A WARRIOR WOMAN: Keisha Hickson's Battle and Victory Over Cancer

Dawn Damon: Hey, all you beautiful, bravehearted women. So glad you are with us again today. I'm your girl, Dawn Damon!

Today, my guest is a professional speaker, transformative thought leader, passionate leader, and an advocate for resilience, transformation, and women's empowerment, and you know we need that. But listen, her personal journey marked by a diagnosis of multiple myeloma and a challenging prognosis has fueled her pursuit of a limitless legacy. Please welcome, the CEO of Hickson Agency, a community advocate and multiple myeloma warrior, Keisha Hickson.

Hey Keisha!

Keisha Hickson: Hey, Dawn, thank you for having me, and thank you for that wonderful introduction. Thank you so much.

Dawn Damon: Well, you're a wonderful woman. You are a warrior. We're going to talk about that today. I'm just so excited for my listeners to get to know a little bit about you. So why don't we just dive in? I'd love to hear a little bit about your story, because as I said in the beginning, despite a challenging prognosis of incurable cancer. My goodness, girl, and yet here you are and you say this is just a catalyst for personal growth and development. Talk about it for a moment.

Keisha Hickson: So in: 2016

Dawn Damon: Oh, yeah.

Keisha Hickson: I was like, what? I was 38 years old.

Dawn Damon: Oh my goodness.

Keisha Hickson: And I may not live to see my 44th birthday.

Keisha Hickson: That's an unacceptable diagnosis. This cannot be it. So anyway, I pulled myself together. I called him back cause I just could not believe what he was saying. He goes, Keisha, I'm sorry, but you do have it. It's confirmed. Make the appointment, which is the following Monday, and we're going to start treatment right then and there, the first thing that came to my mind was my daughter. She was eight years old at the time. And during that stint, I worked for a bank for, at that point, maybe 22 years, 21 years. I was a senior vice president. I was in retail banking. Life was a status quo. Like, I was living the American dream, like going to work. I had a beautiful daughter. I lived in the suburbs. And this happens. So, at that moment, I had to decide to live. Yes, I had my moments. I'm not gonna pretend like it was scary. I'm the only one in my family who has cancer. To be incurable, and something that was so rare that no one heard of it, I had my moments, but I decided that I couldn't fold.

o the stem cell transplant in: 2017

So that was 2016. So now we're in 2024. It's eight years later, right? And I'm alive, right? So I'm alive. Yes. So one thing I always end every talk with, if I had [00:05:00] let that cancer diagnosis consume me, I would have wasted another eight years of my life.

Dawn Damon: Yes. Had you even had another eight years of your life, if you had let that get on the inside of you and consume you, chances are it would have overtaken you.

Keisha Hickson: When it was taking me, but all outside of that too, with that three to five-year window, I felt like I was running out of time. Like I just started doing all these things. I started my first business. I just started living life differently and seeing life differently. And I started to think about all the things that I put off. Um, and I was like, Oh, I'm going to do this for another year or another month. Oh, when my daughter gets sick or when she goes to high school, I will start. And I started to think about all those things. Right.

So I refer to that as the nine-day week. The one day in some that we add on to the week. Oh, one day I'll get to it. Someday I'll start that dream. And I just started to like life. Like, start a business. Going vacation. Stop putting things off. I used that to fuel me to live. I just couldn't see, just sitting here, just waiting for time to tick. And my daughter was eight years old. She was very impressionable at the time as well. If anything, if I was to pass away in five years, I wanted her to know Your mother fought to the end. Absolutely. My legacy. And this was not gonna be, oh, I just worked for the bank and that was it. Like I became more involved in the community. I started a business helping women start their businesses. That I became a multiple myeloma coach because to receive that diagnosis is so terrifying to say the least, right?

Dawn Damon: Well, yes. And like you said, you know, your whole world turned upside down. I think when people hear your story, yes, they're absolutely inspired. They also want to know how did you do that. How did you hear something that did turn your world upside down? That was literally the worst. kind of news we want to get when the phone rings.

