Olegana Travel Boutique: SIGN YOUR OWN PERMISSION SLIP PODCAST

Permission Slips - Ep6 - Joanna Jepsen - Permission Granted: How I Took the Trip of a Lifetime My Cancer Came Back!

• Anna Fishman • Season 2 • Episode 6

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Joanna Jepsen shares how her trip to Puglia, Italy with Olegana Travel Boutique (also known as ‘the Sisterhood of the Travelling Focaccias’) was a once-in-a-lifetime, transformative experience.

In this episode, Joanna Jepsen and I talked about giving yourself permission to take a trip of a lifetime after getting a cancer diagnosis. We discussed that even though it may feel like the world is crashing down, it’s so important to keep a positive attitude and outlook on life, and how this trip was the best kind of medicine she could have given herself at that moment.

We chatted about the amazing group of women who were strangers at first and became friends during this trip - enjoying each others’ company, uplifting one another, cooking together, and sharing laughter as the best medicine.

WHO ARE WE? Olegana Travel Boutique is a boutique travel company offering custom-curated trips for families and couples to Europe and authentic, luxury small-group tours for women.

🌐  https://oleganatravelboutique.com/
💌 Email: anna@oleganatravelboutique.com



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Hello, everybody. You're listening to Sign Your Own Permission Sleep Podcast, episode number six, and I'm your host, Anna Fishman. We have a very special guest today. Her name is Joanna Chapson, and she is one of our amazing traveling focaccas, self-aimed. Traveling focaccas, she was one of our ladies on the last trip to Puglia, Italy, and they gave themselves this name, Traveling Focaccas, and I thought that was super cute. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Focaccas. Oh, sorry. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Focaccas. I love seeing the group chat on WhatsApp, all the pictures. It's been like a month since the trip finished, and you guys are still going strong, sending pictures with the travel mugs that you got as a gift from me, sending pictures of the things you've been making. So it's really, really awesome to see that it just warms my heart, and I would love to hear about your experience on the trip, but before we go into the good stuff, we connected originally on the not so fun topic. When you messaged me after you came back and you said, Anna, this was a transformational experience, I learned about my cancer coming back the day before I left for the trip, and the trip has changed my life, and I was like, oh my God, this is the topic we have to talk about. So today's podcast, today's episode in our Permissions for the Podcast, we're talking about giving yourself permission to take over a trip of a lifetime after getting a cancer diagnosis. So Joanna, thank you for joining us, and thanks for being on this podcast. Thank you for having me, Anna. This is a total pleasure to be here and to share my story, and I hope that I can, with my sharing, inspire and influence other women to take the trip of a lifetime and just know that if you're getting the itch to travel and maybe you got some bad news, the correct answer is to go on that trip and enjoy your life and live in the moment. It is so important that we give that to ourselves in good times and bad, so definitely feel strongly about that. Absolutely, and it feels like when the bad news comes, it's like the world is crashing around you and you don't want to do anything, and you're like, I don't want to be a wet blanket, not you, I think I want to do the trip, but there's always like two sides to each story, right? There are two sides, because upon meeting all the ladies in our first afternoon at the pool bar at the Masseria, which was so incredibly beautiful, I might add, it was such a festive time to meet everybody, and we're just kind of getting an idea of everybody's story and why they're here and just some of their personal history, and it's not easy to talk about the more maybe devastating and serious parts of life. We want to put our best foot forward and be positive and happy, and I'm all of those things too, but I mean, I did come on this trip with a heavy heart and heavy news, and so I mean, I am so glad that I did, because I realized that this trip that I wanted to go on for so long, it was the best medicine I could have given myself, because it took my mind completely off my diagnosis. I honestly, I really didn't think about it that much. Occasionally I did, it would seep in my head, but we were so busy doing so many amazing things and laughing our asses off, I might add, and just having so much fun, it really helped taking, you know how the monkey mind can just go out of control, especially when you have news like that and you just don't know what the future is going to bring, so I mean, the trip was truly the best medicine, so I encourage anybody out there who has a similar situation as me, go on that trip, take that leap of faith and enjoy yourself, because you know, it's our attitude also that is going to help our recovery too, for sure. I read this study a while ago that the brain doesn't know real from fake, so if you tell yourself I'm the most amazing, healthiest, happiest person, the brain will take this as true, it doesn't know that you're faking it, that's why all the inspirational quotes we tried to put around, just lift our spirits up, so if you go on this trip and you tell yourself I'm sick, I'm this, all the bad things, they