Realign, recenter, rebalance: Chelsey’s mission to build a community of healing

Chelsey Pickthorn was an advocate for breast cancer awareness from an early age. Her own diagnosis would change her perspective, and her life, toward a new path.

Chelsey felt the weight of her family history with breast cancer. Having lived in fear of breast cancer since childhood due to her mother’s diagnosis when she was 9, she felt she owed a success story to the seven women in her family who had experienced breast cancer before her.

She was also steeped in breast cancer advocacy from then on, as her mom launched a local nonprofit - Breast Friends of Oregon - supporting others with breast cancer.

“I just had a lot of fear of when, not if, this would happen to me,” she recalls.

Her “when” came earlier than she feared, when she was at the height of success in the beauty industry as a hair and makeup artist to high-profile clients and owner of a busy Brooklyn salon.

After returning from a month-long job on tour, she was diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer at age 33 in 2017, and then with a metastatic recurrence just over a year later in 2019.

Chelsey was at the height of a busy career working with high-profile clients in her Brooklyn salon when she was first diagnosed with triple-negative breast cancer at age 33.

Advocacy to Chelsey had always meant awareness. But she quickly found that even being surrounded by people who had experienced breast cancer, there was still very little awareness around metastatic disease and her triple-negative subtype, which disproportionately affects young (like Chelsey), Black, and people of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage.

“I needed to find my people and where I belonged,” she recalls. “I needed people who get this and understand my perspective more than ever. “

She soon found Living Beyond Breast Cancer — and a sense of connection and belonging.

“I flipped a switch where I was like, I need people who get this and understand my perspective more than ever.” She joined LBBC's Young Advocate program in 2021 and later became a board member at LBBC in 2024 to support the organization’s efforts to provide connection and information to the wider breast cancer community.

She now advocates for and coaches people with breast cancer and other serious health conditions to control what they can control – such as lifestyle, stress management, nutrition, and movement – and for many, to accept the uncertainty of living with metastatic breast cancer by facing those tough emotions.

“I find myself seeking these deeper conversations, seeking more purpose,” she says. “And it’s leading me this very different way.”

Chelsey worked through her early-stage diagnosis, but her metastatic recurrence would come a little over a year later. Her determination to live a long life spurred her to a new type of advocacy – for equity in cancer care, recentering priorities, and devoting time to personal healing.

From fear to healing

Leaning on her fast-paced, efficient work style, Chelsey felt she could handle her early-stage diagnosis alone. She learned to navigate the healthcare system, juggled work and treatment, and came out the other side.

But with her metastatic diagnosis, the weight of her childhood fears came crashing down on her.

“I felt like I let them all down,” she says.

True to her bias for action, the following week, she was at an event for the triple-negative breast cancer community.

What began as conversations with those who were walking the same path became the start of healing many of the fears she’d carried throughout her life.

“I found myself saying, I want to talk about all the things that we're not allowed to talk about,” she remembers. Rather than getting lost in those dark spots in herself, she began the work of excavating them.

She started with a bold declaration at a workshop she attended with her mom. “I stood up in front of 35 people and said, ‘I am going to live a very long life.’ The mind-body-spirit connection is so powerful that I believe speaking that outwardly contributes to my continued fortune of being no evidence of disease four years later.”

Chelsey found a sense of belonging after connecting with other people like her – women with triple-negative disease, which disproportionately affects young people (like Chelsey), Black people, and people of Ashkenazi Jewish heritage.

The beauty of balance

Chelsey came to understand that living with joy and purpose and meaning, and helping others do the same, ultimately was part of her own emotional healing to finally let go of her fear.

“As a cancer patient, you're in this very vulnerable and susceptible place,” she says. “My goal, with myself and others, is to figure out where this health condition is stemming from and to support recreating balance in life.”

Where she was out of balance before her diagnosis – being a self-described workaholic, eating takeout every day, drinking alcohol, and ignoring her inner voice and desires – she adopted a new focus on balance.

“You can’t heal in the same environment where you got sick,” she says. When she was initially diagnosed metastatic, she was frozen in fear for her future. Over time, she was able to replace those fears with the pursuit of joy, excitement, and purpose. She leaned into joy further in 2025, marrying her partner, Coco.

Chelsey married Coco in 2025, a testament to her continued pursuit of joy and a long life well-lived.

Her everyday life looks totally different. She became a certified health coach and trained in Compassionate Inquiry. She reduces her exposure to chemicals in her home and at work, she eats a whole foods, plant-based diet, and she takes care of her nervous system – even dropping her old habit of watching murder mysteries that trigger the fight or flight response.

Through a combination of nutrition, movement, intentional balance, and confronting trauma, Chelsey supports clients finding their way through tough emotions, developing skills of self-advocacy, and making their bodies feel more equipped to handle the rigors of treatment. As an advocate and coach, her priority for each client is to help them build their muscle of self-trust.

After supporting a close friend through her death, the woman’s partner sought Chelsey out to share how her counsel had an impact on them as a couple facing decisions around end of life.

“It’s incredible to see how those moments influence the entire unit,” she says. “The whole point is to realign, recenter, and rebalance.”

Supporting other people with cancer through treatment and end-of-life decisions has motivated Chelsey to strive for building a larger healing community that helps people feel better equipped to handle their experiences.

Planting seeds for the future

As an entrepreneur, she is now integrating all she learned through her cancer experience as she moves into the next phase of her life, punctuated with the anticipation of celebrating five years of no evidence of disease in 2026.

“When I was diagnosed metastatic, I set the intention to dedicate the next five years to focus on myself and healing,” she says. “My advocacy work will always be part of whatever I do next. I've realized I've been an advocate since I was 9 years old, and I'm accepting that as part of who I am.”

She is still figuring out what that next thing will be, but she is certain to continue building a community focused on healing in all of its forms.

Her lifelong passion for beauty and wellness is evolving with her, as she looks for ways to influence how the beauty industry can better serve people with breast cancer. In addition to a more balanced schedule between her salon and coaching, she advocates for less toxicity in hair products and is exploring ways to address hair loss in her work.

Chelsey focuses her advocacy on promoting emotional and physical healing, wellness techniques that bring balance, and health equity across race, gender, income, and sexuality.

In addition to serving on the board of Living Beyond Breast Cancer, she sits on the advisory board for Project Outreach and co-chaired the gala for breastreconstruction.org last year. She’s actively seeking partnerships and collaborations with breast cancer organizations and pharmaceutical companies that share her values and mission.

As an advocate, Chelsey also speaks openly about issues of health equity, where race, gender, income, and sexuality intersect with access to health care. She doesn’t see herself as one to give people scripted answers, but rather to look inside themselves to actively participate in their own healing.

Through self-trust and partnership with their healthcare team, she wants patients to feel confident that they can choose what’s right for their situation and equipped to meet the emotional and physical challenges of breast cancer.

“We can do anything we set our minds to,” she says. “Even if your goal is to overcome something so incredibly difficult like metastatic disease, there is a possibility. And that power is inside of ourselves.”