Episode 41 - Shaunace West: Stronger Than The Storm

This is my longest episode yet but it deserves ALL the time to tell this incredible Everyday Warriors story!

What if “being strong” is the very thing keeping you from healing? Shaunace's story starts with speed, a senior OT by her mid‑20s, a mortgage, a wedding to plan and a body built for aerial silks and pole. Then breast cancer hits. She keeps it secret, rushes back to work after a double mastectomy and reconstruction. She then powers on until pain in her chest reveals metastasis and a fractured sternum. That’s the moment everything truly stops.

What follows is a radical reframe of strength and recovery. Guided by a counsellor who helps unwind childhood beliefs, Shaunace spends 40 days in deep stillness, learns to cry again, and chooses radiation and tamoxifen from a place of sovereignty, not fear. Within two weeks her pain vanishes, challenging the expected timeline. She starts seeing healing as science and nervous‑system safety working together. Gratitude, sunlight and calm become part of her healing journey. A cancer charity’s “feel better” kit packed with endocrine disruptors sparks a new mission; she builds 11:11 Lab, a clean and luxurious skincare brand that later wins awards.

The third diagnosis tries to break that momentum. Medical menopause, a grim prognosis and a hard conversation about kids collide with a pivotal insight. If PET scans track cancer using radioactive glucose, then glucose is fuel. Shaunace pivots to a low‑glucose, animal‑based approach, layers in targeted off‑label medications and botanicals and integrates standard care. Six weeks later, scans show a 75% reduction in tumour sizes, including cleared lung lesions. It’s not anti‑medicine, it’s pro‑agency, blending oncology, metabolism and mindset.

We also dive into life after crisis which includes coaching rooted in NLP, hypnotherapy and breathwork, retreats for high achievers and a VA agency built to free founders from busywork. Shaunace talks candidly about identity, reconstruction, redefining family and why she prefers “clear scans” instead of "cancer free" and “thriver” instead of "survivor". 

If you’ve ever equated worth with doing more, this conversation offers a new blueprint. Choose differently, align your care and build a life that heals while you live it.

Connect with Shaunace on Instagram or her Website

Purchase from 11:11 Lab

Chapters

• 0:01 Welcome, Purpose & Care Disclaimer
• 2:01 Reviews, Support & Book Plug
• 3:33 Meet Sean: High Achiever to Diagnosis
• 6:30 The Reality of Reconstruction
• 10:45 Overwork, COVID, And Return of Pain
• 18:34 Metastasis, Fracture & The Stop
• 22:20 Fasting, Therapy & First Breakthroughs
• 28:20 Choosing Radiation On Her Terms
• 32:10 Mind, Science & Rapid Relief
• 36:10 Identity, Products & Toxins
• 42:08 Building 11:11 Lab & A New Pace
• 47:12 Fear Returns, Third Diagnosis
• 51:30 Menopause, Mortality & Bali Reset
• 56:20 Rethinking Cancer: Metabolic Lens
• 1:02:00 Diet Switch, Off‑Label Stack, Results
• 1:07:20 Coaching, Breathwork & Transformations
• 1:13:20 Serial Entrepreneur & VA Agency
• 1:18:10 Redefining Family & Body
• 1:23:00 Clear Scans, Language & Gratitude
• 1:28:00 Closing, Subscribe & Share

Transcript

Trudie Marie: 0:01

Welcome to the Everyday Warriors Podcast, the perfect space to speak my truth and dive into deep conversations with others. This podcast is about celebrating everyday warriors, the people who face life's challenges head-on, breaking through obstacles to build resilience, strength and courage. Join me, your host, Trudy Marie, as I sit down with inspiring individuals who have fought their own battles and emerge stronger, sharing raw, real and authentic stories in a safe space. Allowing you to explore, question, and find your own path to new possibilities. Let us all embrace the warrior within and realize that while no one is walking in your shoes, others are on this same path, journeying through life together. Please note that the following podcast may contain discussions or topics that could be triggering or distressing for some listeners. I aim to provide informative and supportive content, but understand that certain things may evoke strong emotions or memories. If you find yourself feeling overwhelmed or in need of support while listening, I encourage you to pause the podcast and take a break. Remember that it is okay to prioritise your well-being and seek assistance from trained professionals. There is no shame in this. In fact, it is the first brief step to healing. If you require immediate support, please consider reaching out to Lifeline on 13, 11, 14 or a crisis intervention service in your area. Thank you for listening and please take care of yourself as you engage with the content of this podcast. Love the Everyday Warriors Podcast. It would mean the world to me if you were to leave a five-star review to ensure that the Everyday Warriors podcast is heard by more listeners around the world. You can also support the show for as little as $5 with a one-time donation or by becoming a monthly subscriber. Your contribution helps me to continue bringing you inspiring stories of everyday warriors who overcome challenges to find strength, resilience and new possibilities in life. Head to the link to buy me a coffee and fuel the next episode. Every bit counts. It is my memoir of hiking the 1,000 kilometre Bibbleman track. A journey that was as much about finding my way back to myself as it was about conquering the trail through the highs and lows and everything in between. This book is taken from my journals and is my raw and honest experience of overcoming trauma and embracing the strength within. Grab your copy now. Just head to the link in the show notes and let's take this journey together. Welcome to another episode of the Everyday Warriors Podcast. And today I am here with a lady who was actually referred to me by MG, who appeared on the show back in June, and I am so glad that we connected. So I would like to welcome to the show Sean C from Perth.

Shaunace West: 3:52

Thank you very much. It's an honor to be here.

Trudie Marie: 3:55

You're so welcome. I'd like to start your story back where I think life changed for you quite dramatically, uh, which I believe happened around 2019.

Shaunace West: 4:06

Yes, that is absolutely where everything changed for me. So 2019 is a huge year for me. I think that any everything that that could have happened possibly happened in that year and the next. And uh prior to 2019, I was I prided myself on being a high achiever. So 2019, I was uh working full-time as a pediatric occupational therapist. I had worked really, really hard to become a senior in my role. So I was at a company where I go from schools to homes to uh daycares, and I work with the teachers and the educators and the children one-on-one or in educational sessions, deliver workshops. And at that time I really, really wanted to become a senior in my role, but it usually took about 10 years to do that, and I was only about three years out of uni. Maybe no, at that time I might have been about five, but at three years I made that that connection and became a senior in that space. 2019 was also when we just moved into our new house, taken on a mortgage. I had just gotten engaged, so I was planning a wedding, also planning a honeymoon. And February 2019 was when I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Because of my high-achieving self and being this independent woman, a strong independent woman, as my parents raised me to be, the very fact that I had been diagnosed with cancer just threw me for I was in total denial. I didn't want anyone to know, and so I kept it as secret as I could. I snuck out of work for a few weeks to go have a double mastectomy and a reconstruction, and then I came back well before I was ready and just continued working like nothing had changed. I kept planning the wedding, kept planning the honeymoon because I wasn't able to do any of the physical things that I did before the double mastectomy. So before the double mastectomy, I was training with the local circus school as an aerial silks performer. I was also teaching uh in disadvantaged children in the circus school doing that. I was an advanced pole dancer, literally flipped myself upside down with my bare arms, just you know, abs ab city and kickboxer, and anything you can imagine, rock climber, I was doing. And so I couldn't do any of them when I had my double mastectomy. And when I say I went back to work before I was ready, I mean I couldn't even curl my fingers to open a car door because of the surgery. So and my job involved driving to all these different places, so I actually had to back in to my car from behind and unlock the car door that way. So that was um, yeah, that was the like a completely uh what kind of it would was a time that I felt like I needed to prove that this weakness was not me. I did not want to identify as a cancer patient. And so yeah, go on.

