At the beginning of July, I was asked by Genentech, the pharmaceutical company that makes my targeted treatment, to come to their campus in San Francisco and be part of their Patient Connect series.

They told me it would be an intimate setting and that they’d work with me to tell my story. If I felt more comfortable, we could do it as a Q&A, or I could give a talk and then sit down for a Q&A afterwards.

The backstory here is my utter fear of public speaking. It comes as a complete shock to everyone who knows me because one-on-one conversations are so easy for me.

Years ago, I joined Toastmasters to help me overcome this fear. Public speaking was completely terrifying to me, but as part of my therapy, I was intentionally doing things that scared me. Toastmasters got me over the initial hump of getting on stage, but I’ve never fully broken through or become desensitized. I don’t volunteer to get on stage & when I do patient panels or a Q&A sessions about cancer, it’s incredibly anxiety-provoking. I’ve never done a speech or TED Talk–style presentation before. The most I’ve done are panels while sitting down with other patients or interview-style speaking engagements.

July had already been a mad dash, and I didn’t have much time to prepare.
The plan was for me to give a TED Talk–style speech and then sit down for a Q&A. They told me I could switch to a full Q&A format at the last minute if I wanted to, and that flexibility gave me the security I needed to ease some of my anxiety.

I wrote the speech that morning and kept it on my phone.

When I got to the Genentech campus, the plan was still the TED Talk format. From my experience with anxiety, I know that the panic breaks a few minutes in, but overcoming those first few minutes is incredibly difficult and incredibly uncomfortable.

I did two run-throughs before the audience started arriving. At noon, the doors opened and Genentech employees began walking in.

As many of you know, part of my story is that from the age of 16 until about 30, I had debilitating panic attacks. My incredible cognitive behavioral therapist, Dr. Guiss, taught me how the brain works during panic. That your mind thinks you’re in danger when you’re actually not—and the best thing you can do is keep going anyway, because that’s how you retrain your brain.

When you give in to fear, your mind thinks you’ve escaped danger, and you feel safe again. But you’ve reinforced the belief that there was something dangerous and scary. Now your brain thinks avoidance is the answer. In fact, avoidance to stay comfortable the worst thing you can do.

But when you face it, when you push through, the feeling is indescribable. It is the best high. The absolute best self-confidence builder.

So I sat on the chair, on the edge of my seat. My heart was racing. I was doing deep breathing the way Dr. Guiss taught me.

Then I was introduced.

I took one last deep breath, walked up on stage—and fucking nailed it.

Just like I expected, my anxiety broke a few minutes in. I delivered a speech on stage in front of 275 people, with another 100 streaming online.

I was able to go off-script. The audience laughed when I referred to Chris as an “undervalued asset” when I first met him, and they cried when I talked about being diagnosed with a terminal illness just 10 days postpartum.

I sat for the Q&A, thanked everyone for spending their lunch hour with me, got off the stage, and I have never been so proud of myself.

It made me reflect on the life lessons that I live by, that I have experienced, and that I encourage others to live by:

• That anything worth doing in life is going to be hard. In fact the best things I’ve experienced in life have also been the hardest. 
• To lean into discomfort instead of avoiding it.
• And most importantly, that bravery isn’t the absence of fear. It’s moving forward in spite of it.

Not everyone is afraid of public speaking, airplanes, or the ferris wheel on the Santa Monica pier, like I was.
Maybe your fear is needles or shots.
Maybe it’s the change of starting at the new school, or standing up for yourself to someone who scares you. 

Maybe it’s the fear of failure, of taking the test and not passing.

But whatever it is you avoid out of fear, I encourage you to do it anyways.

The pride you’ll feel in yourself, for doing the thing you were afraid to, is unexplainable. And it’s worth every ounce of discomfort it takes to get there.

*See Slideshow below for pictures from the event