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[0:00] Leah Walsh: Hi, and welcome to The Compass, the podcast documenting the struggles of life as an artist. I'm Leah Walsh.

[0:06] Leah Walsh: Hi, everyone. My guest today is Brittany Vicars. Brittany is an actress, writer, and teacher based in New York City. I'm grateful to have her on the podcast today and to share her voice. She's a fellow Juilliard alum, although we weren't there at the same time. But we were friends on social media. And back in December of 2020, I witnessed this series of posts that she put up, 15 posts, about her experiences in the past year dealing with a rare form of cancer. And I admired her honesty and sharing her story so much and just her obvious artistic heart in processing her experiences through her writing in that way. So I reached out to her on an impulse just to say that I know we don't know each other well, but if you are ever looking for an audio record, a documentation of your experiences, I'd be happy to offer you the podcast for that.

And she agreed. So on the day that we were recording, we were just talking about what form the conversation might take, and we just basically got into it before we technically started. So we just hit record with the audio engineer and continued on our way. So it won't take quite the same structure you're used to hearing, but it's a really moving conversation. It made a big impact on me. We talk a lot about her experiences in the last year, but also touch obviously on her artistic path and her passions and yeah, just the fact that your health, your sickness, your body, your self as an artist and a human, it's all one. It's all the same. So thank you, Brittany, for sharing with me. You can check out her work at Britvickers.art, B-R-I-T-T V-I-C-A-R-S dot art. I hope you enjoy the 174th episode of The Compass.

[2:11] Brittany Vicars: Yeah, I think that what I was saying is that for me, one of my reasons for starting to write about my journey. I've always been a writer. I've always kept journals. At school, my teacher Becky Guy yelled at me for taking too many notes once. I feel like someone could have done that to me at school and they didn't. My classmates made fun of me so much. All the time. And I wrote and I wrote and I wrote and I um unfortunately, because of a very epic Brooklyn journey, do no longer have my writing. They're somewhere in a storage unit in Brooklyn, um, potentially. So from that time period at least. And um, right out of school, I began teaching a lot, and I became a performing arts teacher at Queen's High School.

And my message to my kids, they were young adults, they were 17, between 16 and 17 juniors, I would always tell them that vulnerability is their biggest strength. And um, I think that that's something that has always been within me. I'm very interested and afraid of vulnerability. I think that's you know, why we're actors as well, to open up something that we can share, uh vulnerability of ourself, married to our characters. And so when I decided to write this whole, you know, 15-part series on surviving illness, it was actually you know about four months after I actually found and had my tumor removed, and that was really lonely. I was really, really lonely, and I wanted to share so that I could have support, and I was really afraid to have support.

[4:09] Brittany Vicars: Yeah.

[4:10] Leah Walsh: I'm sure it was only magnified by the fact that you were literally isolated in the middle of this pandemic at the same time.

[4:18] Brittany Vicars: Yeah, I had a friend of mine named Melissa. She, I know her, she's the wife of um Ed Highland, who I know in the theater community because he played Polonius in a Hamlet I was in in Hartford. And um, she's my angel. She had breast cancer. And uh last March, exactly a year ago, um, I was, you know, we were all locking down, and I just started feeling underneath my, you know, doing a self-exam, like just checking out my armpit hairs and being like, oh, is that an ingrown hair? Like, and I felt this lump and it hurt, and I couldn't sleep at night. And I thought, oh well, the pandemic is really hard, like this is scary, maybe that's what's going on psychologically. But I was in a lot of pain, and I thought, okay, I should reach out and see to my breast cancer survivor friend who um I love, see if she could give me any advice.

And I didn't want to reach out, I was really scared, and I finally there was just something in me after a couple of weeks that was like, this thing's not going away. It's not an ingrown hair, it's very painful. I'm scared, Melissa. I think there's something wrong. And she immediately said, Here's my doctor's number, call tomorrow, you need to go. And I did. I was able to get an ultrasound that week. And uh the pandemic was really hard to get anything at that time. You know, it was late April, early May. And I found out that her doctor didn't take my insurance, so I had to pay out of pocket. I had no money. I had to ask my grandmother for $400 to get an ultrasound, and thank God she gave it to me.

Um then I got a call the next week that said, This looks like something, it doesn't look like cancer, but you need to get a biopsy. And the biopsy didn't happen until July because of the pandemic. So yeah, that isolation was really scary. And thank God at that time I didn't know it was cancer. There was never a time when I was, you know, had the cancer in my body that I knew that it was cancer, and I'm so grateful for that because I remember the feeling of it being inside of me, and had I known that, I think I would have been really, really terrified. Um rightfully so. Rightfully so. So But at that point. Thank God for for Melissa, yeah.

[7:08] Leah Walsh: At that point, you just thought it was a growth or a cyst or something that just needed to be removed.

