I spent nearly two decades serving my country in places most people will never see on a map. Years in conflict zones, third-world postings, forward operating environments where the mission came first and everything else came second. I was a CIA operations officer, and for more than half of my career, I lived and worked in warzones and developing countries, operating in the kind of conditions that quietly take a toll on your body in ways you don’t fully understand until years later.
I left that life proud of what I had given. I also left it carrying more than I expected.
The Years It All Came Due
In 2022, I sustained a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) that left me with chronic side effects. It was the beginning of what I now recognize as a cascade. I found myself on the threshold of the kind of health crisis that doesn’t announce itself all at once, but arrives in waves, each one asking you to dig a little deeper.
In 2023, I was diagnosed with Stage 1A Melanoma. Caught early, treated, and behind me, but it cracked something open. When you have spent your career in service of others, being the one who needs care is a disorienting recalibration.
Then came 2024. A diagnosis of Atypical Ductal Hyperplasia, a precancerous condition of the breast tissue, that led to a dramatically higher lifetime risk of developing breast cancer. It was a conversation which, for me, had a clear answer. I have a husband and three daughters – if I could absorb the brunt of what might be coming and spare them from watching me walk through breast cancer, then, for me, the right course was an obvious one. I chose a prophylactic bilateral mastectomy. Grateful for the opportunity to face breast cancer on my own terms, I have not regretted it for a single second.
I knew it would be a hard road, but no one can be fully prepared for the physical and emotional terrain of that journey. Navigating it alongside a head injury that leaves me more easily overwhelmed, more quickly fatigued, and more sensitive to sensory overload made everything even trickier. There is no clean script for that kind of layered recovery. You find your footing where you can, and you hold on to the people beside you.
Late 2025 brought revision surgery and another step in the ongoing, non-linear process of healing. It is as walk that no one describes quite accurately enough in advance because everyone’s journey is so uniquely personal.
What We’re Starting to Understand About Women Like Me There is a conversation gaining slow momentum about servicewomen of my generation experiencing elevated rates of cancer at younger ages. Burn pit exposure, contaminated water sources, environmental toxins in deployed environments, and the chronic physiological burden of operating in austere conditions. The research is still catching up, but the pattern is becoming harder to ignore. I am one data point in that story, and I know I am not the only one. Women who have served deserve to have their full health histories taken seriously, including the chapters that happened far from home.
The Gap I Couldn’t Find My Way Around
Our farm in Madison County, Montana sits at the base of the Tobacco Root Mountains in the kind of place where long winters and strong neighbors shape how you live. When I came home post-mastectomies, I was navigating mTBI recovery, post-surgical nerve pain, and a body that had been through more than it had signed up for.
I wanted clean, botanical, all-natural products. Not as a lifestyle preference, but as a matter of conviction. After years in chemically compromised environments, the last thing I wanted was to layer synthetic compounds onto healing skin. I needed something gentle for the chronic nerve pain and the sensitivity I developed post-surgery. I kept coming up empty.
What I found in the wellness space were products full of ingredients I could not verify, or “natural” claims that did not hold up to scrutiny. What I was looking for simply did not seem to exist. So, I started making it myself, slowly, the way things are made on a homestead. I gratefully used what the land and the season provided.
What Grew From That Building 4R Farm into a Montana-rooted botanical and heritage care company was not a business plan. It was what happened when a gap in my own healing met with Montana grit.
What I did not anticipate was what the making itself would give back. A CIA career is hard to leave behind. You feel the loss of mission keenly, no matter how ready you are to retire. My head injury, which dimmed my confidence and sharpened my fatigue made that transition harder still. Weeks of post-surgical limitation, when your body will not let you be useful, has its own particular weight.
Slowly infusing botanicals, learning the rhythms of what the land offers each season, building something with my hands that I believed in – all of it gave me back something I had not known that I had lost. Purpose that fit the pace of recovery. Confidence that rebuilt itself quietly, in small increments. A reason to be in the present instead of grieving.
Our GENTLE Care Collection was built for healing seasons. Formulated with the care and restraint that post-surgical skin and nerve sensitivity require, made from whole-plant infusions, traditional fats, and Montana beeswax, it came directly from my own need. It is the most intensely personal thing we make. 4R Farm was built on the need to live close to what is real, to know what is in the products that care for body and home, and to build something that reflects the values that carried me through twenty years of service. Values which are carrying me still.
