My Guru Cancer

“I am not here to fight cancer. I am here to make friends with it, listen to it, learn from it, evolve and grow,” writes Bethany Webb Adair, aka B2, on her blog. “What if illness happens for our enlightenment? What if it makes our life even better? I am already learning so much from my new guru, cancer.”

After receiving a Stage 2b breast cancer diagnosis in 2015 at the age of 34, B2 took this “my guru cancer mindset” into the challenges so many face: misinformation and too much information. Tests and scans. Surgeries, chemo and radiation. Questions and doubts. Ups and downs. She was declared cancer-free in 2016, but the cancer returned, and she was diagnosed as Stage 4 in 2021, and has since lived with metastatic breast cancer.

“I call myself a thriver,” B2 says. “But after I was declared cancer-free in 2016, I spiraled downhill mentally and emotionally. My marriage was in trouble, all of the issues we’d already had were really highlighted, and I couldn’t ignore that. Eventually we would decide to end it, but at the time, we were still trying to work on things.”

She adds, “I also was overwhelmed with these feelings of, ‘What just happened? And what could have happened, and what could happen in the future?’ Although I was physically cancer-free, I was really mentally unhealthy. This was such an important experience for me because it taught me that true freedom from cancer is a state of mind, not a physical condition. Once I gave myself permission to move through all of the feels through inquiry, meditation, yoga — I slowly started to feel like myself again.”

Originally from Fort Myers, Florida, B2 had moved to Dallas after high school to study advertising, French and psychology at Southern Methodist University.  “After graduation, I jumped into a fast-paced advertising career but after a few years, I felt
myself burning out and decided to buy a one-way ticket to Barcelona, Spain to teach English abroad.” It was there that she felt herself drawn toward more spiritual pursuits, including yoga and mindfulness. 

She went on to earn her 200-hour Vinyasa Yoga Certification, 500-hour Yoga TherapyCertification, and in addition, became certified in Thai Yoga Bodywork and began leading yoga retreats. A few years later, she discovered “The Work of Byron Katie,” an author and spiritual mentor, and found that Katie’s message of challenging the belief systems we carry around in our heads really spoke to her.

“It was like yoga for your mind and created so much peace in my life,” B2 says. She then completed Byron Katie’s School
for The Work and Certified Facilitator Program. Just after her first international yoga retreat in Costa Rica in 2015, her “greatest yoga teacher” arrived instead: cancer. “It was time to practice what I preach,” she says.

“These yoga and mindfulness tools are definitely what kept my sanity,” she shares. “I was always a really natural person, and anything involving medicine was a big deal for me. I worked to open my mind around the feelings of having poison and instead chose to see chemo and medicine as a gift, a privilege, and a healing cleanse.”

B2 had also discovered First Descents, which she learned about during active treatment. “All I heard was ‘free trip if you have cancer,’ then I heard it was for young people, and at that time, I really didn’t know anyone else my age going through this,” she says.

That changed when she found out that a dear friend whom she’d met while living in Spain nearly a decade earlier had also been diagnosed with breast cancer six months after B2’s diagnosis. “We had kept in touch on Skype over the years, and we decided that after we were finished with treatment, we would meet on this First Descents trip,” B2 explains.

In 2017, in Tarkio, Montana, they made it happen—reconnecting with each other and their much-changed bodies while kayaking and soaking up the healthy setting. “What was neat was that it really supported me in getting out in nature, trusting my body, finding my confidence around that again” she says. “I didn’t know how much I needed that until I was there.”

B2’s nickname happened one night when everyone was gathered around the table at the lodge for dinner. One of the staff members left to pick up the last participant at the airport, and she never showed up. “I watched the staff scramble in confusion when all of a sudden they looked at me and said, “’Wait, are you Bethany?’ I said ‘Yep!’ and then watched the realization sweep over their faces that they went to pick me up, but I was already there. So, we all joked that there were two Bethanys for a bit, earning me the nickname B2. Although, technically it was ‘B Squared,’ but that was annoying to type, so it went to B2.”

She was doing a lot of typing at that point, it turns out. All through her initial cancer journey, she had been journaling, and also sharing her thoughts on her blog, and much of that material went into her book, “My Guru Cancer: ​​You Don’t Have to Fight to Find True Freedom from the C Word.”

B2 also had started to rethink how she wanted to live. “Life is precious, and I realized that I need to live my life and do the things now while I was in remission,” she says. “I had always loved Colorado after I went to summer camps here when I was younger, and my younger brother had just moved there and was about to have a baby. So I made the tough decision to leave my marriage and start a new life in Colorado. I was immediately like, ‘What took me so long?’ I had never been so in love with where I live. I felt so alive!”

She remained involved with the FD community, joining locals on Community Adventures, and she met a wonderful man—they just got married this past June, and live in Lafayette, where she continues her work as a mindset coach, sharing the healing benefits of movement and mindfulness.

“Everything that has happened to me up until this point, what a gift,” she says. “I was being trained for this without knowing it. And while I hope cancer physically leaves my body someday, and I get to grow old and gray, I am beyond grateful for all of the blessings, lessons and connections cancer has brought to my life.””

B2 is hosting a special opportunity for the breast cancer-diagnosed FD community to come together for yoga and a book-signing (attendees will receive a free copy of her book) on Oct. 27 at Battery 621 in Denver. Check out the details for this in-person “Mindful Movements & Mindset” and sign up to join us here.