Trudie Marie: 7:56

Yeah, I was just going to say, like just listening to you list off all of those things that you are literally in the prime of your life having succeeded at becoming a senior in your chosen career path, you've taken on a mortgage, you're engaged, you're planning a wedding, you are physically active in the fact that you are going to circus school, you're pole dancing, you're kickboxing, like you're fit and healthy, and everything seems to be going right. To then just receive this diagnosis that and have this surgery, like we're not talking minor surgery here, we're talking major surgery, not only to have something removed, but the reconstruction as well. That's a big deal. And I guess you weren't very old at the time either.

Shaunace West: 8:45

I was 27.

Trudie Marie: 8:47

Yeah. That's life-changing in the prime of your life for anybody.

Shaunace West: 8:53

Yeah, and I I absolutely agree that the reconstruction component of the surgery made the recovery so much bigger than it could have been. If I had just chosen to have the mastectomy, I'm sure that I would have been back to doing things within months, maybe. But the fact that I chose to have a reconstruction at the same time meant that my recovery was actually years rather than months. And I had to have multiple surgeries to be able to find finalise the reconstruction. So yes, I was absolutely in the prime of my life with everything going for me. I thought that I had the best possible life, even in terms of what I was eating. I was a hundred percent plant-based, gluten-free vegan. And I had been for a year prior to that. So I was physically fit and healthy, I was mentally fit and healthy, I was doing really well in my career, doing really well financially. Like literally, I had checked all of the life boxes.

Trudie Marie: 10:00

Yeah, that's like just hearing you say that, I can only begin to comprehend that. Like my mum has been through her own breast cancer journey. She had a single mastectomy with no reconstruction, and I've watched what she's had to experience going through that, but she's doing this in her 60s. So I'm just trying to imagine what that was like at 27 to, you know, your life literally changes right before your eyes.

Shaunace West: 10:29

Yeah, absolutely. But in that case, I did everything that I could to not allow that to happen and to sort of sweep it under the rugs and just keep on going like nothing ever happened. Uh, just, you know, the wedding went ahead, and me being my high-achieving self, I needed to try to get back to that physical, physically fit well state, but I couldn't with my newly reconstructed muscles and tendons, and everything had been placed in different sections. Uh, I'm not sure how much you know about how a reconstruction is done, but there's usually three different ways that you can do a reconstruction. The first way is to use the muscles from your uh back, and because I was a rock climber, a pole dancer, an aerial silk performer, like there was no chance anyone was taking my muscles from my back. So the other option was to take the fat from your tummy because it has a blood supply in your lower tummy. But the the surgeon told me that I just didn't have enough fat in my tummy to be able to do that. And so the only option I had was to use implants. But when it comes to a breast reconstruction that has no breast tissue, a usual breast augmentation, a boob job, which so many people after this tried to say that they understood where I was coming from because they'd had a boob job, it is nothing like a boob job. Most boob jobs they sit the uh implant on top of the existing tissue. But because I had no breast tissue, they had to prime my breast, uh, my breast muscle, so my pectorial muscle from my bone and then put a tissue expander in it, and then every week for the next, I think, three to six months, I would go into the doctor's office and he would inject more saline solution into the tissue expander to stretch my pectorial muscle until it was big enough and stretched enough that we could put a permanent implant in there. So completely different.

Trudie Marie: 12:39

That's like an effort in itself. Like, not only are you dealing with this whole idea of having to have this reconstructive surgery, but to have so much physical impact on your body, uh, like I never really fully got that that was another option of doing it. I've heard of the other two options that you talked about, but I haven't actually heard of that particular option. So that's new to me as well. And what an ordeal to have to go through.

Shaunace West: 13:06

Yes, which meant that I had to have a second surgery as well. And given that I was also getting married, going on a honeymoon, like doing all of these other parts to the puzzle, which you know, weddings are a huge part to like everything was about planning this wedding. And because I had got diagnosed in February, two weeks later was getting wheeled in for the double masteptomy, the wedding was planned for September. So I literally had like I don't know, months to plan this wedding. Anyway so I came out of that surgery knowing that uh the only thing I could really do in terms of exercise and recovery was yoga. And instead of just using yoga as my way of healing and recovering, I, my high-achieving self, needed to become the yoga teacher. So, as well as, you know, getting married and and taking on a mortgage, I bought a new car that that year as well, and it was completely outright cash, like it was a really big celebratory milestone. Like there was all these parts to it, but then I also added on a 12-month yoga teaching training. On top of that, so we fast track to a year later, we're now February the following year, and I'm getting my second surgery done. I've just returned from our honeymoon, and we've just had Christmas, and February 2020 is when COVID hit. So, amongst all of that, I'm then having a second surgery. I am about to uh complete my yoga teaching training degree, so I become a yoga teacher as well, and I start to feel uh this pain in my chest, and this pain sort of radiates through my left shoulder, and so I start seeing a physio, and we uh, you know, agree that it it must be just complications from the surgery because I'd only had the surgery like a month or two earlier. Meanwhile, everything changed in terms of my work because now COVID had hit, and at being an occupational therapist, I wasn't able to stop working. I I was an essential worker, so I had to put on all my PPE and still go to all of the daycares, still go to all the schools, still go to all the homes to do all of this. But in addition to my nine to five, it also became open the laptop at 7am to get all of the online stuff done because now we're moving everything to online and then go to work and then come home, continue working online until 7 p.m. So my sort of seven and a half hour days became 12-hour days with no extra pay, and the stress was just amounting to it, was just so so much that I remember actually just calling my boss and saying, I need to take some mental health days, I just need to take some days, and they granted that at the time they didn't have any sort of mental health days in the contract. But when I asked for that, they granted two days for me, no questions asked, and then implemented a mental health uh two days per year for everyone. So that was actually really great for that. But I I took those two days off and it was great because for those two days there was no stress, there was no pressure, no pushing. I at that time had a team that I was looking after. So I in addition to doing all of my uh KPIs, I was also managing a team. I think I got to a team of nine by that stage of therapists that I was helping. I was also taking on students, so students were shadowing me and I was going to their, uh they were they were contracted at a school, so I would be making sure I added my hours there. I had the highest KPIs of anyone in the company. I had higher KPIs than anyone, any of my therapists that actually worked for me. And so I was basically setting them up for failure because I was clearly overdoing it all to try and prove something, and I still don't know what. But I took those two mental health days and then I returned back to work and nothing changed. Everything was exactly the same, and I remember driving home from work, just stuck in traffic, trying to go from north of Perth down to south of Perth through the through the tunnels, through the through the narrows, and uh just sea of break lights ahead of me. And I had I was basically stationary and I was just in a space of overwhelm and just exhausted and just just done with it all. And I remember throwing my hands up in the air and just like going, I just wish it would all stop. And at the time, I didn't mean life, I just meant like everything in it. Like it was just too much, everything was too much, and I didn't know how to make it stop. And it was only weeks after that moment that I got a scan done to see what this pain in my chest was, and it turns out that it was cancer, and it had returned in my bones, it had returned in my sternum, and the pain was that the tumour had grown so much that it had fractured my bones, it had grown from the the marrow of the bone and opened the bone ups because it had grown so big.