[7:14] Brittany Vicars: Yeah, it was like, yeah, it's a cyst. It's a sebaceous cyst. I like Googled everything. I'm like, oh determination. Oh. Yeah, it's a lymph node. It's a sebaceous cyst. It's an ingrown hair. It's all of these things. And it can't be cancer. I'm 28. It cannot be cancer. Um, so I went into the doctor and she got the fine needle aspiration. And I remember laying there and I saw on the ultrasound, it said Brittany Vicars, January 14th, 1992, 28 years old. And it was just this moment of like, oh my god, what what's happening? What's happening in the world? What's happening in my body? What's happening? Um, and it and like I said, it was so painful. They had to do the biopsy about like three or four times to get deep enough to get the cells, and it's like they just scrape the inside.

And um, I'm really used to being in hospitals, I'm used to needles, I'm I'm used to that because uh growing up, and I wrote a little bit about this in one of my posts, that my grandfather was very ill. My grandparents adopted me when I was 10, and um were always in my life, but that was the time for them to take over raising me, as my mother was a single mother, and um he was really sick. He worked for the post office for 30 years, and the day after he retired, he uh was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

[8:55] Leah Walsh: Oh my gosh.

[8:55] Brittany Vicars: Yeah, the day after. So he had prostate cancer, uh triple bypass surgery on his heart, diabetes. The list goes on, he had thyroid cancer, he had a kidney cancer removed. Um so he was called the million-dollar man at the Veterans Association because they were like, he's the million-dollar man because there's millions of dollars in his body of medical treatment. So um that always really triggered me being at the hospital. And then when I got sick, you know, um, and I can talk more about that as well, but it was really like I felt like I was healing myself for my grandfather, and he's been passed away for five years, but psychologically I was really in tune with like this is something that he went through.

I am with him, I am connected to him, and he's always felt like a guardian angel. So having him there for me when I was scared, having him there when I eventually got radiation. Um, I would have, you know, really palpable visions of him holding my hand, which was incredibly emotional, as you can imagine.

[10:20] Leah Walsh: Terrifying, yeah.

[10:21] Brittany Vicars: Terrifying. And the surgeon said after that aspiration, you know, there are some spindle cells which are not indicative of cancer. They spindle cells can happen when you have an injury. They can happen for a number of reasons. So she said, I'm, you know, really, really uh confident that it's not cancer, but let's get it out next week. And so, you know, then there's the fear of like, oh my god, I've got to have a surgery. And my husband, uh, Thomas, he just said, Yeah, you have to have it, we're going. And we did. And I got that first surgery in July. The biology of the tumor, which at that point was the size of a lemon.

[11:06] Leah Walsh: Wow.

[11:07] Brittany Vicars: Um, it yeah, it was this big. Um, yeah, my scars here, so it was it was like that. Um five centimeters. Uh, it was gone. I was healing, I had physical therapy, I was doing everything I could. I had physical therapy three times a week during the pandemic, which was really scary to go down there. Um, and by September, it had been seven weeks, and I was having a small um dinner party with a neighbor, and her mother was in town and she just had a new baby, and it was very joyous. And her mother survived breast cancer, and um, she said, How are you doing? And I said, Oh, I'm good, you know, no news is good news. I haven't heard what the biopsy really is, that the um that the information they're giving me back, the results.

Um, and everyone's saying no news is good news, you know. So no news is good news. And she looks at me very seriously and she says, Well, no news could be good news, or it could mean that you slipped through the cracks. And I just had like a light bulb moment and fear. Again, a lot of fear. And um, I called the next day. It was the Friday of Labor Day weekend, and I called my doctor at noon. They didn't call back until 5:31 PM. She called me from her house phone, upstate New York. And she said, Brittany, um, I just wanted to call you. We got your results in. Um, you know, it took so long, there were a lot of things going on, but um, it is cancer. And it was just like that. And my my surgeon probably did fall through the cracks, like they had to figure out between noon and five.

And I did, and I and I I did. I looked at the pathology when it came in, and it had actually come in a week and a half before. Um, so that was hard to process. You know, you it's like a bad, it's not a bad movie, it's a it's an emotional drama movie that we've all seen before. If you've watched any type of um movie on on cancer or healing or even Breaking Bad, and you get the news and you really do, the world stops. And um my husband comes in and he goes, Is it cancer?

[13:35] Brittany Vicars: And I just looked at him and I went with the phone still on, and she says, So we're gonna get you in on Tuesday, and we're gonna go back in and we're gonna have to get some more tissues, we'll have another surgery, and you're just you're gonna be just fine.

[13:48] Brittany Vicars: And the phone call left lasted three and a half minutes.

[13:52] Brittany Vicars: Oh my god.

