Back to square one
Can you change your life in the middle of life? Yes, says Stephanie Neumann, 46. The former fashion journalist defeated breast cancer, hung up her profession, and founded a start-up: Happie Haus, an app for those affected by breast cancer. Here she tells her story
"It's good that you came back, it's malignant." Three and a half years ago, I heard these words as if in a dream – admittedly, a pretty bad one. I had just successfully founded a company with a friend, was newly in love, and life was great. And then, on an icy Friday afternoon in February 2018, came the diagnosis: breast cancer. What? Me? Cancer? How could that be? I was feeling great. It had to be a mistake! That thought shot through my mind as my oncologist drew tumor classifications and treatment methods on a white sheet of paper. I looked at the white paper with its abbreviations and arrows and understood nothing. How could I?
Back then, many things were unclear to me. Not that around 70,000 women in Germany receive this diagnosis every year. Not what it means to endure months of chemo, antibody, and who-knows-what-other therapies. And not that on this icy Friday afternoon, my life would change abruptly. From the fast multitasker happily working on five different projects in three languages at once, I became a "cancer patient" with chemo brain. Forgetful and endlessly slow – physically and mentally. I could only focus on one thing, and sometimes not even that worked. I sat in the car, wanted to drive off, but my feet no longer knew which pedal to press. The name Woody Allen was erased from my brain for over a year. And when I did manage to get on the bike, I was the last one, completely out of breath in first gear, arriving at the traffic light.
I was frustrated, confused, no longer recognizing myself. But at some point during the endless hours on the drip, I flipped the switch in my head. I began to accept the slowness that the chemotherapy was dripping into my body. I decided that this brake, which cancer had slammed into my life, was a challenge I wanted to take on. And I made the decision that if I survived cancer, there would be a new life for me. One that no longer takes place in the fast lane, but in harmony with myself. One that is not just about the latest handbags and shoes, but about other people. I wanted to help. Do something meaningful. But what?
"Yes, I wanted to change something, but I had no idea where the journey should go."
A life that you have envisioned for over 40 years in a certain way and with certain goals cannot simply be changed overnight. I had to soberly realize this when, after successfully completing my therapies, I was recovering in a rehab clinic in the Spreewald from the past nine months and slowly clearing my head. Yes, I wanted to change something, but I had no idea what. Yes, I wanted to change something, but I didn't know how. Yes, I wanted to change something, but I had no clue where the journey should go. I was stuck. The psycho-oncologist at the rehab handed me a book titled "Diagnosis Cancer – Turning Point and New Beginning" by Lawrence LeShan. I opened it and read the foreword: "What life would you live if you adapted the world to yourself, instead of what most patients do, adapting themselves to the world? What life and lifestyle would make you happily get up in the morning and happily go to bed at night?" Here it was, my book, my inspiration, my ticket to a new life. I read it in every free minute during rehab and simultaneously ordered my own copy home. The book is now almost exactly three years old, but it looks as if I have owned it my whole life. I don't even know how many times I have read it, quoted it, and flipped through it searching for answers. The book itself didn't give me answers, but it helped me find them within myself. It set something in motion.
And so it began, step by step. Not at a gallop like before, but at my new pace: veeeery slowly. At the end of 2018, just before Christmas, I left the company that I had proudly founded with my friend only a few years earlier. And in the summer of 2019, one year after my last chemotherapy and half a year after my last operation, I cautiously took the first step in a different direction: I started a yoga teacher training. It felt good, but I was still not sure about it. If someone asked me during that time what I did professionally, I had no answer. I didn't feel like a yoga teacher, but no longer like a fashion journalist either. Although I had taken on assignments as a freelance author again, I did so more for financial reasons. My heart was elsewhere; it was searching. Still.
And then everything fell into place at a time when I least expected it: during the Corona lockdown in 2020. All my writing assignments were canceled and I was once again sitting in my attic with no idea how to proceed. To do something meaningful with my time, I gave friends yoga classes on Zoom once a week. And to do even more meaningful things, I completed an additional online training for yoga for cancer. And suddenly, in the months when the whole world seemed to stand still, something started moving for me. Two and a half years after my diagnosis, I suddenly knew what I wanted to do. I founded a charity organization, Yoga for Cancer, which raises funds for cancer organizations through yoga events. And I founded Happie Haus with the goal of supporting breast cancer patients on their journey through the disease.
And that's how it happened. Today I am about to launch my Happie Haus app. Together with my partners from the 3Horizons Founders Hub and a team of experts, I developed an app that, with a lovingly curated mind-body program, is meant to help make the difficult time of breast cancer therapies a little easier. There are meditations, cooking classes, psycho-oncological group sessions, makeup videos, tips for managing side effects, yoga... Plus lots of tricks and ideas on how to master everyday life with cancer – also in terms of fashion. How do you tie a turban? How do you find the right wig? Answering these questions gives me particular joy – after all, I was a fashion journalist for two decades. And it just slipped out naturally. I WAS a fashion journalist. In my last life. Now I have a new one. I wrote my last text as a freelance author in late summer this year. Now I am an entrepreneur. And I am putting everything on one card. On the hope that with the Happie Haus app I can bring a smile to the faces of many women – despite the breast cancer diagnosis. Wish me luck!
Stephanie's Happie Haus app was launched in October. You can find all the information about it on www.happiehaus.com .
On our YouTube channel you will also find a detailed conversation with Stephanie.