Healing Out Loud: Awakening to Cancer and Psychedelics

For most of my cancer journey, I didn't talk about it.

I was embarrassed by my disease. Ashamed of my scars. I didn't want people to see me as sick or broken. I performed wellness while suffering internally. When people asked how I was doing, I changed the subject. I kept my fears to myself. My pain to myself. My questions and doubts and existential terror—all of it stayed locked inside.

I thought I was protecting myself. Protecting others from my burden. Maintaining some illusion of normalcy in a life that felt anything but normal.

But what I was really doing was making myself more unhappy. The silence was suffocating. The repression was exhausting. The isolation was unbearable. I was trapped in a prison of my own making. 

I'm not unique in this. So many of us living with cancer suffer in silence. We carry shame about our diagnoses. Guilt about what we might have done to cause our disease. Fear of being seen as weak or damaged. The stigma of cancer runs deep—the assumption that we somehow failed our bodies, that illness is a personal failing rather than a reality of human existence.

And this silence? It's harming us. Not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually.

During my recent podcast conversation with Ashley Lukens—a cancer thriver who has been working with psychedelic medicines for years—she shared something about her father that resonated deeply with my own experience.

"My dad died of cancer when I was twenty-three," Ashley told me. "And my dad didn't want to tell anybody he was sick. We weren't allowed to tell anybody."

Her father was diagnosed with late-stage metastatic prostate cancer. He went through traditional oncology, then entered clinical trials. And throughout it all—the treatments, the suffering, the slow decline—he didn’t want anyone to know he was sick. 

I understand that impulse completely. The desire to keep cancer private. The instinct to protect others from your reality. The shame that makes you hide your suffering. I lived that way for nearly two decades.

But Ashley learned something profound from watching her father's silent struggle.

"Now my mantra is to Heal out Loud," she said.

Healing out loud. Not healing in secret. Not performing wellness. Not pretending everything is fine when your world is falling apart. Healing out loud.

I'm just beginning to learn this myself. Psychedelic medicines have helped catalyze my own slow evolution—helping me see the cost of silence, showing me that sharing my story creates connection rather than burden, giving me courage to be more open even when it feels terrifying.

I'm still not very comfortable healing out loud. I'm still learning. But I'm trying to do more of it because I know it's good for me. And good for the cancer community.

And when I see someone like Ashley bravely healing out loud—sharing her cancer journey, discussing her work with psychedelic medicines, advocating publicly for access—it's a complete inspiration. It shows me what's possible. It gives me permission to keep stepping out of my shell.

The Awakening We Need

There's a paradox at the heart of psychedelic medicine access for cancer patients. And Ashley articulated it better than I could.

When I asked about organizing the cancer community around psychedelic access, Ashley respondent with empathy and humility. "I don’t know. The hardest thing is watching people buy the Western medical story about cancer whole-hog and erasing themselves in that process."

She continued: "There's so many more like groundwork that needs to happen in the cancer community to empower people to question the Western medical model and the way that it defines and describes cancer."

Here's the paradox: we need to awaken as empowered patients before we can fully appreciate the value of psychedelic medicines. But psychedelic medicines themselves can catalyze that awakening.

We need to be empowered to question the medical establishment before we can recognize that healing exists beyond standard protocols. But psychedelics can help us become empowered to ask those questions.

We need to trust our bodies and our intuition before we can follow them into unfamiliar healing territory. But psychedelics can help us learn to trust our bodies again.

It's circular. It's paradoxical. And it's true.

"Psychedelics can lead to that awakening" Ashley said. "But you have to be able to question the medical model first before you can even begin to see the role that psychedelics can play in your own healing journey."

So where do we start?

The CEO of Your Own Cancer

Ashley has a phrase that captures the empowerment she's talking about: "I always said: I'm the fucking CEO of AshleyLukinsCancer.com. This is me."

The CEO. Not a passive patient receiving doctor's orders. Not a grateful supplicant hoping for scraps of information. The CEO. The decision-maker. The person in charge.

"You have to be a boss to get through cancer care," I told her during our conversation. "And you have to advocate for yourself."

"100 percent!" Ashley agreed.

This perspective—that we own our cancer care, that doctors work for us rather than us working for them—is fundamental to healing out loud. When you claim power over your own treatment, when you become an active participant rather than a passive recipient, it becomes easier to speak openly about your journey. The two reinforce each other.