[13:54] Brittany Vicars: That's exactly where I was. I was sitting right here in my living room and I didn't cry immediately, but my husband sat down and he cried.

[14:08] Brittany Vicars: And we cried, and I kind of have this image of us like we were buoys in this salty water of our tears just for a whole weekend.

[14:20] Brittany Vicars: It was just darkness, no lights on. It was Labor Day weekend, whatever that meant during a pandemic.

[14:28] Brittany Vicars: There was no laboring going on. I mean, for the majority of Americans, and those who were laboring were doing so at the cost of their lives.

[14:37] Brittany Vicars: So there were barbecues outside. It was all very strange and dreamlike.

[14:45] Brittany Vicars: And we walked through Central Park and I saw a group of women African dancing, I saw children playing, and there we sat next to this algae pond with our two little dachshunds and nothing had changed.

[15:02] Brittany Vicars: Everything had changed and nothing had changed. You know, the world I had been in Central Park the day before.

[15:10] Brittany Vicars: It was all the same, the same walk, the same sensations, but I was diagnosed with cancer.

[15:18] Brittany Vicars: And there's no way to describe that.

[15:22] Brittany Vicars: And I walked with my husband and he had a pack of cigarettes and he gave it away to a homeless couple, um or a houseless.

[15:32] Brittany Vicars: Um and they were standing there and they're like, Thank you, God bless you, like we needed these cigarettes, and we both knew that we were never gonna smoke again.

[15:44] Brittany Vicars: And then on and we they're just horrible, you know, Leah, like you don't have anyone to call. It's Monday.

[15:51] Brittany Vicars: Like who do you call? Do I call my grandmother? Do I call my mom?

[15:57] Brittany Vicars: And when you don't, they didn't give you any information, any concrete information about what might happen next or just that would you tell them if you called them, yeah.

[16:07] Brittany Vicars: Exactly. Just you know, I might have to have radiation. I don't think I need to have chemo.

[16:13] Brittany Vicars: Um, I have a very rare one in a million cancer that had I found it if it was just one centimeter, one you know, millimeter bigger, it would have been stage two then I would have had to have chemo.

[16:30] Brittany Vicars: So I was I was very lucky and very lucky.

[16:35] Brittany Vicars: Lucky became a strange a strange thing.

[16:40] Brittany Vicars: I last summer I found um you're not gonna believe this, but I found never in my life have I found a four-leaf clover.

[16:46] Brittany Vicars: I found twenty-one four-leaf clovers.

[16:48] Brittany Vicars: Oh my god.

[16:49] Brittany Vicars: And that's insane. And it was in a park, and I can't tell you, like, I still have evidence, so that's the only reason I know I'm not delusional.

[16:57] Brittany Vicars: But I said to my husband the other day, I was like, I'm the girl who found 21 four-leaf clovers and got diagnosed with one of the rarest cancers that you can be diagnosed with.

[17:08] Brittany Vicars: So that was the first part of just discovering it.

[17:12] Brittany Vicars: Um this is a little bit of a tangent, but are you someone who has looked for um or connected with signs in the past?

[17:20] Brittany Vicars: I noticed, yeah.

[17:22] Brittany Vicars: I noticed, you know, several that you highlighted through your post when you were telling your story online.

[17:27] Brittany Vicars: Um is that something that you've always kind of noticed throughout your life, or is it a new thing?

[17:35] Brittany Vicars: I'm very sensitive to signs.

[17:38] Brittany Vicars: I have been.

[17:39] Brittany Vicars: Um for a long time.

[17:42] Brittany Vicars: I think um, I think we all look back on our lives, and um intuition is very important to me, and especially now.

[17:52] Brittany Vicars: I think it you know, to answer that question, I go to like the intuition of finding my tumor and saying, This isn't right, there's something not right, and you can relate as a performer, our bodies are instruments, so um that intuition, and then having that intuition come through in signs, and I think that for me, signs are really anything, and um a sign can be nothing too, you know.

[18:24] Brittany Vicars: It can be a simple like that seagull is beautiful, um, it makes me feel something.

[18:30] Brittany Vicars: So absolutely there have been very poignant signs in my life, um, simple signs, um nonchalant signs.

[18:40] Brittany Vicars: I love that question because um, and that you found that in the writing, um, especially with the end with when I saw the sign on the subway.

[18:51] Brittany Vicars: Oh my goodness.

[18:52] Brittany Vicars: Um I couldn't believe it.

[18:54] Brittany Vicars: So there's lots of things like that that I'm just like and it goes to as well.

[19:00] Brittany Vicars: I think that my body showing me the sign, not only from exterior signs, right?

[19:06] Brittany Vicars: That's a lot of what we receive if we're open to the world.

[19:10] Brittany Vicars: Anyone living in New York when I was 18, you know, I'm from Colorado, I would walk down the streets and be like, oh, there's a shoelace in front of me.