will eventually creep in and you will believe it, but if you go on the trip and if you first of all give yourself that permission to put all this heavy weight, at least for a week, for ten days, put it like that, lock the drawer and tell yourself I will have the most amazing time, I will be healthy, I'm going to feel great, I'm going to make new friends, I'm going to eat this amazing food, your body will deliver, and I'm sure when coming on the trip I'm always amazed at the courage of the women that come on these trips, because 99% of the women, even in your group, didn't know each other, I think we only had two ladies who knew each other. Exactly. And we all got along so well, everybody was so loving and supportive, caring, we were looking out for each other, we were just checking in, we were enjoying each other's company, and I find that to be very rare to have 12 women, including our host, the beautiful Melina, who was amazing, oh my gosh, it was just such a perfect synergy of souls that wanted the same experience, and if that isn't so good for your heart and your mind, the endorphins, that is just truly the best medicine, friendship, sisterhood, but the laughter, oh my god, I mean, we were just, we were silly, and everybody around us, we had a great time, and the food and all the classes and the guides were wonderful, and I don't know, we sure didn't have any idle moments except when we were, you know, probably just so exhausted from a wonderful day, so it was great. You know, I felt so much fear of missing out when every morning I would wake up, and it's like already 2pm in Italy, and I see all the missed messages on the group chat. I was dying laughing, I loved when you guys did a survey, who to marry, like the guide from the store, the bus driver, the boat driver, the peace man, the bread guy. I was like, that's amazing, and then like, you know, people sending like, I also like loved seeing like, the little jokes, and then when you guys got home and you started seeing like, sending pictures of each other, like grandkids and kids and those, like, that is so nice, because, you know, you go on a trip, and you have the wonderful time, but to have to create that bond with someone, and to keep in touch, and now you guys are talking about reunions, I'm like, I want to be part of a reunion, I feel like I'm like, please, I want to come to the reunion. So like, those kind of relationships, it's so hard to make friends as you get older in life. Like, we're no longer playing at a playground when we know everybody's the best friend. Yeah, and a lot of our, you know, partners, if we're, you know, involved in a relationship or marriage, a lot of our partners aren't interested in travel. And so, this is just a fabulous group of women that I fully intend to travel with again, and I can't wait to do that. So, you know, it's such a nice thing to be proactive in kind of set, you know, you just don't know that that's that side benefit to going on one of these trips, but it has ended up that way so much, and it's just such a wonderful, like, byproduct, you know, so. And you know, you gave yourself permission to take that trip without your husband. Yes. And a lot of times people ask me, oh, do you have to be divorced? Do you have to be single? I'm like, no, everybody's welcome. Like, we don't have to get attached to our significant others at the hip. We have different interests. I always joke that when people are like, oh, how do you create an itinerary? How do you come up with a trip idea? I was like, anything that my husband and my two sons could care less about, like, I'm doing that as a girls trip, you know? Yes. Like drinking champagne in Paris or making pasta in Italy, shopping in Spain, like, that's going to be a girls trip because they don't care what to do with them. Why would I waste the time, the money, and the effort, like, dragging them when I can have so much more fun doing it with women like you would enjoy the same thing? Absolutely. I mean, honestly, like, it was so nice when we took all the different classes. We were so focused. You could see all of us were so serious, still having a great time and fun, but we were very focused because it's something that we collectively all wanted to do, you know? So doing, you know, the focaccia making or the pasta making with another like-minded person or, you know, 12 people, I mean, how much fun is that when we all know that probably our significant others, they could care less, like you said, they could care less. That doesn't fill their cup, doesn't, you know, nourish their soul, but for me, it really has because those skills that I've brought home have been part of my therapy and my recovery from, you know, a procedure that didn't go as planned, but, and I'll have to get a second procedure in early December, but the, you know, the cooking, that is always going to be my happy place. That's my therapy, always when I'm, you know, if my brain is cranking on a problem, I just get in the kitchen and I start making stuff. And so I have all these new things to make and I did ship home a bunch of treats and wine and flour and all sorts of stuff to make things with and just, it's inspired me. So it's, again, the trip has taken my mind off of, you know, the bad news that I have to have a second surgery. So and to have the support of my sisterhood of the traveling focaccas, waking up to their WhatsApp messages every day has just lifted my spirits more than I can ever tell them. They're just so beautiful and sharing their love and their care with me and just to