7. Body Love & Acceptance - A Goddess Journey Through Cancer with Nicole Lite

In this epsiode we chat with the beautiful Nicole Lite, an intuitive healer and two-time cancer survivor, about her journey of self-acceptance and body love after going through breast implant illness, breast cancer and lymphoma.

We dive into the role of spirituality, how to foster self-love and self-empowerment in the face of cancer, and how her journey taught her how to embrace her whole self as the gorgeous divine goddess that she is.

Her story is moving and filled with so much love. This episode is not be missed!

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About Nicole
Nicole Lite is an intuitive energy healer, reiki master, 2x cancer survivor, goddess empowerment.

• Follow her on Instagram at @soulkisses222

About Andi

Hello! I'm Andi and I'm a Voice & Expression Coach, Medium, and Actress, and I love all things spirituality, expansion and being brave. I have been on a really long journey with my body. If my journey has taught me anything it’s that as humans we are incredibly powerful self-healers. When we allow ourselves to be brave and share our stories, we embody our most transformative ally – our beautiful, empowered strength. I am here to help you reclaim your whole creative, connected and confident self so that you can become EVERYTHING that you are here in this life to be. xx

• @andi.matthies on Instagram
• Be a guest on the podcast

Transcript

Welcome to Body Diaries, the podcast that shares our real, raw and unfiltered body stories so that we can finally shake off shame, reconnect with our whole selves and ignite everything that our bodies are capable of.

 I'm your host, Andi Matthies and each week we connect with some of the world's most inspiring body-led humans and explore the energetics that changed their lives. If you've ever felt disconnected from your body, or you are craving to finally unlock your whole experience, this podcast is for you.

Andi M: .

This week, I have a really powerful episode for you. I sit down with the beautiful Nicole Light, who is an intuitive healer and a two time cancer survivor.

In this episode, Nicole shares with us her journey of self acceptance and body love after going through breast implant illness, breast cancer, and lymphoma. We dive into the role that spirituality played for her, and how to foster self love and self empowerment in the face of cancer, 

and how her own journey taught her how to embrace her whole self as the divine goddess that she is. Her story is really, really moving and filled with so much love. It really is an episode not to be missed. 

And please, don't forget to leave a review if you love it, so that we can reach everyone who needs this story. Let's dive in.

Hi, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of Body Diaries. I'm really, really excited today. We are chatting with Nicole Light, who is an incredible intuitive healer, Reiki master, but she's also a two time cancer survivor and a goddess of empowerment. Welcome. Welcome, Nicole. It's so lovely to have you here.

Nicole Lite: Thank you so much for inviting me to have this conversation with you and being in your energy. It's definitely an honor for me, and I truly appreciate it, and I love what you're doing with this podcast. It screamed out to me when I saw that you were seeking women and men to speak about their journeys.

Thank you so much.

Andi M: Thank you. I'm really excited because today we're diving into all things, body love, body acceptance as a divine goddess and this acceptance and love, particularly after significant life events. We mentioned in your intro, you're a cancer survivor. So really learning to love and accept your body after this, 

I feel really privileged to talk to you about this today, and I'm really excited to dive in what that really looks like.

Nicole Lite: Wow. So there's so much to say on this Because my journey of self acceptance and love has been a complete process for me and it supersedes cancer journey. it goes back to a point in time where I can recall being unhappy with my body, even in my teen years and feeling some sort of disconnect and unhappiness with what I envisioned in my head to be the perfect female body.

And I was not happy. I was never fully happy with my appearance. And so I was a small breasted woman and I was just always on this mission at some point to create the full feminine form for myself. And when, after I had my son and my breasts had changed form, as many women can certainly understand, I just felt more masculine at that point.

On my 40th birthday, I decided to get breast implants. And so in having those breast implants, I finally felt that maybe my body was completely symmetrical and it made me feel more whole, and I actually did it for myself. It wasn't like I was one of those women that desired to show off my breasts.