Dawn Damon: You probably stayed there, what, a week, a day, a month? How long before you were able to switch the gear and say, okay, this is going to happen for me, not to me? Did they, was there a moment in time?

Keisha Hickson: There was a moment in time after the initial we went to the biopsy and this is really what it is and I have to go to treatment for it. I'm going to say 30 days later when we actually started was called the induction therapy where you go on the cycles right twice a week. I go to chemo. I went to radiation. And I had to settle into it, right?

So I coined the term, finding your fearlessness, because I was terrified, but I couldn't let that paralyze me. And I couldn't show that to the world every day because managing my emotions and my family's emotions is a task. Yes. It's a task. So I had to find my fearlessness. I had to put on my fearless face every day, go to treatment, pick up my daughter from school, and do homework while I was ill, throwing up, stomach was messy. Going through the initial treatment of chemotherapy is very vigorous on the body. It's very vigorous. So how do I manage myself? Right. And the first step was really to acknowledge where I'm at. Where am I right now? Okay. The diagnosis of multiple myeloma, you work for the bank. I was still working at the bank at the time.

How do I manage my obligations at work, my treatments, and my daughter? Because multiple myeloma is a lifetime treatment, always on treatment until they find a cure. Like I'm on chemotherapy now, it's called maintenance therapy. So I just made it part of my life. Work, treatment, medicine, everything else. I just put it in the rotation. I accepted it. I put a plan in place. There were times when I was sicker than other days because of the treatment cycle. So I made those days lighter and on the days that I felt better, I would do more. I just incorporated it into my life like a roadmap and put on all these other tasks that I wanted to do.

Every day I work towards what I want to do and that's what I teach in my program, Dare to Change. You have to accept it. It has to be part of you. It happened. You can't turn it back. It happened. So yes, you cry about it. You get sad about it. But you have to manage those emotions because even today I had a moment like my daughter is going to be 17 this next month a month from about a month away on the 19th she'll be 17 she's going to start her senior year. It was a time when I thought I would even get to see her get to her senior year. So I had those moments where you know things remind you of this is what you're faced with, that's normal. But what you're going to do in the in-between to push yourself through it what matters, what are you going to do?

Dawn Damon: Yes, yes. Well, you're such a beautiful candidate for our program because we are bravehearted women. We talk about having to face brave things and find our courage, our bravery, and our fearlessness because we're stronger than we know. But Yet. And still, there are moments where we're going to feel it. We feel what we're going through, but you know, when we were going through COVID, we found that statement that's way overused, but we found our new normal. And it sounds like you were able to find your new normal. You found a rhythm like, okay, I have this myeloma, but myeloma doesn't have me. I'm going to keep on going and I'm going to find that resilience and you have your days.

Dawn Damon: But how did you keep from, I see a word a lot on some of your social media and it's called complacency. How did this jar you out of complacency?

Keisha Hickson: So my signature talk, one of them is the high cost of complacency and during this talk or workshop I really want to employ on the audience this whole idea of us just wanting to be comfortable How it make us complacent, right? And then when something happens something critical in our lives We just have this regret of Why didn't I do this or why didn't I do that? So the high cost of complacency for me, the high cost of complacency was I went to work for this bank during my, between undergrad and law school. I started off as a part-time teller. I don't need a job. Let me find a job until I go to law school. But then my banking career took off and I became comfortable at the bank. Which was great. It was rewarding. It was satisfying at times, but that wasn't what my true passion was. The plan was always to go back to law school.

Dawn Damon: Okay.

Keisha Hickson: It would become comfortable. I was in my 20s. I was making a lot of money in sales and securities. Then I got married, I had a child, started going on vacation, and just became comfortable, like, just sat there, like, I was doing well, not pushing myself for better, for other departments. And within this bank, there were other opportunities that I could have taken advantage of.