have that added support in my already, you know, lovely community here in Nevada, you know, it just, it means everything. And I just appreciate that you curated such a wonderful group of women and a trip that we all just loved. I mean, my God, it was amazing, Anna. So you are the master magician here. You know, I really appreciate what you're saying. Every time I hear feedback like this, it just warms my heart. It makes me think, you know, this is what I was supposed to be doing with my life because my journey in a straight line, like I didn't go to school and it's like, I'm going to do trips for women. Like I had to like to have my own bumps and curves to get to that point. But it was so worth it because I can see how I'm changing lives. I mean, it sounds like this grandiose, I'm changing lives, but I can tell this trip has changed your life for the better. I mean, it's really has, but it has and it like it makes me feel like I made a difference in somebody's life and 12 people's lives just on this one trip. Yeah. And there's like we as women, like we thrive on community, we thrive on relationships, we thrive on making focaccia and cooking together. Yeah. It's like taking a trip. It's like a gift of gift from giving. Now you know how to make focaccia. I hope that's better than mine. I've been making it every every Saturday. I make a big pan of focaccia for Chris because he used to eat naan every day and now he's eating focaccia in place of naan because he's a carb king. But the focaccia is so healthy for you because I'm using the good Italian flour, which is so much more nutritious and the olive oil and I'm decorating it with rosemary and great sea salt and different herbs and veggies and pecorino cheese. So he's benefiting from my, you know, the fruits of my labor. So it's all good. You should. You need to share the recipe with me for focaccia because I think I was there. I wrote it down probably not correctly because I tried making it at home and I'm like, how is that when I made it in Italy, you are not paying attention or drinking wine and it's a drinking. I cook with wine. Sometimes I put it in the recipe to it. I guess. It came out amazing at home, like I measured everything precisely. I even bought Italian flour from like the local Whole Foods. Yeah. They didn't come out the same. So I have a feeling I messed up something somewhere. So if you can send me your recipe, that'd be great. I will. And what I've noticed is it's the timing because I'm using, you know, the convection oven. So it's the timing of how long you have the focaccia cooking for or baking for. It's you got to be, you got to start out with less is more and then add minutes. But I've pretty much got it down to a science. It's like 27 minutes at 420, I think 420 or 450. I can't remember. It's I'll look at my recipe and I'll send it to you. But you know, I've been making the pizza, the pasta, the focaccia, but you know, it's it's more like I've just been inspired to, I mean, I've been cooking pretty much every single day since I've been home. And I've been off for about 12 days, you know, with the first surgery and I'm actually back to work today. I'm at my office right now and, you know, I'm just starting back slowly. Yeah. You know, but this whole recovery process has been so much I don't want to say carefree because it's not. I still have my moments, but the trip, the ladies, the friendships, the just the memories, just that's my go to when I start getting a little down and depressed. So I just, you know, think about I'll look at my pictures and I'll laugh at or I'll laugh at the messages from Gabriella with her cute little gifts and I don't know, just everybody has their special way of making me smile because I just I just think about, wow, I just spent a week with the most amazing women. I mean, I just feel so lucky right now. I mean, what a fantastic group. And this is what other travelers that are, you know, on the fence wondering if they should do that trip, you know, go on it alone. I don't know anybody. Right. Let me tell you, ladies, go on the trip. You will not regret it. You will be so glad you did. And you know, especially if you're going under circumstances that I did, you're going to be even happier that you did so. And if you're going alone, which is so scary to kind of get out of your comfort zone, and then like you say, Oh, I remember when I went to my first solo trip, people were like, you're going where are you going with who by yourself or do you create these like voices? But you need to get this is what you wanted to do always. And maybe you did something like that with your spouse or your kids or whatever. But if your heart is tugging at you to do this trip or to do any other trips, like a million trips out there, right, like you can choose what makes sense for you, like give yourself a question. Like, I know we were chatting a little bit before we started recording about retirement funds. You're not going to take all the other retirement funds with you or enjoy it while you can. Yes. I mean, that old saying you can't take it with you. It's so true. I mean, I, I have absolutely no regret investing in myself. Like my, my son was asking me, he's like, Mom, maybe you can buy that new car if you stop going on all those trips. And I'm just like, I'm like, babe, I am not going to stop traveling. I have a car it's paid for. I don't need a new one. But what I do need is another trip to go on. So you know, that's, that's what I do for myself. It's my happy place. It's filling my cup and it's investing in me. And