Sara Champie, LCSW

05/11/2026

Most people only find out they carry a genetic risk after someone they love gets diagnosed.
And then comes the weight of it — the “what if we’d known sooner?” the scramble to figure out what it means for you, your siblings, your kids.
This Wednesday’s episode is one I’ve been excited to share. I sat down with Natalie Samson Hart, a board-certified genetic counselor and founder of Golden Genetics — an integrative practice that’s doing something different. Instead of waiting for a diagnosis to walk through your door, she helps people use genetic testing proactively to actually plan for their health, longevity, and how they want to live.
We talk about what it really means to “know your risk,” how genetic counseling has changed, and why your genes aren’t a life sentence — they’re a starting point.
New episode of Walking the Genetic Line drops Wednesday, find it on Spotify and Apple Podcasts 🧬

04/24/2026

Three specialists told Krista the abnormality on her MRI wasn’t cancer. She pushed for a biopsy anyway — not because she was confident, but because something wouldn’t settle.
She was right. Her diagnosis came two weeks before the preventive surgery she had already scheduled.
Krista carries an ATM mutation — not BRCA, not one most people have heard of — and she had to fight to even get tested in the first place. In this episode we talk about what that listening to her gut actually feels like from the inside, the grief that comes with choosing surgery, and how she explained all of it to her three young daughters while still processing it herself. Now she is a nurse navigator, helping others in her shoes and speaking from a place of deep knowing.
New episode of Walking The Genetic Line is out now, and this one stayed with me. Link in bio.

04/13/2026

I’ve been sitting with this one for a bit before posting.
Being a guest on Transforming Trauma — the podcast of the NARM Training Institute — meant something to me in a way that’s hard to explain quickly. NARM is the modality in which I’m certified as a Master Therapist. It’s not just a clinical framework I use, it’s the lens through which I understand myself and others. It shaped how I think about trauma, about the body, about what actually moving underneath our behavior. Speaking on a podcast platform that has held so many of my teachers was an honor.

Emily was so warm, and her life has also been touched by genetic testing on a personal level, so our conversation was intimate and felt deeply meaningful to me. We talked about what I see every day in my practice: hereditary cancer doesn’t just threaten the body, it activates the same emotional survival patterns that we use to navigate all stress and uncertainty. The inherited roles. The grief that doesn’t have a name yet. The way people who are genuinely holding it together on the outside can feel completely untethered underneath.
At the end of the day, this is what I’m most passionate about — the way illness and cancer, in all their forms, collide with our earliest patterns. The way a diagnosis can crack open something developmental, something relational, something that has been waiting.
Link in bio if you want to listen.

04/02/2026

She found out she had BRCA in a parking lot, from an email she almost didn’t open.
Ali Hall didn’t seek out her diagnosis — it found her, five years after a forgotten 23andMe test, while she was picking up her kid from school.
What this episode actually explores is what happens when you’re q***r, gender-expansive, and navigating prophylactic mastectomy in a body where going flat isn’t just a medical choice — it’s a safety calculation. Three weeks post-surgery, Ali said something I keep thinking about: she just cared less. Not because she stopped feeling things. Because she finally felt at home.
What does it mean that a cancer prevention surgery gave someone permission to exist more fully in their own body — and why did it take that? This episode represents the heart of the podcast—human beings grappling with genetic information in the context of each of our unique stories.
Episode out today on Walking the Genetic Line — link in bio
q***rhealth

03/24/2026

“Not a hug. Not a birthday card. Not a Christmas gift. But this. You give me this.”

Jennifer inherited Lynch Syndrome MSH2 from a father she barely knew — the only inheritance he ever gave her.

Lynch Syndrome is the most common hereditary cancer mutation most people have never heard of. 1 in 279. More prevalent than BRCA. And still, almost invisible.

From that moment of diagnosis, she built Lynch Syndrome Awareness.

This conversation goes there.