But I just became so comfortable in retail banking. It was my vertical. I was the go-to person. I did well year after year. It was a great time. But then when the diagnosis came about and you looked back up all the things you could have done and you didn't do, I was comfortable with the higher cost of complacency. So what is going to be the trigger for you to say I was comfortable and now I feel like I'm running out of time. Mine was cancer. So what is going to be the trigger for you to realize that you're comfortable? And we say it all the time. I just want to be comfortable, right? I want to finish school, land the job that I would like, and just be comfortable. We don't really realize psychologically what that does to us, that comfort. We just settled in. We stop stretching ourselves. We stop learning new things, and new heights. We just become as great here until it's not.

Dawn Damon: Yes. And then you're like, what did I do to myself? Right. And we're finding out now that, you know, with so much understanding of the brain and the neuroscience, you know, the brain detects anything. Its job is to keep us alive and anything that feels like a threat, it says, no, don't do it. And you know what? Change is a threat. Feels like a threat. Doing something that's not your normal pattern feels like a threat to the brain. And so, yeah, at all costs, stay comfortable, but we got to push against that. We have to come against that complacency.

Keisha Hickson: And push against the fear. Fear has a lot to do with how we become comfortable. Fear of the unknown, fear of failure, fear of change, fear of they may not understand my idea. Rejection. Clarity. Not having clarity within yourself brings fear also.

Dawn Damon: Yes.

Keisha Hickson: Right. Not having a clear plan and a clear understanding of why you want to do this thing, why you want to try, or why you want to start a business. Clarity has a big part to do with it. Yes. So that's the high cost of complacency.

Dawn Damon: That's so good. And you're the great person to speak on that because you're living it. You're not just talking about something you don't know you're living it. And I agree, you know, fear is definitely a thief and a robber. And I often say, you know, we have to face our fear with a plan when you don't know what you're going to do, fear gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And just. It begins to swallow us up. But when we say, Hey, wait a minute, let me break this down. Let me put some steps to this. Let me put an action plan together. And we then start getting mobile and action always breaks through fear. We can just move. Otherwise, we're paralyzed. We get stuck. How do you help people, are there specific ways that you help people move into action? I do.

Keisha Hickson: It's called on my data change program. I usually do a small cohort of between four to six women or one-to-one. And I really particularly like to work with women who are in that transition phase I've worked for this for a corporation. They're about to retire. They want to start something new. They have some level of success and they're looking to step into the next thing in their life. Yes. So initially we sat together and I asked them really why you want to do it. Right. You have to own why you want to do it and it can't be me. Oh, I just think I should. I'm 45. You have to really own the thing that you would like to do next. Whether it's learning a second language, learning how to cook a different cuisine, or starting a business. Because you have to use that Y as your North Star.

Dawn Damon: Yes.

Keisha Hickson: It's rough. The road to change is rough, right? It's hard to make new habits and be committed to yourself and determination. Motivation is great, but you need determination to be successful. So after we go through that process, we talk about the skills, the people, the resources that you may need, right?

We make a list. If you have to hire someone, you want to take a class, what is your zone of genius, what are you comfortable doing, and how do we put a plan in place to outsource the things that you need? Yes. Being a jack of all trades, it's okay, but it makes you stagnant a little bit and it also frustrates you. So I try to employ people to be realistic of the things that you can do on their own and the things they need to seek help on. And then after that, we create the roadmap. Think about it as a GPS, right? The final destination is here. When we put the address in our car as a GPS, it tells us about road closures, accidents, and detours.

So we sit down and we do a realistic plan of what your life is like between your professional obligations, your personal obligations, your kids going to soccer, and the free amount of time that you could work towards this goal every day.