That was never, ever my desire or intention. In fact, it was just for myself. whAtever I would wear, always actually covered them up regardless. But, what ended up happening is, it was all great for a while, but then my body started to actually reject this.

Andi M: I just, for myself, felt more complete by having these breast implants, but I started to actually feel my body rejecting my breast implants. And I do know that for many women, breast implants will never harm them, but there's a significant amount of women out there that have acquired breast implant illness from their breast implants.

Nicole Lite: And I was one of the lucky winners of that lottery. And um, I just started to pay attention to what my body was doing and I could feel my lymph nodes like enlarging. I was losing hair. I had a body rash. There were all these different symptoms that I was experiencing. And I knew at that point that my body was rejecting my breast implants. And so In doing that, I decided, okay, I need these out of my body.

They're poisoning me. And what I decided to do was I contacted a breast plastic surgeon because I was hellbent now on having my breast implants removed and returning my body back to its natural form and helping it heal. And what happened was, I had at that point in doing the mammogram and sonogram, I discovered that I had Breast Cancer and Lymphoma.

My family is both out at the exact same time. So that was a very tough pill to swallow and it was almost as if the doctor was speaking a completely different language to me because I was like, I'm sorry, you're telling me now I not only have one cancer, but I have two. I even digest what you're telling me.

It just, Changed everything. So at that point, it was a decision I had to make for myself to have a double mastectomy to get rid of the cancer and the breast implants of course needed to still go. And a lot of women that have had breast cancer and a mastectomy have chosen to do reconstruction with breast implants.

And that was not an option for me. So what I decided was at that point in time that I needed to just. Abandon that whole aspect of myself. And it was a hard pill for me to swallow because now I'm choosing to go completely the opposite. The one thing that I was obsessed about with my body is now the one thing that was essentially killing me.

And really just, it was a complete extreme, the complete extreme opposite. And um, it was a process because not only did I have to accept that I wasn't having breasts anymore, I then had to think about the fact, like, how am I going to manage battling these two cancers? So it was the conversation that needed to happen between different oncologists and which cancer was I going to tackle first.

And it came to be that having a double mastectomy was the first course of action for me. And the irony in that was that I did not have to have anything else other than replacement therapy after that. I didn't need chemotherapy after my mastectomy, which was quote unquote, the blessing in my breast cancer was that I had a very I had a verycommon cancer and that I be rid of my breast cancer with my double mastectomy, but that's all well and good.

I still had to fight the lymphoma, so I did need chemotherapy. And so yet another huge form of the female identity was being stripped of me because I was completely petrified of being bought. I'm not going to lie about that. Bye. was petrified. it was really hard for me to digest the two things that I felt that defines me as feeling good about myself were being taken from me. But I have come a very long way and I have accepted the transitions and I'm still in the process of accepting more and more. I do feel that along the way I have accepted these transformations with. I would say grace with acceptance, with rawness and with, just realness because I did actually use Facebook as my way to process my feelings, and I would openly discuss how I felt along the steps of my cancer journey and my breast implant illness. And I would use that in a form to get out what was on my heart and to get out the emotional aspect of what it's really like for someone going through this.

And at one point I was completely, I'd say, petrified of, the whole baldness. But then I soon came into a place of complete acceptance of the baldness and exposed myself in a way or revealed myself to my Facebook world and plastered my face bald on Facebook and spoke my truth. And it felt Really empowering and, and amazing. I've maintained that rawness throughout the path.

Andi M: What an incredible rollercoaster of a journey. I know what it's like as a woman to wrap our identities to these certain feminine features that we have, our breasts, our hair in particular. I haven't actually shared this on the podcast yet, but when I was going through puberty, I only.

ever developed one breast. So I had to go through that similar process of trying to reconcile being a female with one completely flat breast and one fully developed, fairly significantly developed breast and grapple through what does that mean as a woman to not have the form that we associate with that and then go through the process similar to you of trying to step into acceptance and using breast implants as a mechanism to do that.