[19:17] Brittany Vicars: What does that mean?

[19:19] Brittany Vicars: Like, oh my god, that homeless person just said that I was a weirdo.

[19:23] Brittany Vicars: What does that mean?

[19:24] Brittany Vicars: Like it's like there's just so much input coming in from the city.

[19:27] Brittany Vicars: Exactly, exactly.

[19:29] Brittany Vicars: So when I got this sign from my body, which was on my left side, really close to my heart, um, it was the sign in a way that helped me through the pandemic.

[19:42] Brittany Vicars: I thought, wow, the world is wild right now.

[19:48] Brittany Vicars: And there is a literal manifestation in my body that needs to come out of my own struggles, but also it made me feel very aligned with Yeah, what how interesting that things kind of had to, I mean, obviously, there's all of this um flurry that you must have witnessed to a certain extent being in the hospital system during this time, but yeah, for a lot of us in our daily lives, things came to a screeching halt.

[20:17] Brittany Vicars: And that this discovery for you was aligned with that and kind of in some ways gave you the space, I would assume, to focus on this in a way that might not have been possible if things were going on as normal.

[20:32] Brittany Vicars: I totally agree, and you know, I my world came kind of to a screeching halt six months before the pandemic, which was I was um I stopped working at the school that I had been at for two years.

[20:47] Brittany Vicars: Um, you know, as an actor, there wasn't really any opportunity.

[20:53] Brittany Vicars: I was getting one audition every two months.

[20:56] Brittany Vicars: Um I had gone on this journey to meet my biological father, which was very deep and um required a lot of courage.

[21:07] Brittany Vicars: And um just for that background, my father is in prison and he's been in prison my entire life, and um I had never known him, I'd never seen a picture of him really, and I decided to write to him.

[21:24] Brittany Vicars: And I wrote him a letter um in July, and upon him replying, I found out I had two brothers, one of which would call me and started to develop a relationship and eventually talk to him on the phone and talk to my father on the phone, and then it was we were gonna meet, and this is something that I always knew I wanted to know my origin, to know if my darkness was from him, to know how they related.

[21:57] Brittany Vicars: To a stranger asked me, Well, why do you want to do that?

[21:57] Brittany Vicars: Why do you want to meet someone in prison for life?

[22:04] Brittany Vicars: And I looked at the person.

[22:05] Brittany Vicars: I had been drinking some beers, we had like gone into this whole saga about meeting my biological father with a stranger.

[22:12] Brittany Vicars: The stranger looked at me and said, Why do you want to meet your father?

[22:15] Brittany Vicars: And I looked at him and I said, Have you seen your father's face?

[22:21] Brittany Vicars: And he went, Well, yeah.

[22:24] Brittany Vicars: And I said, I haven't.

[22:26] Brittany Vicars: I've never looked at my father, and I need to do that.

[22:30] Brittany Vicars: So upon meeting him, I sunk into a very deep depression that lasted for about four and a half months.

[22:40] Brittany Vicars: I had suffered from depression once before that I didn't realize when I got out of Juilliard at 21, felt really lost, very supported by the institution, and then terrified and let go.

[22:53] Brittany Vicars: Yeah, which I'm sure you know, a lot of people who have been at Juilliard can relate to or any type of conservatory.

[23:03] Brittany Vicars: And I was in a depression for those four months, and um my husband didn't know.

[23:10] Brittany Vicars: My husband was working, he's a photographer, he worked until you know two in the morning sometimes, and I would wake up in the morning, Leah, and I would look at my phone, and I would know that my father was probably gonna call me.

[23:22] Brittany Vicars: My usual day was like I woke up at nine, dad called at 10, my brother called at 11 because you know you only get 30 minutes on prison phones.

[23:34] Brittany Vicars: Um, and then he would go into lockdown, and then I talked to my brother from sometimes 11 a.m. until like two.

[23:42] Brittany Vicars: Then I was getting into people.

[23:46] Brittany Vicars: Yeah, you had so much to learn, but that's a lot.

[23:49] Brittany Vicars: I was exactly, you know, we were catching up and exploring what this meant to be related by blood, and then my father would call, and then I would, and then my husband would still, you know, he worked really long days, and then I would go and I'd get a pack of beer, and then I'd spend the night on the phone with my brother.

[24:08] Brittany Vicars: And one beer went to two beers, and two beers went to four beers, and um there it became very disturbing because my brother was also in prison for a time as well.

[24:22] Brittany Vicars: And I became terrified again.

[24:26] Brittany Vicars: I was very just um in it, and and that's when the depression started to suck.

[24:31] Brittany Vicars: And I would turn my phone off.

[24:33] Brittany Vicars: I would keep it on airplane mode.