I learn every time I travel internationally, I learned so much about what to do the next time. I mean, like travel tips that I'll, you know, I mean, I learned so much this past trip about using the train station and the taxis and just, you know, I spoke so much Italian on this trip. It's really wonderful because I've been studying the language for six months before going on the trip. And I, I used my Google translate and all this, you know, all the, the language learning that I did on Duolingo. That was the app, the language app that I was using, but it was so fun to actually apply what I learned. And I love language. So, I mean, for me, that was, that was putting it to work. And, you know, I think people also responded to me better because I made an attempt. So you know, you make them happy. They love when you try to speak the language, even if you're a bit Indian and like not using that. I'm sure I did, but they love the effort, a lot of effort. And it's great that you learned like little tips and tricks about, you know, train stations language, but I'm sure you've learned some things about yourself, like your personality that you have never like noticed. Did you have an experience? I always learned something about it. I did. Well, first of all, I mean, I think I mentioned to you before, like a lot of people thought I was just nuts for going to Italy by myself for three weeks, not knowing anybody. And I'm just like, oh, but that's all part of it. I don't really have any problem making friends. You know, but it was just it was such a confidence builder because I was a little freaked out about the train stations. But you know what? I was very meticulous in my organization. I had an itinerary that I typed out that just had every piece of information that I could possibly need on it. And so I just I just got, you know, I would look at my day and see what I had to accomplish. And you know, if I had to switch to trains and get a taxi, I did it and I and I was resourceful. I was I went with the flow and you know, because sometimes things aren't perfect. And you know what? You just have to learn how to just stop, take a deep breath and say, I got this. Think it through, calm down, you know, make things slow. And I met so many wonderful people during my trip, too. I mean, the ladies, of course, you know, in my travel group, Tapulia were amazing, but I met all sorts of other, you know, you know, just the people along the way, you know, that the person sitting across from you in the train or the person at the front desk of the hotel or that taxi driver that's extra kind and, you know, is kind of showing you historic sites from getting point A to B. So I had some wonderful interactions with people that just made my trip even more special. So I just feel really, really lucky. That's amazing. It's amazing that you found that courage and bravery to do three weeks, because it's one thing to join a group for a week and, you know, you're with the herd of people and you kind of, but then you did time before and then you did time after on your own. So that's really courageous. And you also gave yourself permission to, you know, to go with open mind, to fail or not have perfect days and be okay with that, because we're so like, I feel like as women, we're such perfect. Like everything has to be perfect. We have to take everything, but it's okay, you know, go with the flow. But if you don't see every museum or every, you know, thing on your list, it's okay. It is okay. I mean, it's stranger in the coffee shop, right? Like you'll do something else if you didn't plan for it. Exactly. Like I, you know, I met a woman at the Rome airport and had, I had lunch with her and she was telling me a little bit about her recent life story and it was fairly tragic. And you know, you could tell she needed to just talk and, and here we were strangers. We were just trying to get seated at this one restaurant and we were being ignored. And I thought, well, maybe if we let them know that we're together, we'd get their attention. And sure enough, that worked. And then so I got a chance to have lunch with a complete stranger from the UK. And you know, she had a story that she was sharing with me and I could just tell she needed, she needed somebody just to listen to her, her story. And my gosh, you know, this is where it doesn't matter where we're from. You know, we all have a lot of the same things going on, no matter where we're living. And this is what being human is about. And this is also part of that journey. It's not just the destination and getting there. It's what's happening along the way that just added to my trip. And I knew that I, you know, that just me listening to her share was super helpful for her. And you know, she was, you know, she was going home from a Rome holiday and I was just leaving to go on my Italian holiday. And so we were kind of like two, two ships passing in the night, but it was just two women getting together, sharing a meal, talking story, and just making a nice connection. And that's just another one of those gifts. You know, it's not wrapped up with a bow. It's just, you know, a very random serendipitous event that, you know, makes us feel like we're alive, like we're helping somebody. And it's also adding to our own story. And it's just reminding us, you know, a smile to a stranger, you know, you just never know what kind of day somebody is having. So life is the same, you know, it's not the same, but the things that we struggle with are, you know, all across the board. I mean, women from all over