But on your particular journey, you've gone through that process, stepped into it, found that, that moment of self acceptance, and then it's, it's come down the other side of the rollercoaster with these other complications that have come with your body. So I want to see you and acknowledge you just in this moment.

And thank you for sharing that But it does lead me in to the question of looking back on that now, 

what did the reconciliation of that and coming back to being a woman look like for you?

Nicole Lite: I have to say I was really just open to the process, but I do have to also acknowledge the fact that while I was, so the timeline. of when I had my double mastectomy and having chemotherapy, there was several months in between the two. So I had my mastectomy last June and I was able to recover a little. And then I decided that my priority was to enjoy the rest of my summer and, and just be, and then.

Once the lymphoma kicked in a little stronger in late fall, it was no longer an option to just wait and see what's happening with my body. It was okay, it's time to now take care of things. With that being said, my self perception and acceptance of my flatness actually only started to pick up into it's like crazy realization, I'd say maybe this spring, because that wasn't a priority of mine during chemo.

I was like, whatever, I'm at my complete rock bottom. I don't have boobies. I don't have hair. what else? Like it makes no difference anymore. This is it. I'm at my bare minimum of caring. So once spring started to come and once my chemo was finished, which was in April, it was dress season and it's bikini season.

And now it's okay, what are you going to fit into your neck? What are you going to wear now? What are you going to feel your most beautiful in now? Because you have no chest. And It's been a process, it had been a process, and as timely as this conversation is with you, because it certainly is, I just came back from a family holiday with my son and my husband, and I had no choice but to abandon that whole story in my head of, are people looking at me?

Who's this woman at the beach with no boobs? Like, all these things, and I, I actually came away from this trip being like, This is me. I don't care. I am still very much in my feminine and I just have to feel empowered and beautiful in the skin that I'm in and that my, my femininity has absolutely nothing to do with having two breasts.

And honestly, in terms of how I visually look with my hair,

I'm going to embrace this hair as well because the prior version of me had blonde hair. My hair was blonde and it was highlighted and theyI felt that I was like a blonde goddess, or that was what I envisioned my desires to be. And now I'm Salt N Pepa, and I'm not changing it. I'm not gonna use any type of natural dyes, I'm just going to embrace this new version of myself because I'm actually blessed to be here.

It doesn't matter. I'm just going to be me.

Andi M: And just so our listeners know, Nicole has this cutest cropped haircut that you've ever seen and she is beautiful and she's adorable and I know you can't see her right now but the fact that she is rocking this hairstyle and this body is amazing. So I just wanted to share that.

Nicole Lite: Oh, thank you so much. That's so sweet. The funny part about my hair is that it's growing in super, super soft. And so one might find me petting myself often because it's so soft. And I'll even go up to my son and I'll say do you want to pet me? And he'll be like, I do. It's like I am my own support animal.

That's the family support animal. We have a dog, I'm softer than my dog.

Andi M: I love that. But that is an incredible moment to share, like to go from questioning, how am I going to step into this? Like, how am I going to step into this new version of me going onto the family holiday and embracing yourself on the beach? Like Take me there. What was that moment like? And what was the turning point?

What was the tipping point?

Nicole Lite: For me, I think it was the realization that it's more in my head. People aren't really staring at me. And if they do it's quite normal because, someone might wonder what happened to this woman because she's completely flat. I am no different than anyone else walking on that beach.

There are so many different beautiful bodies that God has created. And who's to say what's beautiful? Everyone is beautiful. Everyone is beautiful. Everyone is divine and beautiful. And so I felt that as long as I can just be comfortable and confident in my skin, then that in and beautiful. I just, I don't wish to limit myself. There are women. Are,and God bless them, are the extreme of me in the sense that they're also flat, but they're also, extremely proud of that. And they expose that on the beach or wherever. And I think it's incredible. But I'm not that person. I'm just wanna feel feminine and wear things that make me feel. Feminine, like even what I'm wearing with you right now, like this makes me feel good wearing a little halter dress. Like it just makes me feel no different, but it just makes me feel girly. And there are other things I also like to doin order to um, connect to my femininity, which is dance. I just feel that this trip was very important for me to kind of step into this. new version of myself with so much love. It's been a process, but I, I wanted to look in the mirror and love the body that I see in the reflection. And I do. I think that it's exactly the way that it's supposed to be.

