We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Miriam Zimms a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Miriam, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?
As a business management and planning consultant, I knew when I was diagnosed with cancer the first time it would be different. I was going to manage what I could and plan for integrative support from watching my mother and other women in our family battle cancer. My mother’s generation of Latina women in our family was of the motto that “silence is golden.” As a Generation X woman, climbing the corporate ladder during the “breaking the glass ceiling” era, I wanted a different implementation experience. I am a daughter who witnessed my mother’s silence through being a first-generation immigrant in the 70s, facing discrimination, and then battling and losing her life to breast cancer, all with no complaints. I knew one thing to be true – my mother’s silence would be my salvation. It was a defining moment for me to learn from what I witnessed growing up and bring it full circle as a successful businesswoman. I grew up admiring my mother’s tenacious and proud way she joyfully and lovingly lived life. But I decided I would combine my business acumen with her gifts and battle cancers different along “a road less traveled” in our Latino family.
Miriam, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I am one of those early “tree huggers” that started out in the early 90s in the environmental field when it was not popular. Over 22 years, I built a name for myself as an innovative thinker and solution driven woman in the public, private, institutional, recreational, and non-profit sectors to save the planet. My skill was writing program plans that included reverse distribution marketing strategies to engage the public (residents) and businesses to (after buying) reduce, reuse, compost, recycle and when purchasing again to buy Green to close the recovered materials loop. These plans included timelines, budgets, layers of departments and people…all with the common goal to launch an environmental marketing program to do the good and make a change in their community or corporation. I spent many years educating and training my peers across the U.S. in a male dominated industry.
My management and planning skills and style for my clients were honed over many years. Now it was time to get to business for myself and bring the same strategy to my first cancer diagnosis of triple negative breast cancer. I got three “quotes” from three different cancer centers and put them in a spreadsheet listing the pros-cons. I brought ten key questions to every doctor or surgeon I met. I asked and received answers to all potential impacts from beating this disease with their treatment and surgical plan; along with wanting an integrative treatment plan to protect body, mind, and spirit. This program plan would be the most important one of my life as it was my own environmental terrain that was at stake here. I got to work on writing my plan. It was a 100% commitment to implementation.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
During my triple negative breast cancer journey that took three years to complete due to chemotherapy first, a double mastectomy second, and multiple reconstruction surgeries over three years, I worked and traveled the entire time. But there were pivots in both my personal and professional life with downtime that allowed me to slow down and think about the present and future. The major mental pivot I made was learning that I needed a better work-life balance, I needed to learn to say NO more to work and people that did not fit my spirit for being the change in the world in unity and love.
It was during that time that my husband penned the name for me as the Guatemalan Globes. It was a perfect fit for me as a Guatemalan American and as a woman whose career was about protecting the planet for future generations. I named him the Royal Globe Holder. As the Guatemalan Globes I upped my healthy-living lifestyle even more than I had been doing since my twenties. I researched and designed a self-care program for body, mind, and spirit balance that was bolder than any plan I had written prior to that moment. And I started writing about my journey and advocating as the Guatemalan Globes.
Even though my mother had passed at the age of 58, when I was 26, I knew I had her gifts of tenacity and resiliency for living. What the breast cancer journey taught me was that although all my providers cared for me and my treatment with a full heart, cancer is a business. We need to be present to make decisions with our providers that will significantly impact our survival and thriving after. I enjoy teams or collaborations of any kind. And teams are a key component in cancer centers for total patient care. These teams are formed to rally around the diagnosis as specialists in their field. Personally, that same type of team is needed to help you get through it, over it and after it. This includes family, friends, and other support systems that are available at your cancer center or in your community; some of which are free. They include but are not limited to nutrition plan, lymphedema massage, meditation, support groups, mental health support, exercise/movement, arts in health, and much more. I used these before cancer, during, and still use and advocate for them to this day as the Guatemalan Globes.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
The two-years before my breast cancer diagnosis, my husband and I had been trying to start a family. We had to stop that process as soon as I was diagnosed with the Triple Negative diagnosis and start treatment immediately. Three years after that journey was behind me, we began the process to start a family again. But we were stopped short again as I found out I had a genetic predisposition to multiple cancers, so I had my ovaries/fallopian tubes removed to avoid ovarian cancer. Within three months of that surgery, I was diagnosed with a separate and unrelated, second, primary cancer called chondrosarcoma; primary bone cancer in my left pelvis. I had a ten-hour surgery to remove my left pelvis, hip ball and socket, and part of my femur, with a complete reconstruction. It required a year of occupational therapy and two years of daily physical therapy to relearn how to sit up, stand, and walk again with adaptive equipment. For over eight years of my life, with two cancers, the primary focus was about beating cancer and finding peace in body, mind, and spirit with the traumatic impact of significant losses of my female body parts. It was all beyond my control, except for self-care as a part of a daily personal practice of well-being. No success can ever replace the resiliency life gives us to live and be present every moment of every day. This gift I learned from my mother. And that resiliency and present-moment-living can bring us success in our creative, personal and professional life beyond measure.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://encasawithm.com/meet-miriam/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/guatemalanglobes/?hl=en
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/guateglobes/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCygzSbS03PEDGoDODVtXH4w
- Other: Ten Years of Courage https://endeavor.moffitt.org/archive/10-years-of-courage/