But getting there takes time. It takes practice. It takes courage to question authority and trust yourself.

"That capacity to do that is related to another key factor, which is following your intuition," Ashley said. "But for me, it's about trusting yourself."

Trusting yourself. In a healthcare system that often treats patient knowledge as irrelevant noise. In a system that sometimes dismisses alternative approaches as unscientific quackery. In a system where asking too many questions can make you feel like a problem patient.

This is where psychedelic medicines can help. Not as magic bullets that instantly transform us into empowered advocates. But as tools that help us reconnect with our inner knowing. That help us trust our bodies despite their betrayals. That help us see the medical system clearly—grateful for what it offers, critical of what it lacks.

Awakening Into Self-Knowing

"I think psychedelics are an awakening into yourself and your own self-knowing," Ashley explained.

Awakening. That's the word that keeps coming up. Not healing. Not curing. Awakening.

Like waking up in the morning. You've been asleep—eyes closed, unconscious, unaware. And then something shifts. Your eyes open. You become present. You start to see clearly.

That's what psychedelic medicines can offer: waking up to ourselves. To our bodies. To our choices. To our power.

But awakening is just the beginning. You still have to get out of bed. You still have to face the day. There's still work ahead.

"Psychedelics didn't get me here," Ashley was clear about this. "It just showed me the work I needed to do so that I could heal."

The awakening shows you the work. Then you have to do the work. For years. With support. With commitment. With courage to keep showing up even when it's hard.

Ashley worked with a Jungian analyst three times a week for ten years. She has a therapist. She has a coach. She has years of introspection creating the foundation for what psychedelic experiences could reveal.

This isn't a weekend workshop. This isn't microdosing for a few days and becoming enlightened. This is sustained commitment to inner work, with psychedelic medicines as powerful catalysts along the way.

Learning From Silence

When Ashley's father went through cancer treatment, he kept it private. That experience shaped her profoundly.

"When I got diagnosed, obviously my whole family was profoundly traumatized by what happened to my dad," Ashley said. "And my dad didn't want to tell anybody he was sick. We weren't allowed to tell anybody. Me, well now my mantra is to heal out loud."

I understand both sides of this. I lived in silence for many years, just as Ashley's father did. And I suffered because of it. The isolation was crushing. The inability to share my reality with others meant I couldn't access support, couldn't learn from others' experiences, couldn't find meaning in community.

But I also understand why silence feels necessary. The shame is real. The stigma is real. The fear of burdening others is real. The desire to maintain some privacy in the midst of medical invasiveness is real.

There's no judgment here—only recognition that we each navigate cancer in the ways we can. Some of us find healing in openness. Some of us need privacy to survive. Both are valid.

What Ashley learned from her father's experience—and what I'm slowly learning from my own journey—is that healing out loud can be liberating. Not for everyone, not all the time, but for those of us who are ready, it opens doors that silence keeps closed.

Ashley's mantra inspires me. It gives me permission to keep stepping into more openness, even when it feels uncomfortable. It reminds me that my story might help someone else feel less alone.

And that's ultimately what healing out loud offers: connection. Community. The recognition that we don't have to suffer in isolation.

Breaking the Triple Stigma

Healing out loud around cancer is challenging. We're fighting against stigma—the shame of being sick, the fear of being seen as weak, the discomfort others feel around illness and mortality.

But healing out loud around cancer AND psychedelics? That's facing down triple stigma.

First, the stigma of cancer itself. The guilt ("what did I do to cause this?"), the shame ("my body betrayed me"), the isolation ("I don't want to burden others").

Second, the stigma of challenging the medical establishment. The judgment when you question standard protocols, the eye-rolls when you mention alternative approaches, the dismissal from doctors who see you as a difficult patient.

Third, the stigma of psychedelic medicines. Decades of drug war propaganda saying these are dangerous substances used by irresponsible people. The illegality. The social judgment. The fear of being seen as desperate or unhinged.

Ashley faces all three stigmas openly. She talks about her brain cancer diagnosis. She discusses her holistic approach to treatment. She advocates for psychedelic medicine access. She heals out loud across all of it.

"My tagline is healing out loud," she told me. "People want to learn about other people's journeys because we are all desperate for healing."

This is why her openness matters. Not because everyone needs to share publicly about their cancer. Not because silence is wrong. But because when people like Ashley heal out loud, it creates permission for others to do the same. It normalizes conversations we desperately need. It breaks the isolation that suffering creates.