[24:35] Brittany Vicars: I would be nervous if they would call if I didn't answer what they would think.

[24:40] Brittany Vicars: Um, the something about prison is that the walls are impenetrable, and you cannot, and I mean the walls physically, but the wall between my father and I.

[24:53] Brittany Vicars: And when he would call, I can never call him.

[24:56] Brittany Vicars: So it was like he was the one who could call.

[24:56] Brittany Vicars: He was the one.

[25:03] Brittany Vicars: Um, and I tell this story because from that depression, um, I decided to end the relationship with my father.

[25:11] Brittany Vicars: We mutually decided.

[25:14] Brittany Vicars: And um, sorry.

[25:16] Brittany Vicars: We mutually oh no, don't worry.

[25:18] Brittany Vicars: We mutually decided, and um, in January, when I turned 28, that was my 27th year, which I also believe is symbolic, um, in the history of artists in the world.

[25:32] Brittany Vicars: But um, I received uh I stopped talking to him right before my birthday, and I got so sick.

[25:43] Brittany Vicars: I could have been coronavirus, I believe it was the flu.

[25:47] Brittany Vicars: Um, I'd been babysitting some of kids in my building, and I got sick, Leah.

[25:52] Brittany Vicars: I was it was like him leaving my life physically, my body was like, get him out, and I got a fever and I got a head fog, and I was supposed to be in Paris two days like after I began to get sick, and my husband, it was my birthday present to go to Paris, my husband's French, and he woke up the morning that we were supposed to leave, and he goes, You know, if you're you have a fever of a hundred and one, like you can't get on the plane.

[26:23] Brittany Vicars: And I said to him, 'You are not leaving me to go to Paris on my birthday.

[26:28] Brittany Vicars: Like, this is not happening.

[26:30] Brittany Vicars: This is not happening in my life.

[26:32] Brittany Vicars: And so I uh, you know, probably wasn't very smart now that we know there was a pandemic, but I got on the plane and I went to Paris, and um that was the day that my husband applied for our health insurance that would later save my life.

[26:47] Brittany Vicars: So all of that to say these signs, these symbols, um, I really believe from my experience from this past year that um our bodies physicalize what's happening emotionally, and it happens on a metaphysical level, it happens on a deep DNA level.

[27:12] Brittany Vicars: Um, and I'm really not surprised that I got cancer after meeting my father, after um this riveting and life-changing experience. And I'm I'm grateful that I was able to intuit and to listen to my body, and that's another reason why I wanted to share my story because so many people, my grandfather included, feel something and they're terrified of the doctor, and they don't go, and they don't go. And I if I wouldn't have gone, you and I would not have been having this same conversation right now. That I mean, we all know that stress can do really powerful things to people's bodies, and that so I don't know, you know, who knows what was already happening with your cells, but I'm sure that stress must have had something, something to do psychologically or physically with what you ended up going through.

[28:19] Brittany Vicars: Absolutely um absolutely I don't know if that's a controversial thing to say. I don't want to offend anybody who's been dealing with cancer by saying in some way that it's to something's to blame in a certain way but oh well and and and thank you you you don't offend me and I you know that my my cancer journey everyone is different. So I do thank you for saying that I also from a very early on I had a moment where I was really angry at myself. I was really mad because I thought that I thought to myself like this is something psychologically I did. Right. Why did I reach out to my father and there was a lot of shame around that and now that I'm I was able to write about it and share about it I realize that for me it's totally true.

It is totally and completely true the cancer was caused by stress. The cancer was caused by carcinogens in my middle class American home eating craft cheese and lunchables the cancer was caused because I had a genetic disposition to it. My cancer was caused because I didn't feel like I um fulfilled the expectations of my family when I got out of the best conservatory in the world um my cancer was caused by everything. And for for me to say that, I couldn't have said that um when I was first diagnosed, even though I felt it and even though I knew it. Um, it is everything. It's everything. It's not just one thing.

[30:01] Leah Walsh: Right.

[30:01] Brittany Vicars: And I think that that's kind of that expands on that's such a great response to what I said because looking at it that way, right, it's not you're not blaming this one thing you did or this one thing in your environment for causing it, but those are all included in all the in all the things that could have influenced and it did influence what happened.

[30:23] Brittany Vicars: Absolutely, and and e even more so now. Thank you. And and even more so now I've been thinking, um, there's been a lot of uh what I like to call angels on my path who have given me great advice during this time. Um an angel for me is the stranger I run into, or um my friend's mother, um, her name is Julie. The angels that I found on the way um also come through forms of like gifts. I had my friend Billy, his mother sent me this beautiful like embroidered peacock scarf, and I said thank you so much, and she said, uh, don't worry, your angels gave it to me. It came to me through your angels to give to you. So I really like those ideas of like physical manifestations again of the things that are for us.