Trudie Marie: 19:05

Wow, so I'm you've said so much in that section of just what you were dealing with at work, like if it wasn't hard enough for everybody else during that whole COVID period and what people were having to deal with, you are first and foremost dealing with your own medical issues, which is then causing stress in the workplace because the workplaces become more stressful because of the conditions of COVID, and then to top it all off, you're now diagnosed a second time because the cancer has spread, metastasized to your bones, and not just a little bit, but to the point where you've suffered a fracture because the tumour has grown so large. I mean, you've dealt with it all, hun.

Shaunace West: 19:51

Yeah, not to mention that all the pressure I put on myself to be the highest, you know, KPI that in the company, have the most in the team. Like I was putting that additional pressure on myself to try and prove that I was, I don't know, worthy of being where I was.

Trudie Marie: 20:09

Yeah, and I mean I know what that's like being a high achiever and always striving to be to be more. And there comes a point where even the universe turns around and says, hold on, you need to slow down. And I think in your case, this is it's not the nicest of situations to be in, of course, but this is your was it a wake-up call for you to literally go, Oh, I need to slow down here?

Shaunace West: 20:36

Yeah, I couldn't think of anything else other than death that would have made me stop doing what I was doing. I literally asked the universe for it to all stop, and this it was delivered to me weeks later in the most like devastating way. But I can't think of anything else that could have happened. I could have broken a leg, I could have, you know, nothing else would have actually made me stop. I had already had cancer before and I still didn't stop.

Trudie Marie: 21:05

Yeah, you said that you went back to work way too soon and kept going, and now this was a revisit to be like you didn't get the message the first time, maybe we need to listen the second time. How was that for you? One, did you stop? And two, what was your treatment this time around? Because obviously cancer in the bones is completely different to breast cancer.

Shaunace West: 21:29

Yes, you're right. So it is it's still classed as breast cancer, but because it's metastasized to the bones, it's uh you can't just replace bones, you can't just take out a bone. If they took out my my chest, like there's nothing holding my chest together. The tumor was holding my chest together. So the pain that I had that was radiating through my my shoulders was the fractures that my my sternum had received from the tumour, and it was growing really quickly. So did I stop? Yes. Short answer, yes. Long answer, I stopped everything. I straight away went, you know, now it's not just you know an inconvenience, it is literally life, life or death. So I gave my notice in that work, said, you know, uh I'll I'll do one more week to tidy everything up and then I'm off in indefinitely. Uh they said, oh, what are we going to tell everyone? I said, just let me do Houdini. Let me just do a sneaky exit. You don't need to tell anyone anything. And they were like, yeah, but you're like a big face in the company. Everyone's gonna notice for them to notice. If they do ask, just say I'm I'm on holidays, I'm away. Like, you know, we don't need to explain anything to anyone, it's not their business. So I stopped work. Um, I also I was also at that time, I was teaching yoga on Sundays. So I was working Monday to Friday, seven till seven, and then also teaching yoga on Sundays, uh um Sunday mornings. I basically just had one and a half days off a week. So I stopped that as well. I stopped everything until all I had left was eating and sleeping. And so I thought with my busy mind, with my high-achieving self, instead of, you know, coming out of this with an idea about what I was going to do, like coming out of it with clarity on my life, I would probably fixate on the one thing that I could do, which was eating, and turn that into some big thing, maybe a recipe book, or maybe I'd run around town trying to find special ingredients to create new recipes or something like that. So I decided to take that out too. So for 40 days and 40 nights, I swallowed no food.

Trudie Marie: 23:58

Was that a complete water fast?

Shaunace West: 24:01

Yeah, so I did do the water fast for 20 days and then I did juice fasting for the following 20. I hired a fasting coach who basically said that I was not heavy enough to do the full 40 days without it being like real repercussions. So I'm not a light person by all means. I'm not thin or anything like that. I am very average. I'm actually quite heavy because of the muscle that I had from all the activities that I was doing. But in saying that, I didn't have excess weight on me to lose over 40 days. So we decided 20 days for just water and then 20 days on just juice. And that I think is the biggest treatment I ever have done in my life because it forced me to slow down when I had no energy because I had no food in my body, I couldn't do anything. I had no way of concentrating on anything. I was really I couldn't even go for a walk without being puffed out. Not that I was allowed to because of COVID. I was pretty much confined to my own house anyway. And so most of the days I spent, we it was winter in in Perth, and we had a beautiful, beautiful winter that winter with so many beautiful sunny days. So most of the days I was just sitting outside in the sunshine on my blanket, and yeah, it was just journaling. I hired a counselor at the time, and we did online sessions. I met with her every single week. Her name was Ray, and she was incredible. She was also a psychotherapist and a medium. And so when I first met with her, it was two days after the reoccurrence of the diagnosis. And I was such a skeptic at the time. I was a skeptic of anything that wasn't science driven. Everything had to be see it to believe it. I had a science degree, so any woo-woo was absolute down the drain. So I met with her because someone told me that they'd helped her, and you know, she she was like, okay, so what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna pull some cards and then I'm just gonna close my eyes and feel into the energy and all this sort of stuff. And I was just rolling my eyes as if, and I did not let her know what I was going through because I didn't want to give anything away. And in the end, she uh she goes from complete smiles, like this is what I'm gonna do. I'm like, Yeah, fine, whatever, do it. And uh she closes her eyes and instantly everything just shifts, and her whole face just dropped, and she opened her eyes and she goes, This doesn't make sense. Someone is sick, but you look so healthy. I don't understand, but it has to be you, and it could have been anything in the whole world, but she used those words which was so spot on. It was the first sort of opening into this new world that I had with her.

Trudie Marie: 27:16

Wow. I mean, especially for somebody like you said, you're a skeptic, you're science-driven, your science background with your career, you're referred to this person who is supposed to help you. And the first words out of her mouth have you literally going, What the hell have I got myself into? Yet she couldn't be more pinpoint accurate into your journey. How did that change for you moving forward? Obviously, you said you had weekly sessions with her, but what opened up inside of that whole other world of the non-science, I suppose?

Shaunace West: 27:53

Yeah, so she I just paid her for a one-off session, and she ended up finishing that session going, I just have a pool to help you, and I don't even want to charge you for this because I see you as I see helping you as helping my daughter because she had a daughter that was a similar age, and basically she decided to meet with me every single week on Zoom and helped me dive into why I was driven the way I was, the core beliefs that I created as a child that no longer served me. There were things like my parents raised me to be this strong independent woman. Yet to me, strong meant physically strong. It meant not showing emotion, so mentally strong. So you could see everything in my life was exactly that. It was strong physically, mentally, career-driven, financially, everything was so strong that we had to break down that strength. And she said to me, What if you were not strong? What if you were weak? What if you were dependent? What if you were low achieving? And instantly my whole body, my gut, everything about me said my parents wouldn't love me, which I know as an adult is so untrue. But that is what I had taught myself that I needed to be all these things because if I didn't, my parents wouldn't love me, which was not the truth, and so over that time with her, I reconstructed what the truth was, which was that they would love me regardless and unconditionally.

Trudie Marie: 29:45

Which they had probably proven to you time and time again throughout your diagnosis and the support and love they had for you, given what you were going through medically. But it's amazing what our bodies hold on to, it's amazing what stories we tell. ourselves so many times that they become the truth for us. And it's not until we have that experience of working with somebody that we can actually, like you said, start to look at those childhood traumas, look at those values and beliefs that we created when we were younger that we are still telling ourselves in our adult lives that possibly no longer service.