the world have the same types of problems, but when we get together and become a sisterhood for each other, the support is just, you know, you can't put a price on that, Anna. You know, you just cannot. So. You cannot. And when people ask me, are you afraid of AI taking over, like, you know, stealing your job? I'm like, no. No. AI can plan a trip for you to Italy, I'm sure. But AI cannot create a sisterhood of traveling for conscious, bring together and make these friends. I'm worried because this human element and like what's a beautiful story of, you know, you're having lunch with a stranger. First of all, it's terrible that they wouldn't teach you alone. That's just bad people of mine that like they just like, you know, solo woman, like, no, not like that's also like an old school mentality. Like a solo woman should not be by herself in the restaurant. There were two of them. Yeah. So, you know, I'm not going to go into my whole like so box speech about that. But you know, you had you were fortunate enough with whatever circumstances in life to be in that place at that time, because that's how I look at it. You know, so you were fortunate to go on a trip to Italy and I'm like an Italian talking with my hands. I feel like too many or too much in my hands. But like you had an opportunity to go to Italy and meet all these women and they were there for you to help you through whatever you were going through. Yes. That woman at Rome Airport didn't have an opportunity to do that and didn't have anyone. So like the circumstances of the life, like I don't know what gave you to her because you know, she knew and it's amazing because now you're kind of like you're paying it forward a little bit as well and look at it. It's this way of like, you know, we are all helping each other in the way, like one way or the other. And it's beautiful that you were there and you had you were able to, you know, get to the restaurant, the two of you and like and have a beautiful lunch. And now you have an amazing memory like that. That's so nice. It was wonderful. And you know, and she was she was away for the weekend and, you know, she's a widow, a recent widow of two young kids and she needed that time just to recharge and restore. And essentially, I mean, that's what I did, you know, during the time that I was in Italy, especially, you know, during the trip to to Puglia. I mean, that was total restoration. I mean, and I need to rest. I'm a massage therapist and yoga instructor. And so, you know, I need to give my body a rest regularly just so I can do my job so I can keep doing my job. You know, so absolutely all need that. And as women, we always prioritize ourselves last. It's always like kids, families, work, clients, everything but ourselves. So it's so important to like pause and realize it's also matter and we're important and we need to do what we need to do to because if our cup is not full, if you know, I always use this analogy on the plane when the masks fall, like you have to put yourself first because then if then if you don't do that, you can't help anybody else. And that's the same thing with mental health is the same thing with physical health. Like we need to remember that we need to put the mask, the proverbial mask on ourselves first. Exactly. Also, another thought, you know, like the laughter that we shared was so, I mean, that just did my heart so good. And we forget as adults that we need to play, you know, we need to play and be carefree, be silly girls, laugh at silly things. And let me tell you, we had some funny ladies on our bus. Oh my God. I'm sure wine helped. Wine, but it was just so great. I mean, whenever I think of my trip, I mean, I just got a giant smile and all those endorphins just come flooding down. Yeah. All over again. So I don't know. That's pretty priceless from where I'm sitting, you know, 100%. I couldn't agree more. And I like because I wasn't on this trip with you guys. I was there like in spirit and you were there in spirit, right? I was like, oh, I was like, I so look forward to meeting you all in person. I hope maybe some of you will come on our next trip to Sicily with me and Melina will get to hang out. I don't have like, you know, Italy trip 2.0, the reunion of the focaccia, the focaccia. I mean, and our host, Melina was just outstanding. I mean, she's really great. Wow. I mean, you have a dream team, sister. I do. I do. I do. I do. I have a great team. Well, Johnna, thank you so much. I don't want to take more of your time. I always say we can probably chat for hours and hours for sure in these podcasts. But next time with a glass of wine. Yes. Or maybe champagne. I'm wearing my champagne. Or champagne that works for me. Thank you so much. You are very welcome. I'm so thankful to A, to do the episode with us. But also like I was so glad that you had this amazing journey that you had that it helped you so much. It really did. We wish you the most luck that possible with your next surgery and procedure. Thank you. Everything to just go the way it's supposed to. And I can't wait to meet you in person in our next trip. I can't wait either. And my family's from the East Coast. So when I get back there again, I am going to make a point to get up there to have a reunion with all the gals in the area that can come and with you. And that would be wonderful and would look so forward to it. Absolutely. And then we'll raise a glass of wine and champagne and everything together. Sounds good. Amazing. Okay, Anna. Thank you again, Jana. You are so welcome. My pleasure. Okay. Okay.