But um yeah, I I think that another thing I've been exploring lately, um, I was given a book called You Are the Placebo. And um it's all about how when we have a memory, when we think of something traumatic, for example, if you have a very traumatic experience with public speaking, for me it's playing piano. I get terrified of I I played piano for seven years and I I'm so scared. You put me in front of an audience of 2,000 people, I'll do a whole Shakespeare play one person. But like you you asked me to play Mary Had a Lim Little Lamb in front of like you and your daughter, I would just be like and and it's because I have memories of that from my childhood.

[32:00] Brittany Vicars: So um the kind of thought that I've been exploring now is when we have a traumatic memory, we replay it, and our body gets um the same chemical feelings as if it had just happened. And so then we start to think it again and then again, and our bodies almost get addicted to that physical feeling, even though it's bad for us. Right now that we're feeling, that we're, you know, reliving, going into a pandemic, we have reminders of that when we get our masks on, all of those things we've become desensitized to on a physical DNA level is actually, you know, opening those cells, opening room for those cells to change and um and to physicalize in different types of illness, or even the best example is all my gray hairs I have from Juilliard.

[32:59] Brittany Vicars: So um, and I'm actually I'm gonna use a question that you wrote in one of your posts.

[33:08] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[33:10] Brittany Vicars: I was going to ask, how are you feeling about your cancer now?

[33:14] Leah Walsh: Wow.

[33:16] Brittany Vicars: Thank you for asking that. Um thank you for asking that because um I wrote it and you read it. And um that's probably the the biggest gift you can give me by um by asking me because I think um for me my grandfather never talked about that. And um it's really brave to actually ask someone how they really are.

[33:50] Brittany Vicars: So I feel vulnerable. Um but I that's good. Um I I how how do I feel about my cancer now? Oh, and thank you for asking because I I don't get asked it often. Well, just for the the listeners, you wrote you wrote that in a piece about how interacting with your friends kind of I don't want to say it was advice to people, but you know, uh advice to to friends on how to how to check in with someone, how to be there for someone. And one of the things you wrote was asking that question outright.

[34:25] Leah Walsh: Yeah, people were really scared to talk about it. I'm I'm sure I've had moments where I've been scared to ask people questions like that.

[34:32] Brittany Vicars: Yeah, and and you know, sometimes it's not the right time. Sometimes I just want to watch a stupid movie and or watch Snow White, that always makes me feel better. And sometimes like I want my my best friend who made me dinner to look at me and go, I love you. Are you okay? How do you feel? So thank you for asking that. I I have um a question that I ask every day with one of my best friends named Sochi. She lives in New Mexico, and we always ask each other, what is your heart look like today? And so, in that kind of imagery, how do I feel about my cancer? I feel like my cancer is like a shield.

[35:18] Brittany Vicars: And what I mean by that is I feel that finally my cancer has gone from something that could be used and weaponized against me to something that is protecting me, and that is my armor against everything. All of the treatment I've gotten, all of the doctors I've talked to, all the friends who have supported me with either money or food or a hug or music or new boots. Um all of these things that have come into my life, I see as like this fortified building, and now I feel like my cancer is like, I don't know if it's a part of the building, I don't know if it's like my secret service or like you're never getting back in here, but I don't, whatever it is, I've built this building now. And this, and I was actually like, I get a massage every Thursday to help with my healing process.

[36:15] Brittany Vicars: And I was in the car today, I was looking at all the buildings in Manhattan. I was like, is that what my cancer building is? Like, is that what my building is? And when you look at a building in New York, it's like every brick has been laid, like a tidal wave could hit the city, and you know, which I don't pray because that could happen one day, I hope not, with the world changing, but but like it it I feel strong. I feel my cancer, I feel how I feel about my cancer now is that I feel it has created strength in me. I still have moments where I wake up in the middle of the night fearful, and um, even today I told my my Miss Seuss Georgette that um she said, When is your next scan? In six months. And I said, No, my next scan is April 28th, and then three months after that is my next one, and then it's gonna be every three months for the next two years and every six months forever. She just looked at me and she went.

[37:21] Brittany Vicars: And I realized like it's so easy for me to talk about it now because I've been able to share it. But that information is huge. It's unbelievable. It's huge. It's huge. Um so yeah, there are moments when I I still wake up in the middle of the night. Mostly what I feel every on a daily basis, aside from being strong, I feel so grateful to be alive.

[37:53] Brittany Vicars: And not only because of the cancer, because of coronavirus, because of 500,000 people who aren't here. Which has been there, you know, these people who love you, the people who you've built these friendships with. But I remember my my mom had a health scare right after my daughter was born, like five days after my daughter was born, she wound up in the hospital. And we never really found out what it was. It seemed like it might be a stroke and it wasn't. But um when when it was over she was saying like I just I can't believe like how much you all love me and I just like I'm so like I'm so grateful that I'm okay but I'm also just like I couldn't believe how you all came together.