Shaunace West: 30:25

Absolutely. So the next those 40 days were the hardest days of my life harder than recovering from a double mastectomy, harder than getting to to day 13 on just water, getting to day 14 on just water. I had to go from getting through day to day to getting through hour to hour to getting through minute to minute. When we got to day 18, day 19, day 20, they were the hardest days of my life. Once I got to juice it felt so easy. It felt so easy. But what happened when it got when I came to juice is that I started getting this fear creeping in that I was then 20 days on water so thin. My bones were jutting out. And so this tumor was so visible on my body it was like a big mountain with a tent set up on it. And you could see it through my t-shirts you could see it through clothes. Luckily it was winter so I could wear scarves if I needed to go anywhere. But it was so painful. I couldn't breathe without it hurting. I couldn't sleep without it hurting I couldn't drive without it hurting. And once I entered this juice stage I felt like it just decided to take on a world on its own and just grow and grow and grow. And my fear grew with it. So by the time I finished the 40 day fast and had another scan we actually saw that it had grown so rapidly this tumor was now I think it was like it was I feel like it was six and a half centimeters but that doesn't sound right that might have been the original one. Anyway it was huge still a decent size yeah it was huge and the the doctor um was very very condescending he basically took one look at me and I was so thin so frail my whole like everything about me was just withdrawn and he was just like you need to do something this is unacceptable basically and up until that point one of the things that Ray had asked me was when was the last time you cried like how many times have you cried since your diagnosis and I answered very honestly that I hadn't I hadn't cried. She asked me if I had cried in my first diagnosis. I said I cried a little bit not really I almost cried when I was in hospital after my mastectomy when they told me that I should have chemo I started to a little bit cry then but other than that I hadn't cried since I was 11 years old. That's huge for you to be so detached from your body that you could not express emotions because most people will bottle up for a certain period or for certain things but they will find release somewhere along the line but for you to have not one but two cancer diagnoses and to not be emotive during that time I I have no words on that like how how did that reshape you and and what did you do to literally go through that crying I suppose episode because you I guaranteed that's where you're leading to yeah so I do have a memory when I was 11 I worked through this with Ray that basically it was such a trivial event it wasn't traumatic it wasn't anything other than my childhood best friend calling me a crybaby when she hurt my feelings and I decided and she told all my friends that I was a crybaby. And so I decided from that moment that I was never going to be a crybaby and every time we came to a point where people would cry I could feel the tears at the brim but there was no way I was allowing them to fall over because I was not going to be called a crybaby. So that's why I I didn't cry and it feels so trivial because it wasn't this big traumatic event but we do get to this point where I've received this scan. We've come home I've got it's just my husband and I at home and uh prior to that we were trying for children but we basically put that on the back burner going nope this is not a priority right now we just need to get through this and he said to me what are we going to do and I just said I am in no condition right now to be able to make a decision about this and that's when I finally let go and I finally just allowed myself to be a mess and it was the messiest messiest mess that I've ever experienced and my husband was a mess and I was a mess and we were just messes together and uh the treatment options that I had been given to my to me was uh the doctor had said basically you need to do radiation which at that time in my mind was this massive big toxic thing that would kill me essentially anyone that I knew that had been through cancer okay been through cancer treatment they die. I don't know anyone who's survived cancer and if they do it comes back and they die from that or something happens like I just didn't have any good connections with cancer and treatment. So any treatment options scared the shit out of me. So they he wanted me to go on this drug called tamoxifen which you're probably aware of and do radiation. Chemo wasn't an option uh he said that that was a last resort at this stage because we were looking at metastasized cancer in in the bones and it was inoperable so we're gonna do all of these things first and if none of them work then we're gonna go with chemo. So I was so scared and that day was my breaking point where I just let everything go. I was an absolute mess. I texted Ray said I need to to speak with you tomorrow morning like I don't know where my head's at I don't know what I'm gonna do I just need to have a chat and she said that she was going on holidays the next day but she'll book me in at like 6 a.m before she leaves which is so so beautiful and so that night I didn't make a decision I just let it all go and that is where the magic happened because the very next morning I woke up knowing exactly what I was going to do and I felt so clear about it. I didn't need to speak with Ray my husband came to give me a kiss goodbye uh to leave for work and I said to him I know what I'm going to do and he straight away just stops going okay what what are you going like what what are we what are we doing and I just said I'm I'm gonna take tamoxen and I'm gonna do the radiation and it's gonna work and I just knew that it was going to work and that day I called the hospital booked in my radiation session which I don't know if you are aware but they tattoo you I went in for tattoos that day they uh they tattoo you on your body where they're going to line up the laser beams every day for radiation and I uh started taking to oxen that day and I was on my way home from the hospital and I realized I hadn't told my parents and that's when it clicked to me that I wasn't doing this for anyone else and that was such a huge thing for me because my parents wanted nothing more than for me to listen to the doctors. So did my husband so did everyone around me but I was so resistant to it because I didn't want to make a decision based on fear or based on what someone else wanted or someone else's opinions. So this realization that I was on the way home and I hadn't I'd done all of this without even informing my parents was huge and I called my mum and told her I'm on the way home from my radiation planning session. This is what I'm planning to do and she I could feel was holding on so hard not to let the tears brim and be strong for me.

Trudie Marie: 39:21

I mean that's incredible that you were able to not only completely break down and have this mess as you called it of emotional unleashing because realistically you've stored this up for the last 15 to 20 years. Like it's not oh that happened yesterday let's just release it. This is like multiple years brewing and inside of that and just being that vulnerable to let it all go that you got clarity not just for your healing journey but to be able to make decisions for you and prioritize yourself in a way that you'd probably even though you say you're a high achiever and you've done things it was always because of something else and so to actually have this clarity that's just about you that's you're the priority and that no one else matters like kudos to you because that's such an enormous breakthrough.

Shaunace West: 40:21

Thank you thank you yeah it was huge and the next few weeks uh was a completely different experience so since that one day every day after that the sun was shining everything was beautiful I had such gratitude for waking up every single day and I would skip into the radiation clinic and I would I had long brown hair at the time tanned skin from sitting in the winter sun all winter and would wear these tiny little shorts because I'd been in the sun even though it was a winter day and um I'd skip in go grab my number that tells me what chair to sit in go grab my gown and I'd go sit in the chair and I'd walk past all these people that were old and frail with no hair in wheelchairs and they just look at me walking past going she does not belong here and I knew that I was doing something really incredible right there and then in my healing and 10 days after that decision my pain had completely halved I I was starting to breathe with more ease I was driving with more ease I was sleeping with more ease and a week after that the pain had completely gone like absolutely gone zilt nothing. I still had a fractured chest but there was no pain there anymore and I had noticed that the tent that had set up on the mountaintop had actually been packed away. The mountaintop was still there but the tent had gone like it had completely smoothed out this cone shape had started becoming around hill and I was so like motivated by how I could already physically see and feel these changes and so when I had my meeting with my radiation specialist about two weeks in he said how are you going? What are you what are you finding like let's just have a chat and I knew that I was now no longer in any pain and the tent had been packed away so I asked him what am I expecting to see right now and he literally chuckled. He looked at me and chuckled saying you're not supposed to see anything right now I'm like what what what do you mean like I'm seeing things and he says no you've you've got 25 rounds of radiation you have five weeks of radiation you don't see the effects until you finish treatment that's when you see the treatment has worked and I thought okay well maybe it's the tamoxifen like the drug that I'm on that's that must be the thing that's working so I asked him about the tamoxifen he goes no you it takes six weeks to get into your system like you're only two weeks in and that is when I knew that it was me that was healing me not the treatment not anything it was me that made the decision that whatever I chose was going to work and that how powerful the mind is you know I read a study on this new chemo drug and they had a test group and a the one that was taking the drug and one that thought they were taking the drug they'll just the placebo yeah the placebo they just had uh salty water getting infused into them 30% of the saline solution group lost their hair they were just receiving salty water.

