Loveland Woman Uses Journaling to Survive Metastatic Breast Cancer

Steamboat Springs —The morning light hits the hardwood floor of a personal basketball museum in Loveland. Trophies line the shelves. Medals sit next to framed photographs of Michael Jordan and a former schoolteacher’s own playing days. It is quiet in here. The only sound is the scratch of a pen or the glow of a phone screen where thoughts are being recorded.

Claudia Rivas, 54, is not just looking at old memories. She is using this space to survive a recurrence of breast cancer that has metastasized to her hip, liver, lung, and lymph nodes.

The Steamboat Pilot reported on Rivas’s journey this week. The story is not about a miracle cure. It is about the grueling, unglamorous work of staying alive while your body fights back.

Rivas was diagnosed with breast cancer at 44. She underwent a double mastectomy and spent six years in treatment. By her account, she believed the disease was gone. Then 2023 arrived. Pain in one leg led to an orthopedist, then an X-ray, then an MRI. The images confirmed what she feared: the cancer had returned and spread.

She is now undergoing weekly chemotherapy. Rivas calls it "the most difficult part" of her journey. It is during these sessions that she turns to journaling. She uses an app on her phone to record her innermost thoughts, capturing the highs and lows of her battle.

This is not a new trend for wellness influencers. For Rivas, it is survival. She notes that writing helps her ground herself. It makes her more attuned to small pleasures: birds chirping, a morning cup of coffee, the rigors of basketball.

The Steamboat Pilot piece highlights a specific quote from Michael Jordan that Rivas uses to push forward during moments of deep physical and emotional exhaustion.

“I’ve missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. Twenty-six times, I’ve been trusted to take the game-winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

Rivas reflects on this with a stark observation of her own. “We cannot achieve anything if we don’t fail,” she said. “But many people see failure as the end, instead of as a learning experience.”

Her greatest battle is internal. She describes a constant effort to steady her mind and emotions while remaining committed to treatment at UCHealth Cancer Care and Hematology. On hard days, when showering and dressing require immense effort, the writing provides a refuge. It is a space to process fear, fatigue, and uncertainty without having to perform strength for others.

Rivas is a mother and grandmother who treasures time with family. She has also engaged in integrative therapies alongside her medical treatment. But the core of her coping mechanism is simple: she writes it down.

In a society that often ignores struggle, Rivas argues that strength is not the absence of hardship. It is the choice to keep going despite it.

She is currently in Loveland, a town about an hour east of the Western Slope. Her story resonates here because cancer does not check your zip code before it strikes. The commute to treatment, the cost of care, and the physical toll are universal burdens for anyone in this region facing a similar diagnosis.

Rivas does not claim her journaling cures the cancer. It doesn't. It just keeps her in the game.

She is still playing.