Shalini “Shal” Krishnan was diagnosed at age 31 with Stage II breast cancer. She works as a project manager in the international sports sector and currently lives in Lausanne, Switzerland with her partner. In this episode, Shalini reads her essay, “Swimming, and Changing Direction,” from the 2024 Body issue of Wildfire Journal. The piece transports us to a memory of being caught in the waves at a beach in Brazil, tossed, breathless, and disoriented. A moment of fear that lodged in her body and paralleled the experience of cancer.

April and Shalini discuss using metaphor to make sense of illness and how April’s Sparks writing workshop helped Shalini shape and write this story. They explore fear, how Shalini once took her body for granted, and what it has meant to rebuild her relationship with it as an athlete after cancer.

They also talk about Shalini’s experience of attending 10 weddings across 7 countries while undergoing treatment.

More about episode sponsor Young Survival Coalition: https://youngsurvival.org/

Learn more about Shalini: 

https://www.instagram.com/shal_k/

https://shalsworld.com/

Purchase the Body issue of Wildfire Journal: https://www.wildfirecommunity.org/shop/p/digital-body24

Buy the Wildfire book Igniting the Fire Within: Stories of Healing, Hope & Humor, Inside Today’s Young Breast Cancer Community: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BJVJ629F?ref_=pe_3052080_397514860

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More about Wildfire Journal: 

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Information on submitting your story for consideration to be published in Wildfire Journal: https://www.wildfirecommunity.org/submissions