Normalizing Multiple Paths

Part of Ashley's healing out loud involves changing how people see psychedelic medicines. Making them accessible to people who would never consider themselves part of the ‘countercultural’ psychedelic community.

"I call myself the ‘pencil skirt and pearls’ of psychedelics," Ashley said. "I want to normalize it. I want to professionalize it. I want people to see that this is not just a Burning Man thing. This is also like something that is profound and earth shattering and everybody deserves to be able to do it safely without negative feedback."

Pencil skirt and pearls. Professional. Mainstream. Someone your Oncologist might take seriously.

And here's what's important: psychedelic medicines can absolutely be a Burning Man thing. They can be recreational, ceremonial, celebratory. That's valid and valuable. But they can also be serious, professional, medical interventions. They can exist in clinical settings with trained therapists. They can be prescribed and monitored and integrated with conventional cancer care.

Both paths matter. Both can coexist. And people living with cancer who want to explore psychedelics should be able to choose which setting works best for them—whether that's a festival, a ceremony, a clinical trial, or a therapist's office. The key is having options. Having choice. Having access to different frameworks for working with these medicines.

Ashley's work helps bridge these worlds. She makes it possible for people who would never attend Burning Man to consider psychedelic medicines. She creates space for cancer patients to explore these options within professional, regulated contexts.

And that's what healing out loud accomplishes. It expands possibilities. It normalizes conversations. It makes the impossible possible.

The Community We Build Together

"I just met with a woman who came to one of my Radical Remission healing circles," Ashley shared. "A really young breast cancer thriver. And she went on a healing retreat in California with the Survivorship Collective where they did psychedelics with all breast cancer survivors. And offering her that moment where we can destigmatize and normalize. Like that's what I want for folks."

This is the vision: cancer patients connecting with each other. Sharing openly about our journeys. Exploring psychedelic medicines together in supportive community. No shame. No secrecy. No isolation.

Just healing. Out loud. Together.

But building that community requires people willing to go first. Willing to share before it's comfortable. Willing to face possible judgment and stigma and misunderstanding.

People like Ashley. And increasingly, people like me. And hopefully, more people reading this.

"I think that's the biggest challenge for me. I think it is very hard to be alive right now," Ashley reflected. "It is very hard to be alive in America and we are seeing extreme mental illness and we are also seeing cancer as a result of that mental illness."

We need community now more than ever. We need to heal together, not in isolation. We need to speak openly about our suffering, our questions, our explorations.

Psychedelic medicines can help facilitate this. They can help us break through the silence that keeps us isolated. They can help us recognize our interconnection. They can give us courage to share our stories.

But ultimately, healing out loud is a choice. A practice. A commitment to showing up authentically even when it's hard.

Still Learning

I want to be honest: I'm still learning how to heal out loud. After many years of silence about my cancer, I'm only now starting to share openly. It's uncomfortable. It's vulnerable. It makes me anxious.

But I'm doing it because I've learned that suppressing my story makes me unhappy. Because I've discovered that sharing creates connection. Because I've seen people like Ashley model what's possible.

Psychedelic medicines have been part of my evolution. They've helped me see the walls I built around my suffering. They've shown me the cost of silence. They've given me glimpses of what healing out loud might offer.

But the medicines don't do the work. I still have to choose to share. I still have to face the discomfort. I still have to risk vulnerability.

Not everyone needs to heal publicly. Some people process best in private. Some journeys are too tender to expose. Some cultural contexts make openness dangerous. There's no single right way to live with cancer.

But if you feel isolated in your suffering... if you're tired of pretending everything is fine... if you're curious about connecting with others exploring psychedelic medicines... healing out loud might be worth trying.

Start small. Tell one trusted person something true about your experience. Join a support group. Share anonymously online. Find your people. Build your community.

And know that every time you heal out loud, you're breaking stigma. You're creating permission for others. You're building the world we need—where cancer patients can speak openly about our suffering and our healing, where psychedelic medicines can be discussed without judgment, where we support each other through the hardest journey any of us will face.

Ashley's mantra continues inspiring me: heal out loud. Not perfectly. Not all at once. But gradually, courageously, authentically.

The circle continues. The community grows. The awakening spreads.

Let's journey together. Out loud.

For more on psychedelic medicine and cancer support, reach out to our community at community@healingcancerjourneys.org.