New episode of Walking the Genetic Line — link in bio.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

03/04/2026

I’ve been thinking a lot about how inherited cancer risk is usually framed.
Medically, it’s often treated as a moment — the day test results come back.

But psychologically it behaves more like a timeline.
Many people grow up watching a parent or relative get sick. The body learns the possibility long before any genetic counseling appointment.

Genetic risk isn’t just medical information.
It lives in memory, in identity, and in time.

I wrote a piece about what I see in my clinical work with people navigating inherited cancer risk — including the way milestone ages can reactivate fear and grief, and the moral weight many people carry when making preventive medical decisions.

Full article here:

A therapist’s perspective on the psychological experience of hereditary cancer risk, including milestone-age anxiety, grief, and the moral weight of preventive decisions.

02/26/2026

There is a before genetic testing you.
And there is an after.

Katie was 17 when she lost her mom to breast cancer. At 25, she tested positive for BRCA1 — and chose preventative mastectomy during COVID.

This episode is about what that actually feels like.
The grief that reactivates.
The fear your body remembers.
The fierce agency it takes to say: I’m doing this differently.

If you’re navigating hereditary risk, you are not dramatic.
You are not overreacting.
This is big.

Listen wherever you stream podcasts.

BreastCancerRisk WalkingTheGeneticLine

02/12/2026

On this week’s episode of Walking the Genetic Line, I’m in conversation with Ingrid Mishimoto, LCSW—about what it actually means to live under medical surveillance and still choose a full life.

We talk about:
✨ growing up with Peutz-Jeghers syndrome
✨ multiple cancer diagnoses
✨ grief, anger, hypervigilance, and resilience
✨ learning to trust your body again
✨ letting go of false certainty

This is the emotional terrain no one prepares you for—the stuff that lives between the scans, and don’t fit into a treatment plan.

Listen now. Link in bio. 💛

01/19/2026

“My mother taught me to live it fully.”

When risk becomes part of your story, the question isn’t
How do I get rid of the uncertainty?
It’s:

How do I stay alive inside my life anyway?

We don’t get guarantees.
We get time.
And meaning is built inside the unknown—
through how we show up, care, love, and choose to matter.

This conversation is about living with risk, not under it.
About staying in your body, your values, and your life—anyway.

🎧 New episode of Walking the Genetic Line is out now.
Listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

This one is for anyone learning how to live fully
even when the future won’t cooperate.

01/06/2026

Cancer — or learning you carry a genetic mutation — doesn’t only affect tissue, cells, or treatment plans.

It reorganizes identity.
It activates family roles and long-held survival strategies.
It asks the nervous system to move faster than it knows how.

Medical care focuses, understandably, on prevention and outcomes.
But meaning, safety, grief, and trust live elsewhere — in the body, in relationships, and in the stories we inherit.

When those layers aren’t tended to, people often feel confused by why they’re “still impacted” even when things look stable on paper.

This isn’t a personal failure.
It’s how human systems respond to threat, uncertainty, and loss.
If this approach feels aligned, information about working together is available via the link in my bio.

12/18/2025

In this week’s episode of Walking the Genetic Line, Beth Martinetti talks about being in the middle of her preventative surgeries, letting her kids know when she’s struggling, and giving them choice in how close they want to get to the reality of illness and recovery.

She describes moments when her daughter wants to see her post-surgery body — and Beth responds with openness and consent:

“You don’t have to look if you don’t want to. It can be unsettling, and that’s okay. But if you do want to look, I’ll share that with you.”

That’s trauma-informed parenting in real time:
✨ honesty without pressure
✨ boundaries without secrecy
✨ connection without emotional demand

Talking about bodies, illness, surgery, and vulnerability doesn’t have to overwhelm our children — it can teach consent, emotional self-care, and choice.

If you’re navigating hereditary cancer risk, parenting through illness, or supporting kids through medically-driven uncertainty, you don’t have to figure it out alone.

📩 Send me a DM or reach out through my site — I support families, parents, and individuals who are carrying all of this.