MOMS WHO ROCK

Sarah, a former litigation attorney, now fills her workload with her newfound passion: healthful living information.
Age: 40
Occupation: Freelance writer and editor, owner
of the Semi-Sweet blog - "A Practical Guide to
Healthy Living" semisweetonline.com
Mom of: Lilah, age 6
Married to: David
Hometown: Lexington

Ten years ago, Sarah Isenberg was a single woman working in Boston as a litigation attorney. She typically logged eighty hours per week. Many days, she arrived at work by 6:00 a.m. and did not leave until 7:00 p.m. She ate most of her meals at the office. When she knew she would be working extra-late, she brought sweatpants to change into after dinner and then left "moving under the cover of darkness."

Today, Sarah is married, has a 6-year-old daughter, Lilah, and no longer practices law. Instead, she is a writer and editor as well as proprieter of Semi-Sweet, a smart and helpful blog for busy people to improve the way they live and eat. Now a typical day consists of getting Lilah off to school (the morning scramble), exercising, writing and researching for her blog, and then picking up Lilah from school for afternoon activities and adventures.

While I'd never call having had cancer a 'gift,' I will say that I'm happier with the way my life is now than ever before. The years in between have been intense and pivotal. Eight years ago, when Sarah was newly-married, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She and her husband, Dave, were forced to make many difficult decisions including taking a leave of absence from her law firm so that she could undergo treatment for her aggressive tumor. She intended to finish treatment and return to work, but as she underwent treatment (three lumpectomies, chemotherapy, and radiation), she began to rethink what her career meant to her and what she wanted out of life. She also wondered how she had ended up getting cancer. Sarah started to research evidence linking cancer to environmental contaminants, reading everything she could about this link.

And yet, she wasn't done. As she looked for support from others with breast cancer, she found that there were no groups for young women in the Boston area (even though 250,000 women 40 and under are living with breast cancer in the U.S.). Women under 40 share many of the same concerns as older women and, yet, often have concerns unique to their age group. Younger women are typically just starting careers, relationships and/or families. They may be single and dating or newly-married. Many young women have concerns about fertility and raising children. Sarah recognized this need and filled it. Just as she began chemotherapy, Sarah started the Massachusetts chapter of the Young Survival Coalition. Concurrently, she started the first professionally-facilitated group in the Boston area to support young women with breast cancer. She also went on to help found Thrive, which is a "Boston-based group dedicated to the needs of women with breast cancer."

At the same time, Sarah reassessed her life. Although she loved the challenge of law as well as the camaraderie, she knew she needed to make her life more balanced. She resigned from her work as an attorney and began to think about starting a family with her husband, Dave. Since she would be taking tamoxifen for the next five years, it was not safe for Sarah to get pregnant. After much soul-searching, and realizing that life was too short to wait so long, they embarked on another emotional journey, beginning the adoption process. Fourteen months later, they travelled to China to bring home their 10-month baby daughter, Lilah.

Sarah has spent the years since as a full-time mom. She says, "Today that baby is 6; I am in perfect health, and I couldn't be happier. While my diagnosis left me thunderstruck, it also forced a monumental change in the trajectory of my life." She has been able to spend lots of time with Lilah and pursue her passion of cooking.

When Lilah started school, Sarah started to feel restless. She knew that she did not want to return to the crazy hours of law, but she wanted to make a difference outside the home as well. She continued researching healthy tips and foods for her own family. She cooked even more. Her friends knew that she was a wealth of knowledge on both food and health. They often turned to her for answers to their questions. She started posting her thoughts on Facebook, and her friends responded. She realized that she could share her knowledge and passion for healthy living on a different level by blogging.

After much preparation, Sarah launched her own blog about healthful living, semisweetonline.com. Her goal is to help others have a healthy lifestyle "without going crazy." She says that there is no "bad" food, admitting that even she enjoys a good Cheeto. Sarah's blog is particularly helpful and refreshing to parents because it is so reasonable. She has done the research, gleaning nuggets of important information from the overwhelming amount of material out there.

She says, "In short, I try to practice balance and moderation in my approach to healthy eating and living. The problem for most people is, how do you strike that balance? The information we get about diet and health changes every day-and most people don't have the time, interest, or energy to wade through it all. I follow all sorts of healthrelated news, read zillions of food and lifestyle magazines, and try loads of recipes in my own kitchen. Semi- Sweet serves as a filter for busy people who want to improve the way they live and eat on a day-to-day basis."