Andi M: I love that. When you mentioned the word dance then I got really excited because that is a beautiful segue into the next thing that I wanted to ask you is I know you're an intuitive energy healer and a Reiki master. I was wondering like what modalities and practices, energetic as well as movement or body lead helped you through this process or did you lean on or did you discover?

Nicole Lite: I was a part of a program with a beautiful healer and she did incorporate dance into this program. And it helped me realize my connection and it helped me feel into my sensuality and that the essence of who I am is still very much alive. There were so many things that helped feed me during this journey.

I'm extremely spiritual, so I was a part of many healing programs. I also feel a huge connection to my angels, so I would connect to them and they would show me signs often and always. They'd always show up for me. Connecting with beautiful friends who have also amazing gifts, who were able to actually connect me with my mother who has passed and passed from ovarian cancer, but she's my complete angel goddess epitome of just amazingness.

And so hearing the words from my mother to kind of fill me up and to shift me back into you got this Nick, you're going to get through this like Keep going. Certainly helped feed me. Reiki definitely fed me. And being in the company of other... women that were spiritual and in my community did.

I feel like I'm probably missing on so many things, but I was fed very strongly through my spirituality and leaning in on messages that I would receive. And they could be numbers or cards because I am in fact addicted to my cards. And I pull cards daily and in fact, maybe from three different texts daily.

 I had definitely leans in to that it fed me and it completely gave me faith and knowing that everything was going to be okay and that there was actually a huge purpose in all of this. I didn't feel any victimhood or. I felt that there was a grand purpose in this journey. And besides it being about self acceptance and love for myself, that actually went so deep and into the internal parts of myself and the mirror work, which is a whole other conversation.

It just led me to feel, what is my purpose as well? What can I do with this to help other women feel this? this level of love or come into love for themselves because it's still a process. The acceptance and love is a process. 

Andi M: That's really beautiful. And I guess that leads me into wanting to ask, like this sense of being a divine goddess on this journey, this goddess that is full of self-love and self-acceptance.

What does that look like to you? And when you call yourself an embodied goddess of self-love and body acceptance, what does that really mean? I'd love to understand that from a day-to-day perspective.

Nicole Lite: From my perspective, a goddess is a woman who dives deep into Who she really is and transcends and transforms and just learns through her challenges and rises above them and keeps going and she uses that to empower herself and others and she just continues to

become this being of light because in all darkness There's always something to learn. It's in the darkness that we actually learn the most and learn the most about ourselves. And so I feel in situations like this. You have no choice. Well, yoU do have a choice. Some people are completely unaware of maybe the gift of time that they have during a challenge like this, but it gave me this time to really look inward and to kind of see so many layers of healing that I wanted to emerge from.

So I feel a goddess is any woman who's actually willing to do the hard work and to use her pain as inspiration 

Andi M: I actually had done an entry on my Facebook page prior to my trip with my son and my husband, but on or about the anniversary of my double mastectomy. So this is the entry. It's been exactly one year since I've had my double mastectomy without reconstruction. The grieving process of my old stealth and my body has only really just started to have an impact on me. I brushed off feeling any of the feels because I didn't have the capacity to process all that happened after my surgery. I just wanted to live the rest of my summer as best I could. also then had my chemo journey starting last December of 2022 till April 2023. Maybe because it's summertime, bikini season, and cute dresses, that the self acceptance aspect of my breast cancer has been a hard one for me to swallow. I don't know exactly what God's plan is for me and how he will choose to use me and make this count for something, but I sure hope it's big. No matter who or what you grieve, it's always a I know this all too well? For today, I will offer myself grace and compassion for all the experiences I went through, and looking back on all that happened in one year.