[39:04] Brittany Vicars: And you know part of me was like well we're your family we're your kids like of course we always tell you that we love you. We've always been here but she just was so overwhelmed by the the show of support in that moment I don't know what I'm trying to say about that but it's just interesting that when it when it becomes um physical like that and so strong and amplified oh yeah and I I think too during a pandemic when I have you know a neighbor of mine said isn't your mom flying in and I thought about it and I was like no she's not because she's she works in a nursing home like she can't and had it been any other time those people would have I mean people would have and Melissa also said to me um my my friend who survived she said Brittany this is stressful when you're not in a pandemic so just remember that and I couldn't I was like oh right I'm going every day to get radiation therapy, like that's not normal.

That's not normal. I'm terrified to be in the car that I have to take because the train is dangerous. So that overwhelming love. Um, I had friends call me ex-lovers call me, like on the phone, like not even just a text message. Like, I had my the their parents calling me.

[40:42] Brittany Vicars: I had like, you know, best friends from elementary school that broke my heart, which I you know, still I'm getting over one of them, but she called me, and like, you know, and and also then your ego kind of gets involved because it's like, oh, well, why didn't that person call me? You know what I mean? Like, do they know that I had cancer? And so it's this weird thing, but I I do, and it it also made me more um have more availability for the people that I love. Like uh a lot of people in my life have you know told me what's going on in their life during the pandemic, and they'll find themselves talking about themselves, and they go, Oh, but I'm sorry, like you just survived cancer, and I go, Well, I'll tell you if I can't listen to you right now, but cancer has actually created this space within me as opposed to like you know, uh yeah, in my building, if you go back to that, like there's this space, like uh for everybody's room, and like I it's all accommodated because I know what that meant to me when like just people, and that was also a part of my surviving illness posts was that it gave the opportunity for people who could not be with me to feel like they could talk to me about it, or feel that I was going through something and I needed I needed those likes.

I needed those comments. And I don't think that we'd really admit that with the strangeness of social media. But I didn't know. But almost like you were giving them permission to get involved or to reach out, even if maybe they had heard and but they weren't sure if you wanted that or whatever it was.

[42:32] Leah Walsh: Yeah.

[42:33] Brittany Vicars: And and it also, you know, mentally, I think the two other moments that I've had my depression in my life, which were right out of school, as an artist getting out of a conservatory, you feel not like an artist. I I believe. I mean, it feels especially being at the caliber of like, you're an actress, you know, you're an actor. And really feeling like for me at least that I there were certain steps that were supposed to happen that were not happening on my timeline.

[43:04] Leah Walsh: Yeah, I felt that experience.

[43:06] Brittany Vicars: Yeah. And and I felt more lonely then than I ever felt when really I had, you know, 17 classmates who just got out of school who were down the street. I had teachers, I had, you know, um people from elementary school who lived in the city, I had my family, but I think that isolation and that un inability to share for fear of being judged puts a a real distance between myself and really what I need and what I want. And so the cancer afforded me to have that to welcome the love, which is also very hard. It's really hard when people are like, I care about you. You're like, oh, this makes me feel like you love me? Like, like what? It's awkward. It's so awkward. It's so awkward.

[44:05] Brittany Vicars: But I I just, I mean, honestly, if any I the fact that you read it even and we're in the same, you know, social circles, but kind of a few degrees apart means that maybe someone read it who had something on their body, or someone told their friend that they, you know, and and then we can take steps towards our healing. And so if that writing offered anything, if not just for me to, you know, get approval and love, which was important for my healing. But if anybody like with Melissa, when she told me at a dinner in 2015, Brittany, this is how I found my cancer. I was touching my my boob, and then I went to the doctor, and if you ever find anything, you go. And so I the first person I messaged was Melissa.

You know, so it makes my she said this to me too. It makes my cancer journey worth it, if that can spark any type of love for someone to go and get something checked out, and whether that's physically with cancer or even you talk a lot about on your show, seeking help um through therapy as well. So yeah.

[45:19] Leah Walsh: I think we could talk for a very long time. You might have to do a second, a part two episode with you of more things that you uh are involved with as an artist. But I know we only have a limited amount of time with our recording session today, so I do want to ask a little bit of questions focused on your artist journey. Thank you. I'm curious. I mean, you had sent me the trailer to a documentary that you and your husband were making about you contacting your dad. Um, which was so powerful. I want to see the entire thing, but also then just your writing, reflecting on this experience. I'm curious how you're feeling as an artist right now, what you're kind of what's percolating in your mind, and if that sort of creation, self-reflective creation has been something that has always been a part of your journey, or if it's something that's just blossoming now.