Trudie Marie: 43:54

Yeah it's amazing the the power of the mind and I need to ask you because even when you said about talking with Ray and having the sessions with Ray you came from this such science strong background that you just had no idea about anything on like you said the woo side yet here you are in front of a doctor saying you're two weeks in you're not going to see any results until five or six you're already seeing results you already know that you're starting to heal what was that like for you having to almost jump the fence so to speak well see the thing is I never jumped the fence it's still science based I had learned through all of my research over that time and talking with Ray that at a cellular level your body when it's in fight flight chronic stress cannot heal but as soon as you open it up to love to peace to gratitude this cell opens up to healing so even at a science level it's still not woo.

Shaunace West: 45:01

True yeah so we can still see that even that that science that quantum physics that all of this there there is stuff there that proves that all of this is possible but it did change my if you can't see it I don't believe it side of things.

Trudie Marie: 45:22

Got it and how did that then progress your treatment moving forward like obviously you're sitting here today what was that like then going forward from that experience so the next year was pretty incredible.

Shaunace West: 45:39

We do go through a bit of heartbreak after that but the next year uh so we got to the end of the five weeks and that whole hill side had moved on it was just a flat plane now they had uh completely flattened it out ready to plant a new house uh but it was I was in such a new space of I'm trying to work out what is my new identity like now that I'm not working full time and I never wanted to do that again I am still like attached to being an occupational therapist but I'm not as attached to it anymore. I'm still attached to my long dark hair because that's been my whole identity for my whole life but maybe I don't really need it. Like there was all these bits and pieces in here that I was exploring I was exploring like what I was putting in and on my body and one of the things that um happened during my radiation was I got invited to a uh makeup workshop a look good feel better makeup workshop and I couldn't think of anything worse than being in a room full of cancer patients getting makeup applied to them. So I filled out the forms politely ticking no and then the following week they actually sent me a package with all of this skincare and makeup and I assume it's because they thought I couldn't attend and so they sent it to me. And what I found was I started looking at what was in these products and it was full of carcinogens, neurotoxins and endocrine disruptors and it did not go past me that they had given me a cancer foundation had given a cancer patient with a hormone driven cancer mind you cancer causing and hormone disrupting products. So I then started the journey of trying to find better products. I started changing up all my cleaning products all of my makeup and skincare was the one thing that I really really struggled with. There were so many cleaning products out on the market now. It's amazing like they've been around for a really long time but skincare the natural products were a bit shit to be fair and even if they were somewhat okay they didn't give that beautiful luxury feeling they didn't give that you are worthy of these fine products and this box was full of fine products there was $300 foundations from France and the radiation people the the nurses they were like you just use QV QV at at the cameras the one that you buy in one liter tubs that's disgusting why would I want to do that everyone gets these beautiful products and I got to buy QV so I wondered what if this was my purpose what if I'm supposed to create this product and so I did and I I called it 111 lab. I'd never done business before never ever had done business before I'd always been in the health industry and here I was going all right where am I going to find a manufacturer to make these products how am I going to find a cosmetic formulator to actually do you know all of these different lotions and creams and what even am I going to create with them? Like how do I know what what to put in them and am I supposed to know what to put in them and then what where do I get the labels from where do I get the bottles from so all of these things I had to figure out. And it was all before Christmas of that year that I had decided that and launched it the following year. Right before Christmas my family and I decided to go on a family holiday. We weren't allowed to travel out of the state yet because of COVID but we hired RVs and went down south and it was during that time that we decided to get a beautiful little puppy dog. Because children was you know a bit of a moot point at that stage we thought why not get a beautiful little puppy dog? I'm not going to be working full time anymore I'm gonna be at home I can look after this beautiful life and so we got this little cavoodle called Ruby and she taught me so much because up until we got her I was between the end of my fast and up until we got her was probably about six months and every single day I was out and about doing something. I can't even tell you what I was doing but I never was at home and so I was trying to fill my days and once I got her she gave me permission to stay at home with her because I had to look after her and just be there for her because she's this tiny little puppy and whenever I would leave for five minutes I'd come back and she'd be waggling her tail and she lives so in the moment gratitude for every single moment that she lives and I thought I can I can learn so much for her. So the following year was literally me going to yoga 930 classes so I could sleep in not waking up to an alarm creating this new business this new skincare line and raising a gorgeous little puppy.

Trudie Marie: 51:05

That's such a nice place to kind of come to after the trauma that you've been through in the last couple of years to find the simple gratitude in your weekly routine of creating something from nothing with your skincare line and to love another little life that okay it's not children for the time being but your body is not ready for that given the trauma it's been through but you still then can focus your attention somewhere else and have that pure joy on a daily basis.

Shaunace West: 51:39

Yeah absolutely so for a little while it was looking really really good I had gotten my skincare line to a place where it was being delivered all over the country and it paid for me to go to a conference in the Gold Coast and go to this awards night where my products actually won awards. So it was such an incredible experience to be at this event with a literal champagne tower and take a champagne from this pyramid of champagnes and then go and get my medal that says that I'm an award winning product business. Like it was just absolutely surreal and from there it just took off but at the same time this creeping fear started coming back in because while I was actively doing something I was actively doing radiation or I was actively working with Ray or I was actively doing some sort of healing treatment I felt like my mind that was this powerful thing was ruling the roost and doing a really really fucking good job at it. But then when all of that sort of laid off and I wasn't really doing anything the fear started creeping in again of what if it comes back what if I don't think I could go through it a third time. I I think I just don't think I can do it again. And we got to two years after that second diagnosis and we'd booked a trip to Bali to celebrate getting to two years and the scan was the week before we were leaving for Bali. We got that scan back and it was not good news it was uh the cancer had returned but this time it had returned in my sternum again in my breast the same place it was originally and this time in my lungs so I was looking at a very very different prognosis from the last two diagnoses.

Trudie Marie: 53:51

Wow like you've had two years of a healing journey you've had this wonderful moment of celebrating and congratulations too by the way on having an award winning product line because that's an achievement in itself regardless of what journey you've been on but to then be looking forward to this holiday you already had the fear sneak in and to now have that confirmed that what am I gonna do third time round so what did you do?

Shaunace West: 54:22

I gave up I completely just gave up I fell in a hole I not for long not for long mind you but when I was told in that hospital clinic room that it had returned I just said fine whatever like I'd been fighting for so long to do what I I had decided to do and it all had come to this and so I just handed the control over to the doctor and said fuck it. What do I gotta do? You just tell me and I'll do it like I don't I'm not even gonna try anymore. And so he had said that I needed to start getting these injections into my tummy every single month to shut down my reproductive system so I would be in menopause. And the reason for that is because the only drug that I could take was this drug that only works in postmenopausal women. And so they had to put me into menopause so that I could then take this drug. So not only was I getting injections but I was also taking a very very potent drug on top of that which I would take every day for the rest of my life and I would take have these injections every month as long as I stay in non-menopause pre-menopausal but the thing was when uh my husband had had said to the doctor okay had said to the doctor okay so what are we looking at time wise? You know we're looking at like five, ten years that kind of thing and he's he just shook his head and just said years if you're lucky so we were not in a good place.

