Maggie's Story

Maggie Judge: 00:00:00

getting breast cancer into our life is never part of the plan. In this episode, we talk about the need for slowing down to create the space to heal.

Maggie Judge: 00:00:22

Hi, I'm Maggie.

Dina Legland: 00:00:24

And I'm Dina. And this is the show where we get real and raw about breast cancer, the fear, the love, the changes, the surprising gifts, and there's celebrations in it all.

Maggie Judge: 00:00:39

At the end of the episode, we will be asking you to share your real and raw insight from this conversation.

Dina Legland: 00:00:46

Are you ready to dive into today's episode? Today, we will hear more about Maggie and get to know a few things about her and her experience. But before we get to that, I'm going to provide a trigger warning for anyone that may not be ready to hear the real and the raw and need more time before hearing other people's experience in breast cancer. If you are not in a place to listen today, my friend, Please exit the show now and take care of you and come back anytime that you are ready. For those of you in a place to explore and listen. Let's dive in. Maggie, it's been such a pleasure to get to know you since we met in February of 2022. It's our one year anniversary

Maggie Judge: 00:01:49

Can't believe it's already a year. It's been an amazing year.

Dina Legland: 00:01:52

Yes, it has. And I truly would love our listeners today to get to know a little bit more about you. So can you please share some of your story beyond the cancer first, as we will get to know you more and more as in just a little bit. So where did you grow up?

Maggie Judge: 00:02:16

Well, I grew up born and raised Minnesota. And I actually have lived here all of my five decades. I grew up in a place about 15 minutes from where I live now. I when I went to college, I went college two hours north and came right back to where I grew up. And I love Minnesota because I love that we have four seasons. I just don't love the minute the winter season.

Dina Legland: 00:02:52

Yes, I I've never been to Minnesota and I know that there is a lot of sun snow. And for someone who originally was born and raised in New York, I understand the snow. But can you just do me one little favor? Of course. Can you say the state that you're from

Maggie Judge: 00:03:10

Minnesota?

Dina Legland: 00:03:14

I know we all talk about accents and whatnot. But I just I just love hearing it. Why didn't Minnesota eight? Yeah. Okay, my next question for you is what are some of the roles you have had? or are currently holding in life right now?

Maggie Judge: 00:03:37

Okay, so the roles that I play primary ones, mother, wife, daughter, sister, aunt friend, and Grandma, I have four beautiful grandbabies. So that's kind of fun. And and those are primarily the roles that I play as it relates to with others. But I also would say I've always played this role of a personal development junkie, I love all things personal development. And for me, it's always been about learning and always been about exploring and so I feel like that is an important role worth mentioning as well. And in the future we'll get into some other roles but for now, those are the primary ones

Dina Legland: 00:04:33

can you give us a quick one example of personal development that you do?

Maggie Judge: 00:04:40

Um, well I love to go I'm I'm very spiritual and love to go to conferences that help me learn more about and explore more about my spirituality. But also just learning more ways to you know, all of The personal development, your assessments you can take about your personality or your tendencies or your characteristics. And I just I love things like podcasts and things that I find very, very chock full of insights and wisdom Lake gladden Doyle's we can do hard things. Brene Brown, Mel Robbins, all of those things.

Dina Legland: 00:05:28

Yes, yes, that is so true. They are a lot of different, what I would call gurus out there when it comes to personal development. That's amazing. That's fantastic. So what do you like to do for fun? Or what do you love to do for fun?

Maggie Judge: 00:05:45

What I love to do is something that, as we talked about, in last episode, dancing, we will go dancing at some point. And I like you have never cared about who's on the dance floor. If if a song comes on. I'm on the dance floor. And I actually have to be careful. Because once I'm on the dance floor, it's hard for me to get off. So if I'm on a timeframe or something like that, it's yeah, I my, my husband's always like, no, no, let's not, let's not go there, because they'll never get you off the dance floor.

Dina Legland: 00:06:21

Absolutely. I feel the same way. I truly do I get on there. And that's it. My husband says the same thing. There she goes again.

Maggie Judge: 00:06:29

Well, I think about it brings us so much joy, right. So it's like one of those things where you you lose track of time. And which is a true measure of your feeling joy, right?

Dina Legland: 00:06:38

Absolutely.

Maggie Judge: 00:06:41

I also love to travel with my hobby with my daughter with my family. I like to go somewhere warm in the winter, and then go to the cabin. In the other seasons, I love to be in nature. And I think that was one of yours as well. I just love to be outside and I love to be in on or buy water. That's like my treasure place. I

Dina Legland: 00:07:09

love it. That's great. Oh, so many different things that you do. And that's wonderful.

Maggie Judge: 00:07:16

I will add quickly to I do love to play games. I love games like Pictionary. And not, I just board games, card games, I love games. And we grew up doing that with my dad would always get a game at Christmas. And we play games. So I love that too. Wow.