Nicole Lite: I will celebrate myself. and all I've overcome. The self love journey is a lifetime's work, but I will honor where I'm at and love myself as I am today and committed to loving myself fully.

Andi M: That's an incredible entry. Thank you so much for sharing. I think one of the things that really stood out to me was when you read the part about that your journey is for something big, that you're committed, that this is a lifetime of work and you're kind of stepping into whatever that journey is.

I'd love to hear a little bit more around, what was going on when you wrote this and what really brought that out.

Nicole Lite: I always actually leaned into this faith when I even was diagnosed that this just has to have some type of meaning, that this entire chapter of my life isn't about the topical and the most basic like in your face aspect, like cancer, me having cancer, two cancers. It wasn't about that. Like I always had this belief that I would persevere and make it through this, that it wouldn't be easy, but that God had some type of plan for me, that there was some reason behind this happening for me.

And so I, I leaned into that often to be like, I'm going to get through this. like, Please, angels, can you please make it a little like, not turbulent? Can you make the path a little less turbulent for me? Can you make it a little smoother? But, you know, basically did lean heavily into faith that there was a reason for all of this and that somewhere along the way, even if I impacted one woman in my journey and it helped her discover this about herself, that that was worth it for me.

And so that's pretty much inspired me to always share my journey on Facebook because there was a lot of shame for me about one feeling shame around the fact that like, why didn't I just love my body the way it was before? And look at what I did. I, I got breast implants and look at that. They made me sick and look at that.

I not only got breast implant illness, but I got two cancers and there was like all this guilt. And shame around those factors, but I knew that there was a reason for all of that. It was to kind of

help inspire someone else to just love themselves and accept themselves as they are, without having to put any prosthetics, anything in their body and to just love themselves deeply. For the way God created them. So any entries that I did do on Facebook were with the intention of setting my pride and my shame aside, because I just deeply wanted to inspire.

Maybe there was like a 17 year old girl out there that felt that she needed breast implants in order to feel more feminine like I did at 17. And so I, I just wanted to stop it. I wanted to be this speaker and just. inspire someone out there to, to stop and to just love on themselves as they are now?

Andi M: That is incredible. I love that you felt driven to step into that. And I guess that leads me into wanting to ask you. Where does all of this start in your opinion, in terms of us needing to have breast implants and needing to have the long hair? Because I went through the blonde long hair phase too, as a device to uh, make myself feel feminine and powerful and accepted.

So I'm really interested in your experience. Where did this stem from? Where did this lack of love and acceptance come from, particularly in your journey?

Nicole Lite: Wow. That's a great question. And I'm going to try really hard to pinpoint it. And I can't say it's because of social media, because back then there was no social media, thank the Lord, because the images that one would see, they can really influence how you see the world. I'm not certain that it was all based on preconceived feelings as a young girl. I can't say that it was because

I was skinny at some point and I didn't feel filled out. I'm not certain of that. I do happen to wonder now that you bring this up. What kind of impact

previous lifetimes have had in this journey of mine, because I am a huge believer of past life regression. I mean, We are one soul experiencing many timelines. So it does lead me to wonder. Where in that timeline did this distortion come?

But I do feel that at some point in my obviously young adolescence, I felt skinny, but bony skinny and not filled out. And it made me feel insecure at that point.

But I actually don't recall being around girls that were like model esque. So I don't know why I would even feel this now. And looking back, I don't know where this comes from, just...

Andi M: And that's fair. a couple of times through the conversation today, you've mentioned about really stepping into full acceptance and you've decided not to have the reconstructive surgery. I think that's incredible and that's incredibly powerful.