Trudie Marie: 56:03

And putting you into perimenopause I have to ask does that then basically cancel out the opportunity of ever being able to bear children?

Shaunace West: 56:11

Correct and it's not perimenopause it's menopause. So we take a fully functioning reproductive system and overnight or you know with the injection over the next couple of weeks it goes from fully functioning to completely dormant. So yes it takes out the opportunity to have kids but I did I did say this to the doctor what about kids and he said basically if you're his I can't remember his exact words but basically his words were around there's no point having kids if their mum's not going to be around.

Trudie Marie: 56:44

Oh wow yeah but that's a pretty negative response to like you said you'd already put your the idea of having children on hold because of your cancer treatment and that was still very much in your future plans. So now to not only have that potentially taken away but then a doctor to say well what's the point anyway I can only begin to imagine what was going through yours and your husband's minds at that time.

Shaunace West: 57:17

Yeah yeah it was a very very low point and my mum I didn't want to tell my mum because anytime I talk to my mum about something to do with this she would usually just hang up because she just couldn't talk or she would hand the phone to dad and I just wouldn't hear her like she just could not just bring herself to be functional. And so I didn't want to tell her this but of course I had to tell her this so I'm in the waiting room to get this injection. I literally walked from the clinic room where he said the cancer's come back and across the waiting room is the uh chemo ward where I was going to get the injection. So I just walked across sat in the waiting chair to hear my name get called out and I called my mum and I think she could hear the defeat in my voice because instead of her struggling to be functional herself and me being strong for her she said to me the words that picked me back up and she said you have done this before everything apart from this one thing is beautiful and healthy let's just get through this one thing you can do it and that's all I needed to then pick up my big girl pants and walk into the room to get the injection and this injection is a bloody big injection. It's not a liquid it's an injection that is a pellet like a tablet they inject a tablet into my tummy so yeah it's it's uh something that even the nurses are scared of so we went to Bali and it couldn't have been better timed because we could get away from it all and just pretend for a while that nothing was wrong. We went we ended up booking this health retreat that had you know fresh juices and health shots and all this sort of stuff. So for that week we were living in a health oasis and I Snapchatted 247 so that my parents would see that I was alive and well and okay. I knew that if they could see me then they would be okay which is still like you know thinking as I'm saying this to you now I'm still thinking of everyone else. I'm still thinking about making sure that they are okay. So we went to Bali I came back and I was in a weird space Of what's the point of it all? Like, what's the point of continuing 11-11 lab? I'd got it to a really beautiful place. It just needed some gasoline on it now to really let it go. And but then what what would be the point if I'm not going to be around? It would just, I don't know, that was just a really, really tough place to be. So I thought the best thing to do would be to just visit my family right now. And they're in Geraldton, so they're five hours away, so I would just surprise them. And everything that could have wrong went wrong went wrong. Like literally everything that could have gone wrong that weekend went wrong. I didn't even make it to Geraldton before my car broke down and I had to get towed to Geraldton. By the time I got there, the surprise dinner that I was supposed to jump in on had been cancelled because my mum was taking my dad to the airport because he was flying to Perth where I live. And then when I finally did get my car fixed and I was ready to come back because I was only planning to go for two days and I'd overpacked for Bali, so this time I literally took an overnight bag with two shirts, one pants, and three pairs of undies. And uh I was on my way back three days later, call Blake, my husband, say, Look, car's been fixed, I'm on my way. And he says, Actually, probably best you stay there. I've just had tested positive for COVID. So COVID was the last thing I needed at that time.

Trudie Marie: 1:01:32

I can imagine, like you've literally described, you know, this worst case scenario, like you weren't lying in the fact that everything went wrong, and now to have this on top of it. Yeah, it's almost like, okay, life, you've thrown me enough punches. What now?

Shaunace West: 1:01:47

Yeah, exactly. So I didn't even bring my laptop, so there wasn't even a way for me to just distract myself with my laptop. Yeah, so I ended up staying in Geraldton with my family for nine days instead of the original two, which meant that I had to wear my mum's clothes the whole time. And I didn't have my laptop, so I couldn't work on 1111 lab. And so all I did was look at what I hadn't done yet. It was like this new lease, a new what is it, what's that saying? A new lease on life. And I thought, what have I not changed? What have I done everything possible? I have literally turned my life upside down, but what haven't I changed? And the one thing I hadn't done was change my diet. And the reason was because I was on a hundred percent plant-based diet. I was already eating what research tells us is the most anti-cancer diet. And so I never thought I needed to change it, but I started looking at cancer in a different way. Instead of looking at it at a genetic disease or anything like that, I started looking at it as more of a metabolic disease. And if that was the case, then I just needed to work out what was feeding it and then cut that source. And so I knew without even looking at the research, that the two main sources of fuel was my hormones, oestrogen, which I was already blocking with the menopause, just coincidentally. And then the other second fuel source was glucose. And I'm not sure if you know, it's not really common knowledge, and I don't know why, but PET scans, which is how they test for cancer, is all that that is, is they take glucose, which is just sugar, and they make it radioactive so that it glows on the scan, and they just inject your body or infuse into your body glucose and test where it goes in your body first because cancer feeds off it before anything else gets it. Like that is it. That's all a PET scan is. So if we know this, then why isn't the first thing that people that the doctors suggest is cut all glucose?

Trudie Marie: 1:04:02

I never knew that myself, and that is such a and I don't want to say easy fix, but it's like it's one of the most obvious things if that's what a PET scan is and that's what a PET scan does, is why would you not? But then that's a whole other conversation that we don't need to go into, is it?

Shaunace West: 1:04:22

So I looked at my diet and went, all right, if I cut glucose, what am I left with? And a plant-based diet is a hundred percent glucose. So what am I left with is meat, cheese, eggs, basically an animal-based diet, which absolutely repulsed me. Completely repulsed me. I had started uh a vegan or a plant-based diet for help for my husband's health reasons, and uh, we had turned into ethical vegans along the way. And so the very thought of eating meat repulsed me, but I was not opposed to it. I thought, if this is the one thing that I haven't explored, what if this is the answer? Why wouldn't I try it? So I started sitting on that during that nine days, and unbeknownst to me, my parents had been eating a carnivore diet for the last six months and not told me about it because every time I visited them, they stocked their fridge full of their daughter's favorite vegan food. And this time, because it was a surprise, they didn't have time to stock their fridge and it had no fruit, no veg, no fiber, no anything, just meat and eggs. And I was like, hmm, what is going on here? And it turns out my parents had been eating a carnivore diet and basically arrayed uh like turned back all of their own health issues. So I started thinking on that. I thought, okay, what if I just gave it a go? Like I literally have nothing to lose right now. What if I just gave it a go? And just did it for like six weeks. I've got my next scan in six weeks, then I'll figure out whether or not it's the right thing. If it looks worse, then we change it up. If it looks better, well, pretty hard to look better. But maybe if we just like slow the growth, or maybe even like just halt it. And I started thinking, what else can I do? What else can I do to block these pathways? And so it turned me into this mad scientist researching, and luckily I had a science degree, so I understand how to look at studies and how to read studies. I researched every possible pathway to cancer, to my specific breast cancer, and put that, made a list and put next to it a way to block it, either through a herb that I can get access to or through a drug that we already have on the market but might be for something else. So, for example, to block glucose, if I did have some glucose in my body, I could take a diabetic drug called metformin, which lowers blood glucose levels in your body, in your blood. And then what if it it decides to use the fat pathway because it's exhausted the glucose pathway and essentially I'm going to be in a ketosis environment because I'm going to be running on the backup fuel source, which is ketones instead of glucose. So then I could take a high cholesterol drug to block the fats through a statin. So I started coming up with this list of like these really low toxic drugs that people take every single day for their whole life for chronic conditions. And I created this cocktail of off-label drugs, of herbs, and uh specific diet that basically just eliminates all the pathways, blocks all the pathways. And I thought, what have I got to lose? I went doctor shopping, found a doctor that will just prescribe everything for me, had to make up a few stories, and the next scan showed 75% reduction in tumours.

