Episode 6: Julie Bach – Travel as Treatment

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What if cancer didn't have to stop your plans—what if you could weave travel into your treatment timeline instead?

Julie Bach lost both parents to cancer before age 55, then pivoted from her Harvard MBA track to create something revolutionary: a way for cancer patients to experience joy, relaxation, and normalcy through travel. After 20 years battling industry resistance, she's transformed how resorts, spas, and travel advisors serve people facing cancer.

In this episode, you'll discover why 95% of spas once turned cancer patients away and how to navigate that landscape today. Julie reveals the one critical thing every patient must tell their massage therapist, shares how to plan trips around treatment schedules (her client's entire chemo timeline was built around a destination wedding), and explains why travel isn't escapism—it's living.

Whether you're newly diagnosed, in treatment, or supporting someone who is, this conversation will shift how you think about integrating joy into the cancer journey. Because cancer has to fit into YOUR life, not the other way around.

Listen and learn how to kick cancer's ass while keeping your dreams alive.

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Joelle K

I'm a 54 year old former CMO/CRO and generational breast cancer survivor. My early cancer experiences shaped my personal and professional philosophy to continuously cultivate an approach that adjusts to whatever curveball shows up. And we know, curveballs are constant, especially in midlife with aging parents, maturing kids (if you have kids), and opportunities to focus on new goals for our next 50 years. I have a book being released in January - Crushing the Cancer Curveball, A Veteran's Guide for the Newly Diagnosed. While no one wants cancer, 1 in 2 Americans and 1 in 4 people worldwide will face cancer in their lifetimes. There's an alternative narrative to the terror, anger and fear that accompanies a diagnosis - a narrative that spawns compassion, confidence, and even joy. I'd love to talk about it with you and your audience.

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