Dawn Damon: That's so beautiful. And you know, the Bible even says without a vision, people just cast off restraint. We just flounder. We just float around. But once you get a vision, you get that true north, you get that massive action plan. Now you can make traction. But I also like the piece, where you didn't use this word, but accountability, or just that piece where you're talking to someone, because what if you don't have the discipline?

Keisha Hickson: No, that's part of it. Accountability, right? Self-awareness. So, I'm a coach, right? I didn't really call myself, I'm like a legacy leader, right? I'm just trying to guide you into forming your legacy, right? Accountability is key, but self-accountability, right?

You have to hold yourself accountable. It's great. We talk once a week. Every other week, I give you a pep talk. I do check in with you. It could be daily, by email, by text, Hey, did you finish that project? But do you have to really want it for yourself? And you have to find that part that makes you accountable to yourself. So we try to devise the program with the individual where the optimal time that they could work on their project.

Yeah, a realistic plan. Right. My optimal time is between 5 am and 7 am. That's when I do my best work. When is your best time to put it into a routine and do it and practice it every day, you have to work on it every day. Whether it's reading 10 pages, or writing your pillars. Your mission statement. You have to do something every day towards that goal, because it becomes ingrained in you, which is important.

And then we execute. And I always ask them, and I hold them accountable to this part, to leave room in the plan for achievements, but to celebrate, and also if you have to redirect. If you have to take another route, let's say Sally now was in gymnastics and now you have less time. How do you redirect your goals so that you still stay on target? Because one thing is for sure. Time is not refundable. Mondays and Sundays, never get them back. And then you look up, it's ten years later, and you didn't do that thing you wanted to do. So good.

Dawn Damon: And that, you talked about the GPS, that's what the GPS does too. If there's an obstacle in the way, it'll say, rerouting, or if you miss a turn, right?

Redirecting, rerouting, when possible, make a U-turn. Excellent. Ahead. Right. So, you know, it's okay. Life happens. So we can adjust that plan. But you know, when the rocket is heading to the moon, it knows it's going to the moon, but it says it's off course about 90 percent of the time, but it still makes it there.

So, you know, yeah, great. We'd love to have a straight line. Life is rarely a straight line. Right. But we keep moving forward. You talked about living authentically. You may not have said those words, but I did read that in your bio and you help women, especially in their next. And this is my audience too. We've lived for everybody else. We've made other people's dreams come true. We might've been complacent and stayed in a job, but now just life season, we are going to our next. How do we show up authentically this time? For us, not selfish, but self-worth, self-care to say, I deserve to live a life. That's true to who I am.

Keisha Hickson: You know, oftentimes women, especially women, I should say, they always put their dreams on the back burner, always be raising a family. We may not take the position because of other family obligations, women are nurturers, and we tend to take that responsibility in the workplace and in the home, but our counterparts don't do that.

They go full steam ahead. Oh, yeah. They go after those promotions. They are not afraid of nine times out of 10 to switch jobs and move to companies. They're not looking to be staggered in that way. They are, they are driven by their own dreams. And for women, we tend to be like, all right, I'll wait my turn. And I get it like that to a degree.

But after this, I felt like being myself and living my dreams. Right. Your own narratives. Also, women tend to fall into what society says we should do, right? We should be at home. We should just go to work and come home and be in the nursery. We should be the ones rearing the kids while the husband goes out and gets to be, you know, those dynamics have changed because most households have two, both parents are working, but to some degree, there are some societal pressures around women still.

Dawn Damon: Yes. Right. It still feels like the script for women. Here's what you do. Right.

Keisha Hickson: And then you fall into the status quo, which also leads you to become complacent, you know what I mean? Finish school, land a job, and find that perfect mate. Be that loving parent and then be the friend that everyone could rely on.

Dawn Damon: Yeah, beautiful. It's a joy having you here today. And if you had one last thing to say to women who are listening today, maybe they did also receive a diagnosis. Maybe they're stuck. Maybe they know Keisha that their next has to happen. Like, you know, I'm done here. My season's over, but I'm not, I feel so afraid to make a change.

