Built While Breaking: How I Scaled a Business Through Cancer, Chaos, & Motherhood

They say life doesn’t give you more than you can handle —
but sometimes it gives you everything at once.

A cancer diagnosis.
Three neurodivergent children.
And a life that refused to slow down long enough for me to catch my breath.

This isn’t a story about overnight success.
It’s a story about building while breaking — and choosing to rise anyway.

I built a business — not because I had the time or the energy, but because I refused to let survival be my ceiling.

There was no “pause” button. No safety net. No time to fall apart.

The Breaking Point

Before cancer, I was already juggling the impossible.
Single motherhood. A demanding government job. Army Reserve service.
Every day was a new negotiation between structure and chaos.

I have three children — two on different sides of the autism spectrum, one with ADHD. Their diagnoses came during the pandemic — while the world shut down, my world exploded. Between speech therapy appointments, meltdowns, and Zoom meetings, I became not just their mother, but their advocate, teacher, and therapist.

Then came 2025 — the diagnosis that changed everything.
Invasive ductal carcinoma.
HER2-negative. ER/PR-positive.
Chemo. Neuropathy. Surgeries. Radiation.

My world didn’t slow down — it imploded.

I remember sitting in the infusion chair with a laptop open, running client meetings between IV drips. Typing strategy notes while my hands shook. Scheduling pediatrician and therapy appointments for my sons between oncology calls.

That’s when it hit me: if life wasn’t going to wait for me, my systems couldn’t either.

I’m in Ohio, the oldest of three sisters, the one who always figured it out, the one who doesn’t have the luxury of falling apart.  My parents live in Florida, caring for their own elderly parents.  My mother would fly between the two locations to help me as much as possible but ultimately we were in survival mode. 

And so, I built.

The Shift: From Chaos to Command

Cancer stripped away every illusion of control. But it also gave me clarity.

I started The Bread + Butter Company™ because I had no choice but to create something that could stand even when I couldn’t.

I stopped trying to do everything.I started building systems that could run without me. I documented everything — not because it was pretty, but because it was necessary.  Between chemo sessions and therapy appointments, I mapped out processes, built client systems, and automated every task that could buy me one more hour of breathing room.

💬 “If I didn’t build a business that could run during chemo, I’d never build one that could last after it.”

That became my mantra. Not because I was fearless — but because I was determined.

I turned my pain into a playbook — the same operational framework I now teach to women CEOs who are building through their own storms. That playbook became the foundation of The Bread + Butter Company™ — a business built to help others stop running on survival mode and start leading from structure.

What Cancer Taught Me About Business

1. Energy is your most valuable KPI.
You can make more money. You can’t make more capacity. You can recover lost revenue.You can’t recover lost energy.
I learned to track my energy like profit — because if I didn’t protect it, everything else fell apart. If you don’t design your business around your bandwidth, burnout will do it for you.

2. Documentation is liberation.
People assume structure is rigid — it’s not. Every SOP, automation, and handoff is freedom disguised as structure.  Systems aren’t about control — they’re about trust.  It’s how I made sure my boys had stability when I couldn’t physically be everywhere at once.

3. Delegation isn’t a luxury — it’s survival.
I  had to unlearn the habit of being everything to everyone. I had to learn how to let go or watch everything fall apart.
I stopped trying to be the superhero and started hiring like a strategist. Hiring a team wasn’t about scaling — it was about breathing. Every handoff was a step toward healing.

4. Legacy > Launches.

There were days I couldn’t even look at my laptop.  I stopped chasing the next sale and started building something my kids could be proud of.What saved me wasn’t motivation — it was a business that ran because systems made it possible.  That’s when growth became sustainable.

Motherhood Made Me an Operator

Raising three boys is a masterclass in operations. Being a mom to neurodivergent kids means you learn patience, precision, and flexibility like it’s a sport. You learn to anticipate needs before they’re spoken.
You build routines that anchor unpredictable days.
You study patterns, triggers, and communication styles like data points.
Every meltdown, every therapy session, every victory — it all reinforced the same truth: systems create stability.

That’s what my business stands for. Not automation for the sake of efficiency, but systems that give women like me — single mothers, caregivers, survivors — the option to breathe.

When you build a business around life instead of trying to fit life around business, you win twice: financially and emotionally.

Those lessons made me a better CEO.
Because leadership — real leadership — isn’t about control.
It’s about creating calm inside chaos.

The Hardest Lesson: Rest Is a Revenue Strategy

People love to call women like me “strong.”
But strength isn’t a trait — it’s a side effect.

You don’t wake up strong.
You wake up exhausted, scared, determined — and you do it anyway.
There were days when I couldn’t move.
When neuropathy made typing impossible.
When nausea blurred everything.
I didn’t want to be strong.
I wanted to be supported.
That’s what drove me to build systems, not just for myself, but for other women who are holding too much.

And I realized — rest wasn’t weakness, it was data.
If your business can’t sustain itself while you rest, you don’t have a business — you have a burnout loop.

Now, rest is built into my operations the same way sales are.
Because I’ve learned that recovery and resilience are part of the same formula.
The Bread + Butter Company™ isn’t just a business.
It’s a blueprint for survival — operational, emotional, and financial.

From Survival to Scale

When I look at where I am now — running a company, raising three incredible boys, helping CEOs fix the backend chaos that once drowned me — I see proof of what’s possible when you stop waiting for “the right time” or for things to get easier.

The truth? There will never be a perfect time.
You either build the life you need, or life builds walls around you.

I chose to build.
My business wasn’t born from peace — it was born from pressure.
And what it created wasn’t just profit — it created possibility.

I don’t want my kids to remember me as the mom who was always tired.
I want them to remember me as the woman who refused to stay broken.

I built this for them — and for every woman who’s ever looked at her life and thought, I can’t do this anymore.
Because you can.
And when you do it with systems, strategy, and support — you don’t just survive. You scale.

Final Thought: This Isn’t Just Business — It’s Legacy

I built this company from infusion chairs, hospital rooms, and the quiet chaos of motherhood.
I built it with resilience, faith, and a refusal to let my story end in struggle.

If you’re reading this and you’re in your own version of the storm — cancer, caregiving, burnout, heartbreak — hear me clearly:
You don’t need to wait to feel ready. You just need to start building systems that will hold you up when life tries to knock you down.

Because if I can build a business while fighting for my life and raising three boys — you can, too.

👉 Start with the Can Your Business Survive Without You? Quiz — the same diagnostic I used to rebuild my operations from the ground up, one system at a time.