Trudie Marie: 1:08:11

Wow. Just from taking the time to research, understand your own body, look at what wasn't already being done, like you said, you had done pretty much nearly everything else, what was still available to look at, and you were able to again heal yourself, but in a different way this time.

Shaunace West: 1:08:33

Yes. Yeah, absolutely. I think the first time I ignored it, the second time I went full woo-woo. And the third time I went, we need to blend it all. Let's bring it all together. And so I saw in that next scan that the tumour in my lungs had completely gone and the others had shrunk. So I knew I was onto something and it was just a matter of time. I just needed to see it out. So I created this new life again. And I saw in this life that 1111 labs started to thrive. Everything started to thrive. Uh, I started running retreats for my yoga, and I would put on these half-day retreats for women who were high achievers and exhausted. Let's give them the space. And then I started uh working in, I started uh upskilling myself in neurolinguistic programming, NLP, and hypnotherapy and all of these other things that really look at the mind and the power of the mind and how to actually uh utilize that to its fullest. I had a whole decade at that stage of coaching under my belt through my uh OT background, through my occupational therapy background. And so I already had the skills as a coach, and now I had the skills from my experience through this journey through three times cancer. And now I also had NLP, hypnotherapy, I had a whole bunch of other things that I added in there. I added in breath work, so I'm a breath work facilitator, and then all I needed to do was test it out on a subject. And so I did that, and I first did it through an application process. I was like, right, I'm just gonna give do one of this uh for no cost, just test it out like a beta program. And I put out on my social media that um I'm going to put applications out, and I only needed one application, that's all I needed, and I got quite a few applications and I read through them all, and you know, they were they were all right. I was looking for that perfect person, and I ended up finding one of the applications in there. She scared the absolute shit out of me because she had had 20 years of therapy already and was still, hadn't been able to work for the last two years, was basically depressed and suicidal, had oodles and oodles of isms and lists and diagnosis and this and that. But the question at the bottom of my application was why do you think you should have this program? And she said, Because I deserve it. And I just knew right then and there that if I'm gonna do this at no cost, I'm gonna take on the most challenging person and do everything I can. Because if I just made a tiny little change in this person's life, then that would be enough. But also the fact that she had made the decision that she is worthy of doing something like this, that she deserves it, was already indication enough to me that she was ready to make that change. And so I started working with her. I did seven weeks with her. After seven weeks, she sent me a video of her sitting at her favorite beach with tears running down her cheeks saying, I am so in love with my life, and I'm so proud of me and us, and I can't believe we've gotten this far in such a short amount of time. She then spent the next three months solo traveling through Europe.

Trudie Marie: 1:12:13

Like wow, and I think it's important to touch on here is that you like you said, you had all these applications, and that one stood out, and what we don't ever realise or fully comprehend, and I even say this with the podcast, is you never get the ripple effect that that has on the people that we touch, because yes, you changed her life because obviously for her to then go be in the situation and condition she was in, that she could then solo travel through Europe, but now her friends, her family, her colleagues, the people in her life are now impacted by that one experience. And I'm sure along the way, and even people listening to this particular episode, will we never fully get the impact our story has on somebody else's life.

Shaunace West: 1:13:08

Absolutely true. Yeah, so she was a couple of years ago now, and she even now she is one of my very best friends that we went from sharing this original thing together, and she still every day tells me that I am the one, the angel that came to change her life, which is so so beautiful. And now, a few years later, I get to do this on um, I wouldn't say a larger scale, because I still only work with a select few people at any one time because I want to make the maximum amount of difference, but I get to do it again and again and again and invest myself in these people and really see such incredible amounts of change in such a short amount of time. It is truly doable. So from there, um I am running 11-11 lab, I am doing my coaching, I'm doing retreats probably once a quarter, and I'm doing my yoga. But at the same time, I'm still living this glorious life. I don't ever wake up to an alarm. I do 9:30 yoga classes, I walk my dog in the afternoons when the sun's setting. Um, some of my favorite people are at the dog park, and then I get to work with people during the day. I get to work on my my favorite things, and my newest venture is actually something that I started at the beginning of this year. And it started off someone once told me that the way you should be starting new businesses is by solving the problems of your other businesses. And so one of the things that happened with 1111 Lab is that it grew uh really quickly in a short amount of time. Uh, once I hit that sort of two to three year mark, I had stopped fumbling around and went, let's go all in. But with that comes a whole lot of extra workload, and uh so I ended up uh finding that when because I was doing all of the roles, I was the social media manager, I was the admin, I was the customer service, I was basically every aspect of that role, I needed to work out how to still be able to grow this business, but be able to grow it without doing it, if that makes sense. So I had already moved it into a warehouse where I had a team that was fulfilling the orders. So that had released a lot of the the bigger picture things, the the day-to-day things, I should say. And I had heard about these VAs, which are virtual assistants, and there's Australian virtual assistants, and then there's uh a lot of Australian small business owners are hiring through the Philippines because it's a lot cheaper, yet they still get a really good rate because of the cost of living is is so low there. And so I hired a VA and it made me work more than ever. Like it was I ended up having to micromanage. She would screenshot my emails in my customer service inbox and send them to me saying, What should I say? And then she'd ask me questions all day, and I might as well have just done it myself. And uh, so I ended up having quite a team of VAs and people working for me. And whilst the revenue was starting to increase, I my work was just going overboard, and I was basically working 24-7 for a business that I started for freedom. So ended up resetting, let them all go, and started again going, all right, I'm going to hire properly this time. And so I spent a lot more time on the recruitment, and it was a really, really vigorous recruitment. And I eventually found my unicorn. And my unicorn was amazing. She did everything for me. And I had all these friends now that were also small business owners because of the networking that I had done with 11-11 Lab. And I realized that they also had the same problem. They were hiring VAs and they were having more work. And so they ended up, like I ended up just saying to them, we'll just use my VA. And so they would hire my VA. And I did that four times before I was like, okay, this is uh a business opportunity. This is a business model right here. And that's also when I realized I'm a serial entrepreneur now. And so I did that. Uh, I decided to start my own VA agency, and I had a very ambitious goal of starting it at the start of the year, uh, setting it all up, ready to take on first client by May, and then having that business be completely self-sustaining and running by the time I go on uh an overseas holiday in September for a month, so that it would completely run without me. And so now we're at a stage where it does run completely without me. We're going to test it out, and then I'll be gone and it'll be ready to go. So now we are looking at a completely different life to where I first first began, which was working 24, not not working 24-7, working nine to five or seven to seven in the end, plus uh six days a week, and just being in so much uh stress and mental health to now actually running four different businesses, never setting an alarm, and being completely relaxed and enjoying every minute of it.

