Michelle Goldrick

Transcript

If you were to look at my life today, you would probably assume that I've just always been strong. But my strength didn't come from winning. It came from surviving the parts of my life that nearly erased me. Tonight, I'm here to speak to the women who have ever felt disconnected from their own bodies. And to the men who love them, never truly understanding the silent battles that she's fighting because this just isn't my story. But this is happening in bedrooms and marriages and families everywhere.

But just nobody's talking about it. 11 years ago, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. And life didn't just have one battle in store for me. Years later, more tumors arrived. All in all, 11 surgeries. Somehow, somewhere along the way, I became the poster child for adversity. Not exactly the brand deal that I was going for. That estrogen sensitive breast cancer meant that both breasts needed to be removed. Further complications and risk factors meant the uterus and the ovaries also had to go.

I didn't just lose body parts, but I lost the hormones that my body relied on. I lost the organs that the world tells women defines our femininity. But worse than that is I lost the road map back to feeling at home in my own body again. Now, men, blink twice if you've ever said the wrong thing at the wrong time to your wife and instantly regretted it. Yeah. See, you're not a bad partner. You just haven't been taught about this season.

And quite frankly, neither have we. I coach people on how to trust their own bodies. And privately, I had become a stranger within my own. My athletes and my clients saw strength, power, and discipline. My husband saw beauty, loyalty, and devotion. But when I looked in a mirror, I saw a body stitched together by survival. Strong, yes, but missing pieces of myself that I didn't yet know how to grieve. Men, when your wife is fighting a war within her own body, she's not pulling away from you.

She's pulling away from like the parts of herself that she's still trying to understand. And women, too many of you are out there silently shouldering the hot flashes, the mood swings, the anxiety, all while still being everything to everyone. Like nobody knows exactly what you're going through. But what we can do is we can just flourish within it, grow within it. You got to love her, respect her, and understand her. Who decides to jump into their marriage one year after a radical hyctomy?

This girl right here. Because anybody who knows me knows that I love a good challenge. But jokes aside, most women step into their marriage with hopes and dreams and butterflies. And I stepped into mine with fear and scars and uncertainty. How do you show up as a wife when you don't quite feel like a woman? How do you step into intimacy when trauma has rewired your body's responses? See, nobody prepares you for those conversations. Not your doctors, not your girlfriends, not even the pamphlets that pretend to have the answers.

But here's the part that matters. My husband didn't save me, but he stood beside me while I saved myself. And in that space, I found a new femininity. One that's rooted in truth and in softness, not in perfection or body parts. And this is the part that I've learned along the way slowly, painfully, and fiercely. Femininity is not stored in your breasts or in your wombs. It's stored in your resilience. Identity is not built from your hormones, but it's built from the battles that you survived.

And intimacy is not about anatomy. It's about safety, compassion, and communication. Against all odds, I discovered something incredibly powerful. that your hardest season is not your ending, but it is in fact your becoming. So again, you need to grow with her, flourish with her, and embrace all of those seasons, love her, respect her, understand her, because the moment you do, you don't just survive your story, but you become the very definition of the authentic woman it was building all along. Thank you.

Wow.

Transcript generated from the recording and lightly cleaned. Some names and wording may differ from the spoken speech.