We Went to Pine Mountain Club and, For a Minute, Nobody Had to Explain Anything
Backyard Breastie Board Members preparing a meal at their annual retreat.
I am just going to say it: sometimes what a woman in cancer-world needs is not one more inspirational quote floating over a stock photo of a sunrise.
Sometimes she needs to get out of town.
She needs trees. A cabin. Lake views. A bed that looks inviting. Women who already get it. Snacks she did not have to shop for herself. A porch. A sweatshirt. A little mountain air and a lot less nonsense.
Co-Founder Britany Ek in one of the cabin rooms
That is what Pine Mountain Club was for us.
Why this matters
We headed up there for our Backyard Breasties retreat, and the minute we got there, I felt my whole body do that thing where it finally unclenches a little. Not a miracle. Not a makeover montage. More like my nervous system stopped acting like it was on DEFCON 1 and said, okay... maybe we can sit down now.
And honestly, that is huge.
Because cancer has a way of turning your whole life into administration. Managing appointments. Managing medications. Managing side effects. Managing insurance. Managing everybody else’s feelings about your diagnosis. Managing your own face so when somebody asks how you are, you do not answer with the full unedited version and send them straight into a panic spiral next to the produce section.
So being in a cabin in the pines with women who already understand the math? That is not extra. That is care.
What I loved most is that it fell apart fast. Corporate Beverly came with a binder and a white board. SAHM Britany came with beer and Theresa brought board games and a karaoke mix.
Co-Founder Beverly’s utterly useless whiteboard
Um. so maybe beer and karaoke isn’t a great mix for ubernerdy board games. We learned that for sure. Either way, it did not feel like one of those glossy wellness situations where everybody is wearing oatmeal-colored linen and pretending cucumber water changed their life. (I might have been a little like “Guys!!!! we are supposed to do a trust fall!!) but it felt real. Cozy. Slightly woo. Rebecca said something weird about the sun and mercury or something. Genuinely funny like weird funny, hahahah. The kind of weekend where the beds get unmade, people sit outside with drinks in hand, and nobody is trying to win an award for Most Inspirational Human Before Coffee.
Which, frankly, drives me insane and is usually just what I need because I am magnificent at running stuff but sometimes I leave the people part behind.
What real care looks like
There were blankets. Oversized like Salt N Pepa oversized clothes. Porch moments. Quiet lake views. Women talking. Women snoring. And lots and lots of off key singing by people who maybe only had a showered as an audience before. Women laughing that deep laugh that usually only shows up when you are with people who do not require a backstory. The kind of laugh that says, “Girl, this is some nonsense,” and also, “I am so glad you are here.”
or even… I am so glad you are STILL here…because being HERE matters.
And that is the thing. When you are around other Breasties, you do not have to explain why you are tired in your soul and your kneecaps at the same time. You do not have to explain why your body feels like a stranger some days. You do not have to explain why you are grateful, mad, hopeful, worn out, and trying to remember why you walked into the kitchen all in the same five-minute window.
That is rarer than it should be.
Outside making plans
And yes, the setting mattered. For me, a Great Lakes girl, it was everything— a breather. There is something about trees, water, and mountain quiet that makes the regular world back up a little. The to-do list stops echoing off the walls. Your phone gets less interesting. Your body remembers it belongs to the living world, not just the medical-industrial complex and the CVS text alert system.
Nature is not magic. I am not about to tell you a pine tree cured anybody. But I am saying this: it helps. It helps to look at something older than your fear. Something surprising or something a little…petulant frankly. Something that is like…babe, I’m dirty…so what? It helps to step outside and breathe cold air. It helps to sit on a porch and stare at a lake instead of a patient portal.
It helps when survival is not the only assignment on your calendar for five minutes. I never imagined that I would still be going to appointments every three months 7 years later but here we are.
And what I appreciated most is that nobody was up there trying to become a shinier, more optimized version of herself. This was not a “level up” weekend. We were not manifesting. We were not rebranding our trauma. We were resting. Talking. Looking out the window. Eating snacks. Taking time out just for Backyard Breasties.
You would not believe how often a fever throws off our planning or dates.
If nothing else we are here to show that there is something more in the “after”. And we can somehow cobble enough together to help each other. Maybe that sounds small to somebody on the outside, or it sounds like “not enough” or “chemo brain”but if you have lived in cancer-world, you know it is not small at all.
We are planning for actual care. OUT of clinical settings and IN people’s homes and yards.
Care with dignity.
Care with humor.
Care with a little side-eye for nonsense and more than one or two F bombs.
Care that understands real life, real bodies, real households, real fatigue, real fear, and the fact that sometimes the holiest thing you can offer somebody is a place to sit down and exhale.
I did not leave Pine Mountain Club thinking everything was magically fixed, because this is not an En Vogue video and we are not about to harmonize our way out of systemic nonsense and… I mean we never did get to my flow charts….
But I did leave softer.
Quieter.
Grateful.
Like my shoulders had dropped a few inches.
Like my nervous system had gotten a tiny vacation.
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If you believe women going through breast cancer deserve care that feels personal, practical, honest, and deeply human, I hope you will support Backyard Breasties. We are building the kind of community I wish every woman had access to in the middle of treatment and recovery — the kind with dignity, fresh air, real help, and yes, enough snacks.