats involved in gathering subsided, Sheridan-Murphy said the group has stayed primarily online, one because it offered support to a broader number of survivors and two, because as the world opened up many members found that attending via Zoom was easier as family and work obligations returned.
Her goal has been to create hybrid support groups, with people who can gather in person once a month.
She’s also brought back in-person events, such as a full moon hike to the summit of Peaked Mountain on Aug. 29 that was open to all support group members, the Canines Fur Cancer fundraising walk in June, and an upcoming cornhole fundraiser on Oct. 15 in conjunction with Gary Rome Hyundai to help keep all programming free for participants.
“Gary Rome has been huge in supporting us,” said Sheridan-Murphy. This will be the second cornhole fundraiser to take place at Rome’s car dealership in Holyoke.
Finding her new purpose
Sheridan-Murphy said she’s dedicated her time and talents to “focusing on women getting back into society and feeling whole again.” And she believes everything she has done in life led her to this place, and these people who need her help.
“I worked as a weight management [life] coach, I’ve been a sports coach for 20 years coaching girl’s soccer from youth through high school, and then I found in my career as a dental hygienist I was coaching in dental health,” Sheridan-Murphy said.
“I believe God was talking to me [through my cancer], teaching me where I should be coaching. I feel very strongly that he was leading me on this journey, [saying] ‘you’re a coach, but I need you to coach these people.’”