To Anyone in a Healing Season Right Now
If you are somewhere in the middle of your own story, whether waiting on results, recovering from surgery, navigating the weight of a prophylactic choice, or simply trying to find steady ground after a diagnosis, I want you to know that the work of healing is not linear, and it is not small.
I spent years in environments designed to test every limit I had. Nothing quite prepared me for the particular discipline of learning to be still, to let others carry the weight, to turn toward my own body with patience instead of urgency. But the same conviction that sustained me through decades of service has brought me to the belief that when you are given something hard, you do not walk away from it.
You lean into it with faith and you find the mission inside of it. For me, that mission lives on a homestead at the foot of the Tobacco Root Mountains, in a jar of slowinfused botanicals, in three daughters watching their mother refuse to be diminished by what she could not control. It lives beautifully in this community, too, in every woman who has chosen to previve rather than wait, and in every story that helps another woman feel less alone.
I am honored to be in this space with you. 4R Farm Botanical Wellness Balms is a Montana-rooted, farmstead apothecary brand. Learn more at www.4R.farm.*
*Disclosure: This content references third-party skincare products and brands. The Previvor Foundation has no financial relationship with, sponsorship from, or affiliation with the companies mentioned in this article unless specifically disclosed. All opinions expressed are those of the original author and are provided for informational purposes only.
Breast cancer first entered my life when I was in 8th grade. My mom was diagnosed at age 41—and just a year later, she lost her battle.
That moment changed everything. My dad, my two sisters, and I were left to navigate life without her. I was left with a fear that would quietly shape my future.
When I was 18, I found a lump in my breast. It was removed and, thankfully, benign. In my early twenties, I took the BRCA test and tested negative. That gave me some peace of mind throughout my 20s and 30s. I clung to that result like a safety net.
At 39, I had my first mammogram. Like many women, I was told I had dense breast tissue, and they recommended an MRI. I wasn’t overly concerned—until the nurse called:
“Hi, you have a spot on your left breast they’d like to biopsy, and another area we want to monitor. I’ll call in the order.”
She hung up. Just doing her job.
But I stood frozen in my kitchen, suddenly overwhelmed. I felt sick. I sobbed. I was not going to let history repeat itself.
A year before that call, I had a conversation with a stranger who happened to be a breast cancer specialist from Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville . Almost jokingly, I asked if it was crazy to consider a preventative mastectomy with my family history.
“Absolutely not,” he said.
Those words stayed with me. After my biopsy came back non-cancerous, I decided I wanted to be proactive. I wanted to take control of my story.
My first consultations didn’t go well. The breast specialist didn’t understand my concerns, and the plastic surgeon discouraged me about how I’d look after surgery.
Then I got a referral to Magnolia Breast Health to see Dr. Patterson. She reviewed my history, looked me in the eye, and said:
“You are 100% a candidate for this surgery, and insurance will cover it.”
Tears of relief filled my eyes. She saw me. She validated everything I was feeling.
I also met with Dr. Holmes, one of the plastic surgeons she works with, and received the same level of care and confidence. I had found my team.
In September 2024, I had a six-hour surgery to remove all my breast tissue and place spacers. I was home the same day, my husband by my side.
My chest looked like a vacuum-sealed Amazon package, and the surgical drains made me feel like an octopus—but I was grateful.
The hardest part of recovery wasn’t the pain—it was the stillness. As an active mom of three girls, slowing down was a challenge.
In November, Dr. Holmes placed my implants. The second procedure was much easier, and I recovered quickly. The emotional weight had already been lifted.
Now, I sit by the pool watching my daughters at swim practice. My heart is full.
I’ve reduced my breast cancer risk to just 2%. I know we can’t control the future, but we can make choices that shape it.
I’m grateful I trusted myself, even when early doctors didn’t. I got a second opinion. I kept pushing.
People have asked, “Isn’t that extreme? You don’t even have BRCA.”
But tell that to the 14-year-old girl who watched her mom be taken off life support.
No, it wasn’t extreme for me. It was right.
To anyone facing hard choices—I’m sending you love, strength, and the courage to advocate for yourself.
You know your body. You know your story.
Trust yourself.
– Aimee Pokorny
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