Nicole Lite: Thank you. That's also been a journey to be very bare. I did, when I had my double mastectomy, my plastic surgeon and I at that point decided that we would leave room for future decision making. So I have extra skin in that area now. And I'm at the point now where I do believe that I will not have any type of reconstruction to give the illusion that I have breasts. I just don't really think it's a priority any longer.it doesn't feel right. in my body and in my soul to do that. I um, do think that I might have a conversation about cleaning up what we have left, but I, I'm not really feeling the whole fat transfer surgery or any of these other things.

I just don't feel it. And I curious to see what my plastic surgeon is going to try to tell me, but it doesn't really matter because I just feel for me that Accepting myself in this form is exactly the way I'm supposed to be. Like, I just feel that this is freeing. It feels good. It feels right. And I just, I do not wish to create something that's not real. And I think that also goes in line with changing my hair color. Like I basically just want to embrace this next version of myself fully.

Andi M: I find that incredibly inspiring and incredibly thought provoking

And so a couple of times you've mentioned the power of community in your healing in your healing journey. And I believe that you've got a new group starting up that we will be able to join you in. I'd love to hear more about that so that we can potentially work with you.

Nicole Lite: Oh, thank you. Yes, I am very inspired by this group. I named it Her Sacred Healing Journey Embracing Body Transformation. What I wish to create in this container is to invite women not only experiencing my journey with the breast implants and the flatness. I encourage women with any different types of body transformation issues to enter this space because there are, like we've said, so many different stories and different ways that women have 

not felt their most beautiful. And so I,I felt highly called to create this space because I wanted to create this healing amongst the women in this group, just to share their stories and to share the tools and ways in which that have helped them through this process.

And I also wanted to share my tools as well. I wanted to share my story. I wanted to. eventually create a healing program, which incorporates another offering that I have, which is Rose Healing. But I wanted to create this space for women that resonate with spirituality because there are other groups that exist that focus on Christianity or Bible study.

And although those are beautiful, that's not what defines me. I am a very multifaceted spiritual being. And I just use the divine and source and the universe and creator as my inspiration. And I believe that there are many women out there that do as well. So I felt that this experience of mine would resonate with someone else out there and that they would desire to feel this.

Cradling of love in this space. And so it just really called out to me. I'm very excited by it. I'm excited to see what comes of it. I'm excited to see the women that join and to create new connections and to just heal. It's also a collaboration of healing for myself. It will be very cathartic for myself to be in the energy of like minded women who actually understands.

this aspect of healing. It'll be really beautiful. I'm very excited by it.

Andi M: Yeah I'm really excited to see that group as well. If anyone, if any of our listeners want to look that up, the Facebook group is called Her Secret Healing Journey, Nicole, thank you so much. Thank you so much for joining us today, for joining me, for chatting through everything that is your story.

Nicole Lite: Thank you for allowing me this time with you and sharing my story because it's been very therapeutic for me to do that with you. And I feel extremely honored and blessed to be with you and your energy. And it's just a beautiful soul. And I I I really am excited to see what I'm going to learn by listening to more of your podcasts and connecting with other stories.

I feel very honored. Thank you so much.

Andi M: Oh, you're so welcome.

 This was such a beautiful conversation with Nicole. Watching her vulnerably share her journey was honestly such a privilege. If you feel drawn to work with Nicole, please connect with her on her socials by searching Nicole Light. That's L I T E. 

And again, if you feel the pull to explore what working together with me looks like, as always, you can drop me a message on Instagram at andi.matthies. I'm always keen for a chat to see how we can start to deepen your own connection with your body and really open your higher abilities so that that bravery and unparalleled performance and creativity can start to rapidly flow through you.

Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. If you loved listening, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review because I'd love to give you a shout out. You can find us on Instagram at @bodydiariespodcast.

You can also find me, your host, at @andi.matthies. And if you're feeling ready to share your story on Body Diaries or you have some powerful insights from your own work that you know would help others on their own journeys, fill in the guest application that's in the show notes.

This podcast was recorded in Naam, the traditional lands of the Kulin Nation, to whom I pay my respects to Elders past and present, as well as any other Aboriginal Elders of other communities who may be listening.