Trudie Marie: 1:19:10

I love that for you, and I think it's such an incredible achievement. You're still that high achiever with so much on the go. And it wouldn't surprise me. I do human design as well, and it wouldn't be surprised me if you're a manifesting generator, because they're people who have stuff on the go all the time. And what's there for me though is that do you think through all this journey of the cancer, and don't get me wrong, no one would ever want to go through any one of those stages, let alone go through three of them, but it has put you on the path to what your purpose is in life in this lifetime?

Shaunace West: 1:19:50

Yeah, a hundred percent. So, firstly, I am also into human design, and I am I also thought I was a manifesting generator, and I was very disappointed when I learnt I was a projector. But actually, a projector makes so much sense because projectors are coaches and mentors, and almost all projectors burn out in some way or other form by the time they're 40. So it definitely makes sense that I have a very uh limited but potent energy source that I protect by all means possible and then deliver the most potent type of coaching or impact with my clients. So that's uh human design side. Love human design. And then, yes, I wouldn't change it for the world. Everything needed to happen exactly as it did so that I could be exactly where I am right now.

Trudie Marie: 1:20:49

Got it. And I have two last questions for you, just uh as sort of an overarching thing. Obviously, you've been through this treatment now that doesn't allow you to have children of your own. Is there still plans for you to create a family in the future with your husband?

Shaunace West: 1:21:09

So we that's a whole nother journey I went through. I first had to, like, I was mourning the loss of my breasts to begin with because I was never going to be able to breastfeed, let alone like there was never a point in my mind at that stage that I wouldn't even be able to have children. I was just worrying about being a good mother and being able to breastfeed. So uh then that took a whole nother journey around breastfeeding does not equal good mother, they just need love. But I have babies all around me. I'm in that age where all of my friends, all of my family have babies and four-year-olds everywhere, and I get to love and cherish them as an auntie, as a godmother, all of those parts. And then I also get to give them back and come home to my beautiful, quiet home. And it's given us, my husband and I, a really beautiful opportunity to look at it as do we want children because society expects us to have children or because we actually want to have children? I grew up always just expecting that I would be a mother, and it was a huge tank on my heart to learn that I was going to not be able to mother my own children. So we've actually moved into a beautiful acceptance of look at the impact we can have on all the children around us without having children ourselves. Look at how much we can do in our life without taking on extra stress, because I know children are stressful, and we know that stress uh does not work well on cancer. So whether or not we don't have children is still open. I will never have children out of this body. Adoption in Australia is not an option. So if we do decide to do something down the track, it will likely be surrogacy. Surrogacy is also very expensive, so there's costs involved. There is a potential to foster in Australia, it's a very complicated system and they never belong to you. They will always belong to the government, so then there's always that aspect. So it's actually a very, very complicated answer. So for right now, it's a very we're very, very happy with being just the two of us with our little fur baby.

Trudie Marie: 1:23:46

I love that you've created that new perspective around that concept. And the second question I have is you spoke before about being tattooed for radiation, and also obviously you have your reconstructive and massectomy scars. How does that play on a day-to-day living of literally having these symbols of your journey?

Shaunace West: 1:24:12

Yeah, so I've gotten very used to having bare breasts. I don't have nipples, I had them removed, and so I have just these faint scars there now, which will have to be opened up and try like taken. Are the implants removed and replaced every 10 years? So I've always got that in my mind that that's going to be an ongoing thing. I have tried those nipple tattoos, like temporary tattoos, and the first time I did it, I didn't get them central, and it was a good laugh. It was really entertaining. But then when I did get it central, we ended up, my husband and I ended up learning that we really like the blank canvas. We actually are quite happy with it. It and there's a lot of perks, mind the pun. There's a lot of perks to them because I haven't worn a bra in five years. And I have perky breasts, and they should be starting to gravitate. I will never get nipple fripple, like I'll never be noticeably cold, and I never have to worry about seeing anything through a white t-shirt. So there's a lot of, you know, ups to it. There's a lot of downs as well, but I don't focus on them. I focus on the ups. In terms of the tattoo, I have three tattoo dots. One on my chest, which uh looks like a really off-center freckle, and people always point it out and laugh when I, well, they laugh initially, and then they're like, oh, you know, maybe I shouldn't have brought that up when I say what it's from. But if they know me well enough, then they know that I have a bit of dark humour and that we can always laugh about this. But the ones on my sides, I have gotten a rather large cover-up. This one little dot has got a big, beautiful tattoo all the way around it now. So, yes, I actually have turned that into such a beautiful memento, I guess. In terms of the cancer, which I haven't addressed, I it's been almost two years since this scans came back clear. So I think it was a little over a year from when I started, when I came back from my hometown eating meat and exploring off-label drugs. It was a little over a year before I got the all clear and there was absolutely nothing left in my body. And that all clear was almost two years ago.

Trudie Marie: 1:26:46

That's incredible for you to be in a remission phase and like to have a clear body that shows no signs of the beast that literally tested you those years prior to take you on a whole new journey. And you are still only in your mid-30s, like you literally have a lifetime ahead of you in whatever shape or form that takes.

Shaunace West: 1:27:13

Mm-hmm.

Trudie Marie: 1:27:13

Mm-hmm.

Shaunace West: 1:27:14

Yeah. I actually so I I don't like the word remission because remission gives the feeling that it will return. So I I also don't like the word survivor because I feel like thriver is a much better term. So I've always said, you know, that it's there, they are clear scans. I don't usually say cancer-free or anything like that, because then it entails that there should be something there that's not. So if they're just clear, they are clear and healthy. So the last diagnosis was uh over three years ago now, and I'm not expecting another one in the future.

Trudie Marie: 1:27:58

I love that. I love that positive outlook, and thank you for clarifying around the use of language because it is a difficult one that it is all in our language of what we create, and the fact that you said that you create a clear scan because that's what it's supposed to be. It's supposed to be a clear scan for each and every one of us. So thank you for sharing that. I want to thank you so much for vulnerably sharing your story. Like it is an incredible journey of what you've been on over the last six years, and that you've not focused on the negative aspects, you've focused on the positive, you've looked for solutions, and you've ultimately created a life that you can really love and live into a future that has, by the sounds of it, endless possibilities.

Shaunace West: 1:28:48

Yeah, yeah. Just getting started.

Trudie Marie: 1:28:52

Yeah, I love that. And I always love to finish the podcast episode by asking, what are you wet most grateful for today?

Shaunace West: 1:28:59

I am most grateful for my biggest teacher, which is Cancer.

Trudie Marie: 1:29:06

Thank you for tuning in to the Everyday Warriors podcast. If you have an idea for a future episode or a story you'd like to share yourself, then please reach out and message me. As I am always up for real, raw, and authentic conversations with other Everyday Warriors. Also, be sure to subscribe so that you can download all the latest episodes as they are published. And spread the word to your family and friends and colleagues so they can listen in too. If you're sharing on social media, please be sure to tag me so that I can personally acknowledge you. I'm always open to comment about how these episodes have resonated with you, the listener. And remember, lead with love as you live this one wild and precious life.