Dawn Damon: What would you say?

Keisha Hickson: This is what I would say. I dare you to change. I dare you. What do you have to lose? I dare you to change. Really think about the risk and the reward. What is the risk and how sweet the reward is going to be when you try it? And you stay in the course and you do it because I'm here to tell you complacency is the anchor that keeps our dreams from sailing.

Dawn Damon: Yes. Yeah.

Dawn Damon: You got me choked up because you just gave permission. You, you, you even get, you threw down the gauntlet. You gave a challenge, not only permission, but I dare you to change. I get you to face that mountain. Come on, girl. You are a woman.

Keisha Hickson: You can do it. You can do it. And you said something at the beginning of this broadcast, we are stronger than we give ourselves credit for.

Dawn Damon: Yeah.

Keisha Hickson: Right? Right. We are very resilient as women.

Dawn Damon: Yes.

Keisha Hickson: Right? We all have a brave story. Some of our stories are a little bit more critical than others. Prior to being diagnosed with multiple myeloma, there were probably four other things I could think of from the top of my head that should have pushed me out of complacency and should have shaken me to the core. But my diagnosis was it for me, right? That was my trigger. Like, girl, you're running out of time. You better just go for it. I'm sure if each of us look back, there was a time when we should have been like, all right, this is it. Like, I had enough. Yeah, it's time to move forward. So I dare you to change. All right, you two don't think about something

Dawn Damon: I am. My wheels are turning. I'm thinking about it. And I'm not trying to hear that right now, but you know what? Yes, I am. I'm thinking about it. And you know, I went through a severe significant change. My listeners know this, but you know, when I was 46 years old, my husband left after 28 years of marriage. Oh, I was hurled out into the unknown, all the things.

And so since then, you know, God has blessed me a hundredfold. I'm so thankful. But then two years ago, I jumped out again in terms of, leaving my career, leaving my livelihood, and starting my entrepreneurial business. And it's not for the faint of heart, you know, it's a grind. You got to keep believing, you got to keep going.

But every day I look at my vision board and every day I look at those goals and every day, like you said, I say, what is it today? I will boldly Rise to my design. This is what God put inside of me. I'm not going to shrink. I'm not going to quit. And I'm going to keep believing in the greatness that I believe is inside of me and you too.

I don't even talk about that part of it because prior to being diagnosed, my husband and I also split at that point. I'm going to live the second half of my life. And then came my diagnosis two years later. I was like, Oh, this is it. Right. Yeah, it happens. I say it's a million things but the cancer diagnosis was it for me But there were other things that happened in my life Separation and other challenges that should have shaken me to the core, but I was young.

I was only 38 I felt like I had time. Right. Don't take time for granted. Don't take time for granted. I enjoyed my time with you on the podcast. I know that you're a God-fearing woman, and once you believe, there's no reason to be fearful. That's right. We will see you soon. That's right.

Dawn Damon: Perfect. Love it. And I've loved my time with you. You're a beautiful woman. How can people get ahold of you?

Keisha Hickson: Please. I would love to connect with anyone in your audience that will say, you know what? That was great. Thank you for the words of encouragement. If you'd like to offer it to us, hear me speak at one of your events, women empowerment in the office, they can reach me at keishahickson.com to book a call. I'll be more than happy to speak with anyone who is out there. Also, maybe going through a new, a newly diagnosis. Well, as multiple myeloma or not, unfortunately, we do share that club. We are part of the cancer society. And I'd be more than happy to offer any support that I can.

Dawn Damon: Beautiful. And we'll have all of that in the show notes for you. Listeners take advantage of the wisdom, the wealth of information, but just the anointing and the beautiful woman that's before us today. Thank you for sharing your heart and your authenticity.

And listeners, I'm going to leave you, my sisters, like I always do. Dawn Damon, your Braveheart mentor says, is it time for you to find your brave and live your dreams!