Although she admits to missing the "adrenalin and mental Olympics" of law, Sarah is happy with the balance in her life. When asked to summarize all that she has learned, Sarah replies, "I was never so scared, so desperate or as alone as I was when facing a life-threatening illness in the prime of my life. Yet I managed to wrestle with the tough stuff, making meaning from a seemingly senseless situation, and come out in the end with a life colored by cancer, but fashioned by me. Just the way I like it."

To find support for living with breast cancer, visit Thrivetogether.org and/or mbcc.org.

To check out Sarah's helpful tips on healthful living (as well as great recipes), visit her blog: semisweetonline.com.

Amy Cooper Rodriguez is a freelance writer living with her husband and two children in Belmont.

Take 15 with Sarah

1. I am the queen of: Organization and discipline. I run a tight ship!

2. My daughter teaches me: Patience and flexibility - two things I'm not naturally endowed with - and most of all, to live in the moment. There's not much time to dwell on what "could be" when you're running after a kid!

3. What makes me a better mom: My "mama time" and the ability to pursue my own interests

4 A perfect day would be: I'd have nothing to do but eat great food (prepared by someone else, let's be real) and read a great book. Oh, and maybe throw a massage in there.

5. An inspiring parent I know: My father. He's only 68, yet he has lived with primaryprogressive multiple sclerosis for over 40 years. Although he is now completely disabled and is confined to a nursing home, all along the way he has found innovative ways to use technology to cope and adapt to his changing condition. He is my "suck it up and make do" role model.

6. How I feel about being a "Mom who Rocks": Honored, but humbled. I'm not really any different from any other mom, schlepping her kid around day-after-day, trying to figure out what the heck to feed everyone. I make it up as I go along, just like the next woman.

7. Our favorite places to go out to eat: Chinatown (Vinh Sun BBQ is our all-time favorite for roast meats), Super 88 food court (Allston) (try Pho Viet for fantastic Vietnamese soups and banh mi), Shangri-La (Belmont), Eastern Lamejun Baking Company (Belmont), Sevan Bakery (Watertown), Crema Café (Harvard Square)

8. Best thing (s) about October: Sweater weather and apple cider doughnuts from Honeypot Hill Orchards in Stowe.

9. How I celebrated my 40th birthday: We celebrated with eight of our closest friends at Scampo. Absolutely delectable and inspired food, served up by a now famous server, Mario, who we requested ahead of time. The room, the food, the service were all impeccable and it was a fitting way to usher in a new decade. Having successfully outrun cancer for 8 years, I am excited and grateful to be 40!

10. Breast cancer taught me: That in every experience, no matter how horrifying, there is an opportunity for positive change and growth. I have put and am putting every struggle, disappointment and sadness I've felt to good use. "Using my life," as Oprah would say. While I'd never call having had cancer a 'gift,' I will say that I'm happier with the way my life is now than ever before. Facing your own mortality, especially in what's supposed to be the prime of your life, forces you to separate the wheat from the chaff. To make hard choices and changes. I made up my mind early-on that whether I had 20,000 days left on this earth or 20, I wanted to enjoy those days as much as possible.

11. A message for other moms: Do the best you can. Stop being so hard on yourself - 'mother guilt' is a waste of your precious time and energy. Try to be supportive of other moms. When I first became a mother and heard all these other moms cutting each other down behind others' backs, I was stunned. We're all in similar boats, mothering is a tough job - why not act like a team? No one has it all figured out, no matter how well she's accessorized.

12. Things I do to stay sane: hard cardio to loud music, deep breathing (seriously!), get a minimum of 7 hours of sleep every night

13. Three things I couldn't live without: really, there are four - organic Chinese gunpowder tea, my iPhone, baked goods, and Bobbi Brown Creamy Concealer

14. How'd you get interested in food and cooking? Food is love. What better way to show someone that you care about them than to take time to prepare them a delicious, nutritious meal? I come from a long line of food fanatics and home cooks. My people live to eat. I grew up watching my parents and my grandparents in the kitchen, and I learned a lot by just hanging around. My personal interest in cooking really took off when I was in law school. I had a big kitchen all to myself for the first time, and I used cooking as a means of relaxing on the weekends - I'd whip up big batches of food that'd carry me through the week. When I quit lawyering after cancer, I combined my love of cooking and food with my new-found nutrition and whole-foods focus. And when I became a mother, I was forced to expand my repertoire to include a wide variety of quick-cook meals, still with a focus on whole foods and fresh ingredients.

15. What I hope my daughter will remember about me when she gets older: My sense of humor, my zest for life, that I'm resilient and scrappy, and most of all, that I love her beyond measure.

Do you know an inspiring mom or dad who rocks? E-mail Carrie Wattu at editor@baystateparent.com.