Dina Legland: 00:07:31

It's the family time. Those are the memories to treasure without a doubt. Okay, so let's get into something that might be I would say, real enroll right now. When and where were you when you got the call? And what was your diagnosis?

Maggie Judge: 00:07:55

All right. So it's interesting, because mine is sort of twofold. The first, the first thing I remember was I was actually at an appointment at the breast clinic when they called me back for a biopsy. And right then and there, the doctor told me there is a 95% chance you have breast cancer, which I was surprised by because I assumed they would wait. And she said I've seen a lot of these. I'm 95% Sure. And when she looked at me, and she said you are you're very calm. Are you okay? Like she was thinking something might be wrong, because I was just looking so calm, and I didn't have questions. I didn't tear up. I didn't. I think my initial reaction was one of shock. I think it was one of maybe disbelief. But I also walked out of there and I kid you not and I look back and wonder how but I walked out of there feeling like it's going to be okay. And maybe I saw myself in that 5% I don't have it right. So I went home a couple days later, is when I got the call. I was home alone, working from home. And they asked me they called they asked me to sit down I was sitting in my favorite chair, recliner chair in the living room and she told me and that is when it really hit me. So they said you have triple positive invasive ductal carcinoma in your right breast. And then as you well know Deena then it was we need you to come back immediately for and it's like the things you have to come back for the things you got to schedule. It's like you know, get that get additional tests. I actually had to get an additional MRI led biopsy because they found a couple other things that lit up on the on the The initial MRI, so I had to go in for that. And yeah, it was. It was overwhelming. It was it was all. They you know that that whole phrase about it's like the whole world shrunk exam it was just sitting there alone, wondering, similar to you like how in the hell am I going to tell my daughter? How am I going to tell my husband?

Dina Legland: 00:10:28

So Wow, it's amazing on when you get that call all the things that go on in your mind and in your body as well. You know, people don't realize that yes, it's emotional. It's mental. But what does the physical body do as well, at that moment? Right. Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that. What was one of the biggest challenges you faced in your healing journey?

Maggie Judge: 00:11:05

For me, the biggest challenge and of course, this evolved us as we both know, but it's like the biggest challenge throughout was really creating the space to heal. Because I was already living such a busy, I'm doing air quotes here, the busy life, and it meant slowing down. And how was I going to find the time to slow down because I always think of it as I was a light switch. I was either on go go go go. Or off meant I was sleeping. And those were my two modes. So for me, it was really figuring out Oh, boy, how am I going to now create the space in my life to slow down and take care of my health?

Dina Legland: 00:11:56

Right? I would love the for our listeners to hear. Tell us one thing that you did to slow down.

Maggie Judge: 00:12:10

Oh, boy, meditation was one of my first changes. And I always experimented with meditation. I wouldn't say I had a routine practice, but I love to do it. And so that was one that was my first go to and I would just every morning. Go to that practice. That would be a morning ritual for me to sit in quiet. And especially in the three seasons other than winter on the deck, was listening to the birds and being outdoors was heaven and sitting on the deck and giving myself the gift of that time was a game changer for me.

Dina Legland: 00:12:52

Wow. That's just it's very important to look inward when we're doing those kinds of things. And that's something to celebrate. Without a doubt.

Maggie Judge: 00:13:06

Yes, definitely. Definitely.

Dina Legland: 00:13:09

We have a lot more to cover in the episodes ahead. But as we want to keep these episodes short for our listeners, let's wrap up today with you sharing an early win that you celebrated in your healing journey.

Maggie Judge: 00:13:26

Okay, this is kind of a fun one because at the time, I had no idea what I was doing. But when I got the call, like I was telling you in my favorite recliner, I hung up and felt all the feels right. I sat with the emotion I cried I I just was beside myself for a while. But then I grabbed a piece of paper. And I mapped out my journey. I started to map out I needed to see when was my end date? Because I wanted that in mind. So I had a bunch of question marks. I had a bunch of unknowns because I didn't know the plan yet. But I started to map things out. And here's the funny part my get it. Okay, so my diagnosis was November 20 of November of 2020. And I said my end date was going to be March 4 of 21. I was given myself, you know, a very unrealistic timeline. So the funny part is when I went to talk to the surgeon and have the conversation about the plan, she told me it's going to be a year and a half journey. And I was like, that's not gonna work for me. And I gave her my end date to which she chuckled. But here's where the here's where the wind comes in. She said, I think by that date, we could have it be or get it out of you date. That's been target surgery. And then you'll have more treatments. So actually, I officially got it out of me only a few weeks after my end date that I had my end hadn't mine, even though I had to do another, you know, set of radiation and chemo and everything after surgery. So that was like my I was I caught that as we had because it really set the stage for my mindset of targeting, putting intentional focus on the end, the end game,