Beyond Pink Ribbons; "I just wanted to fucking live!!"
Reflections from a Weekend with the Warriors
Years ago I started running.
Not to lose pounds or inches, but for my mental health.
It worked wonders and it led to me running 5k after 5k after 5k to 10k to half marathons. I will have to have a count up to tell you the actual number but I ran at least one or two Race For Life events every year for a long time and felt like I was 'doing my bit' by raising money for the charity.
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
And here at the age of 49 is where my own awareness has had a bit of a tug.
It's not about the glossy, pink-ribbon banners or tshirts with slogans and sparkles. The real kind - full of scar tissue, laughter that bubbles up through tears, and women who have faced the unthinkable and live fiercely anyway.
A week or so ago, the LinkedIn algorithm (for once) did me a favour and showed me a post from the incredible Alexandra Perry, designer of H.E.R. Bodywear post-surgery bras that do far more than support; they help women feel themselves again.
Alex doesn’t do “pretty for the sake of it.” Her work isn’t about pink ribbons or platitudes. It’s about power. About creating spaces and garments that honour what’s real, the mess, the courage, the softness that survives. She's had breast cancer twice herself - she knows what she's talking about.
When one of her facilitators fell ill just before her third Warrior Weekend retreat - a gathering for women navigating life after breast cancer treatment - she put out a last-minute call for a yoga teacher.
And, well… that’s how I found myself driving to the Dales, heart full and mat in hand, to meet a group of women who would change how I see the word healing.
“I Just Wanted to Fucking Live.”
Within an hour of arriving, one of the women said those words to me.
No preamble. No tears. Just quiet, honest truth.
“No, Lee-ann. I just wanted to fucking live.”
It stopped me in my tracks.
Because that’s the essence, isn’t it?
Beneath every operation, every scar, every brave smile, the raw, human desire to stay. To keep breathing, laughing, loving, and finding moments of joy in a body that’s been through unimaginables.
What Struck Me Most
💞 How young all the women were! Far too early in life to have faced what they'd faced.
💞 How different each story was, yet how shared their understanding.
💞 How much knowledge they carried about medication, scar tissue, and side effects, an unwanted education in survival.
💞 How often they’d swallowed their own emotions to protect their families.
💞 How much they LOVED their surgeons
💞 How, when held in a circle of understanding, those same emotions could finally find air.
And perhaps most movingly, how many of them checked in on me.
The only one in the room untouched by breast cancer, yet still seen and cared for.
Yoga, But Make It Human
We moved gently. We blended essential oils.
We made clay pots with boobies (because of course we did). We cackled and laughed at the innuendos aplenty. We paddle boarded. We ate beautiful food.
(this was my own proud effort)
And in one of the most memorable savasanas of my career, a very enthusiastic yoga trump, also finally finding air. Being between sentences, I was unable cover it with words as I normally try to do and then immediately a tiny voice whispered, “I’m so sorry,”.
Half the room erupted in unstoppable laughter with giggles that were pure medicine.
It’s funny how the body finds its own release, isn’t it?
In the laughter, there was permission. In that permission, there was peace.
Patanjali might not have written about farts in the Yoga Sutras, but I’m fairly sure he’d approve and would've been chortling himself.
Beyond the Mat
This weekend reminded me that everything I do - yoga, sex coaching, women’s circles, speaking - is all woven from the same thread: self-esteem, embodiment, pleasure, and empowerment.
Several women spoke to me about intimacy, not just sex, but closeness, touch, and reclaiming confidence in a body that feels different from the one they've always known.
Healing isn’t about “getting back to normal.” - there is no 'going back'. It’s about rediscovering connection - to yourself, to your partner, to life itself.
I witnessed the most profound personal shift and vulnerable big tears within seconds of being asked to tip some water out of a pint glass - it moved me, too 😢
And who could have known how moving it would be when a small butterfly landed on one of our lovelies’ Warrior t-shirts?
Earlier, she had shared that she was mourning the loss of both her parents - and that a butterfly had joined her at the City Ground during the Forest match she should have watched with her Dad. This one, too, felt like a little hello from him and we all shared in her emotion as the butterfly stepped onto her finger and seemed to nibble at the offered crumb of scone 🥹
Intimacy and Connection After a Breast Cancer Diagnosis
At many points during the weekend, conversations turned quietly toward intimacy - how it changes after surgery, treatment, and the long months of feeling like your body belongs more to doctors than to yourself.
For some of the women, sex had become something they could only remember rather than reach for. For others, it was tender but different - a negotiation between love, fear, and acceptance.
The sense I had the most was the longing not just for pleasure, but for the sense of being desired again in a body that carries new lines, textures, and stories.
...and let's not forget that some treatments also mean that women will also have to navigate a chemically- or surgically-induced menopause. Which is an added mind-fuck on top of everything else that might not be expected.
And then there’s the partner’s side of intimacy
The man or woman standing on the edge of that experience, often unsure how to touch, what to say, or whether they’re allowed to want. What about them? Awkwardness and tenderness can easily get tangled and love can feel clumsy when you don’t have the right words. Silence can build where connection used to live. Yet underneath it all is usually the same thing, fear of causing pain, fear of rejection, and the quiet hope that closeness will find its way back.
True healing, I think, includes finding language for those moments. Because intimacy doesn’t always begin in the bedroom, does it? It starts with a conversation, a gaze, or the courage to say, “I still want you.”
And the real question for a couple of the ladies was -
how do you even start to talk about sex again??
I totally get that, and I would wholeheartedly suggest talking therapies such as coaching or counselling. Someone qualified and trauma-informed might just be able to find the right words that are ever so slightly out of reach for you.
The Work of Real Healing
What Alex, Melanie (creator of Lady Survivors Swimwear), and Gemma have created with Warrior Weekend isn’t a retreat - it really is a reclamation.
A weekend of community, creativity, and truth-telling.
A reminder that healing needs more than medication and stitches, it needs connection, laughter, and space for all the feelings.
If you work for a company ever looks to support Breast Cancer Awareness, please reach out to Alex. Financial support keeps these weekends accessible, and believe me, they’re never run for profit. This is work that matters - work that changes lives.
A Final Word
As I packed my car to leave Buxton, I thought again of that first conversation:
“I just wanted to fucking live.”
And I know that’s going to stay with me - the clarity, the honesty, the power.
So this October, can we have it be about more than just slogans and the performative pink?
Let’s honour the real women behind the ribbons - those still here, still laughing, still loving, still living.
And while you’re at it, give your boobs a check!! 🩷
...hang on, did I say 'Final Word'?
Nah, I cannot finish without telling you that everyone was packed up in their cars saying their final goodbyes when Alex asked one of the warriors if she would pose topless looking out to the dales to get a photo for The Gram.
She asked me, too.
Of course, shy retiring wall flower that I am as Sasha le Swank, I was already out of my bra before the question mark had landed.
One by one, women came back from their cars to join in.
Stripping to the waist, full-breasted, uni-lateral breasted, flat-breasted, scarred, nipple-less - all the fucking gloriousness of almost the whole group. Standing on the wall declaring to the whole of the dales that
they are here, they are whole, they are beautiful.
with pleasure,
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