Unearthing the Fear and Buried Trauma Beneath My Lump

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I was sitting on the couch with my partner watching an old episode of Parks and Rec, when I found it. An innocent but precautionary self-check, I raised my arm overhead and examined my breasts.

There it was. My heart dropped into my stomach and the blood washed out of my face.

I said, “Oh God. Turn the TV off. I found a lump.”

This will be the third lump I have found in my lifetime. And with each lump, came a new brand of terror. The first one was insane out of my mind frantic terror, the second one was denial, “I can fix this myself, so I don’t have to feel it” terror, and now this.

I have feared mammograms for a long time now, so I hadn’t had one. I justified it to my doctor any way I could, and she never pushed me. I guess I was afraid to seek out that type of information, after the trauma of my first lump.

I always did self-checks, but the idea of a mammogram gave this (former)control freak, the kind of fearful thoughts that circled overhead like vultures. I always figured, if it’s there, I’ll be the one to find it, and I’ll deal with it.

I’m known to have dense breast tissue, but this was most definitely a lump. My thoughts went back to the first lump. I was at my post-partum check-up after having my second baby back in 2008. I was lying there putting on the impression that I had my shit together and was fine, expecting all to go well.

But then, the doctor stopped on a lump, and so did my whole world. I was certain I was going to die and orphan my babies. I recall crying by myself outside as this came down upon me. I was unknowingly deep in post-partum depression, and this tipped me over the edge of frantic.

Within a couple of weeks, I had had an ultrasound and biopsy, and all was declared fine. No time to process any of what I had been through. My depression eventually lifted, and I moved on. That trauma would lodge deep inside of me, alongside the shame of my post-partum depressed state.

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I looked at my partner and felt myself try to swallow the fear surrounding the lump I had just found, while my whole body clenched. Then, I overruled that old, outdated version of myself who needed to bury her emotions.

I said to him, I must tell you everything I am thinking and feeling right now. My loving partner held his own fear and me close, and said, okay.

I say, “Of course this would happen to me as the one in my family that takes the best care of myself”, and “Just as life is getting so good, and I’ve finally chosen myself, healed my wounds, and have this perfect person to spend my life with, the worst will happen.”

I cried in his arms and shared all the thoughts and feelings that were coming up in real time. I was feeling the fear from my first lump, and what I must have buried with the second one. I felt fearful energy extending from my root chakra to my heart.

After pouring it all out, I thanked my partner for letting me express myself and for holding me through it. He said he would be with me every step no matter what, and I felt it. Truly, I’ve never been so loved and cared for in my life as I am right now.

Soon after releasing the initial fear and emotions, better thoughts and feelings - wiser ones, had a chance to come through.

I acknowledged that I have never had a better support system than I do at this moment. I have an amazing partner, plus a great network of supportive women. I have health insurance. I am otherwise healthy and know that I have everything I need, to conquer whatever this may be.

Peace began to fill the space where fear once was.

I started to reflect on the second time I had found a lump and recall what I did to make it go away. I couldn’t get in to see a doctor for a month, so I did what I could on my own until then.

I took caffeine out of my diet and started supplementing with vitamin E and Evening Primrose Oil. All good things for people with dense breast tissue. By the time I saw the doctor, she couldn’t find the lump.

At the time I thought caffeine may have caused my lump, but now I intuit that was not the case. I had a huge amount of stress with the first lump, that I was burying by pure necessity. My stepfather was dying, my sister was beginning to show signs of psychosis, and I had post-partum depression overwhelm. “I was holding it all together…”

With this current lump, I have been holding it all together again in a way, as I was helping someone I love through a tough time, overseeing my mom’s estate who passed last year, and some other things. I thought I was doing alright, but I was holding a lot.

I looked back on my journals and found that it was 2018 when I had my second lump, as I was beginning to suspect. Something tragic had happened a few months before this lump manifested, that affected my husband at the time and therefore, our entire family.

And there I was, holding it all together. I couldn’t express my anxiety or trauma then, because I needed to be strong for everyone else.

And that confirmed it. All the lumps were linked by the stress and attempting to hold it all together.

We may think we have it all together and appear to be doing well, but in times of high stress with no release of our worst thoughts and feelings, our body is clenching.

It took about a month to get my mammogram, and though the size of my lump became smaller, the fear was still there.

A few months before I found this most recent lump, my intuition(guides) had whispered to me one day – “get a mammogram”. I asked the voices within, “Is something wrong?” Then immediately heard, “No. It’s so you don’t fear it.” As soon as I heard that, I dismissed it.

I am in between doctors and thought, I’m not afraid. I will get one someday.

Ha! Listen to your guidance when it comes through, or you will be forced to listen later.

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I had the mammogram, then an ultrasound, while feeling all the feelings in real time.

The panic and fear were very close to the surface through it all, and I let it be there. I didn’t try to force it back. No pretending.

Soon, deeper breaths, as a bigger part of me knew it was okay.

Before I left, a doctor declared me to be fine and to come back in a year. So, I will. And I know I will be less fearful next time, since I have finally uplifted the trauma, I’d buried beneath the surface for so many years.

I think about women going through this fear every single year, and of the ones who don’t get immediate good news. And of those who are facing a battle, when they get the news they fear the most.

I’ve been on a journey of healing and uplifting buried trauma and emotions from within me (and now help others do the same), for many years now. At this point, I know the drill. Feelings and emotions must be expressed. Emotions must move or they get stuck in the energy body.

What I know for sure is this. Carrying unexpressed fear, trauma, and grief takes its toll, no matter how well you seem to do it. The body doesn’t forget, even if you believe you have tucked it away nicely where nobody could ever find it.

I wanted to share this, because every woman faces this at some point. Whether something shows up on the mammogram or not. There is fear. I never hear people talk about benign lumps. Perhaps this is because when we find out a lump is benign, we feel relief, then “survivor’s guilt”, then just go quiet. We know not everyone is as lucky.

Still, it is fear that needs to be released. We should talk to each other about this sort of thing. To someone. Even if it is in a journal, get those emotions out. Don’t bury them.

Don’t make your body hold what you don’t want to acknowledge, or someday you may be forced to. And certainly, don’t waste your health or precious time seeking things to fear outside of you that are beyond your control.

Look at all the good you have and hold on to that, but most definitely process those feelings you wish you didn’t have, whatever they are.

You will be lighter, healthier, and freer for doing it.

Recommended Reading - “The Body Speaks The Mind”, Deb Shapiro - “The Body Keeps the Score”, Bessel Van Der Kolk M.D.