And as actors, we can be such interpretive artists sometimes that it can feel a little, you know, stuck when you don't have someone else's material to work on. So how yeah, where do you picture yourself right now as an artist? What are you feeling? That's it. What are you feeling?

[46:35] Brittany Vicars: Yeah. No, thank you so much. And and thank you for giving me the time to talk about my uh my cancer journey as it does pertain and go right into um this question because I feel like God, Leah, we could really talk for a long time. But I I really had a lot of demons um come out when I got out of school. Demons meaning insecurity. Um, you know, I won the Housman Award for Shakespeare. Like I was like on top of the world. Um, like I've I've done Shakespeare, I say that because I'm a Shakespeare nerd. Like my my writing, my writing name is Western Bard. Like I really love Shakespeare. And so I have done it since I was five. And so getting out on a high of that, and then being confronted to the real world, um, knowing nothing about the real world, being a girl from Colorado who was really not very cultured and like way too open for anybody to like take advantage of me, or you know, hopefully my intuition kicked in a lot of those times.

But I um I feel like I'm just seven years later, um just allowing myself to become who I am. And that might sound vague and it might sound poetic, I'm not sure, but I I feel like I the cancer like just was all of this insecurity, and it came out of my body, it was taken out, I was saved, and I finally feel like I don't know where my writing will go, but I know that I love to write, and I don't really, you know, know where that self tape is gonna go, but I know that I love making films with my husband. I know there are things that now I just know that I love and I can do it because I love it, and that doesn't make it easy, it doesn't make it like all green roses, but I definitely have a new confidence of um and self love.

Like I just I'm like loving myself. I'm like, Britt, you know, it's okay that you didn't write that feature film yet. It's okay that you, you know, look at what you are doing. I've I've created my spaces really important to me creatively. So I surround myself with a lot of books. I surround myself with a lot of pens, like got like pens everywhere just so that I can write down an opportunity. That opportunity for inspiration to hit. Yeah, and that inspiration doesn't have to be a full-blown project. Inspiration can come from like uh like I used the Siegel metaphor before, but like just a seagull and like I can doodle it in this is a little composition book I have that I call my seed book. And so I just take it with me and I write little seeds and and just seeing which one will grow.

So I'm really curious about myself right now. I'm very gentle with myself right now. I last week I spent the whole week, you know, really enjoying unemployment, meaning I like did what I wanted, and I'm constantly reminding myself that right now. We just went through a war. We just went through a war. So why am I putting pressure on myself to make an immersive theater project in a some space that I have no idea where it is, and trying to like see if I should draft emails already and like get like an LLC for this production company? I'm like a lot of the time on my social media I put like a view from my apartment with the word breathe. And I'm just breathing a lot. I'm breathing in all of my inspiration, my ideas, and I'm exhaling. Um, it sounds very yoga teacher of me, but I am exhaling any expectation to perform as I'm because it's too painful otherwise.

[51:06] Leah Walsh: Yeah, I know. I think that's wonderful.

[51:09] Brittany Vicars: That's so wonderful. I think that's I mean, obviously, you're going through your own individual journey, but I think all of us could do with that right now. It's it's interesting. It's interesting to see different people's paths to as this pandemic like quote unquote winds down, or things are about to get back to normal, and what does that mean? And what are people's expectations of you when I know for me as a um as a parent, like coming, I'm not even coming out of this yet, still going through this. It's a little bit like, but I'm I'm just functioning. I'm I'm I'm I'm trying to let myself be okay with like I'm just functioning on like getting by. I'm not trying to be innovative right now, I'm not trying to be stepping things up, and I know that's not convenient for everyone, but I this is this is all you get from me right now.

[52:05] Brittany Vicars: Yeah, and you know what? The fact that you can get out of bed and take care of your family is like I go back to being grateful for the day, like that is the victory. And I think that a friend, I know a friend of mine told me when I was going through grief, because I think what we're going through right now are the beginning stages of grief or somewhere in the middle. Um, slowly getting to acceptance. He said to me when my grandfather passed away, sing if you need to sing, cry if you need to cry, laugh if you need to laugh, and keep going. And I think with my creative process, that's all that's I'm happy being there right now. I'm happy being there.

[52:56] Leah Walsh: Brittany, thank you so much.

[52:58] Brittany Vicars: Thank you.

[53:20] Leah Walsh: Pledges start at as little as one dollar a month, and anything you can give would be greatly appreciated.

[53:25] Leah Walsh: Also, if you have a moment, please review and follow in iTunes. Every little bit helps other listeners to find the podcast.

[53:40] Leah Walsh: Audio assistance from Monica Choxy, and a special thanks to Frankie J. Alvarez.

[53:44] Leah Walsh: See you next time.