Amanda Neidlinger is crushing it.

A small but mighty force in powerlifting, the Weatherly area woman felled the world squat record in her division three times in May.

After a seven-year hiatus from the sport, Neidlinger also earned overall Best Lifter honors in the same competition.

Her strength and resilience helped her power through adversity, including a devastating house fire in January 2024 and the rapid decline and loss of her grandmother soon after.

Through it all, Neidlinger has been a cancer survivor.

With a comeback mentality, Neidlinger hopes to spread her message that everyone can stay strong and overcome life’s challenges through motion, self-care and positivity.

Diagnosis

A single mom, Neidlinger opened her own business, River Run Center for Healing Arts in Buck Mountain, after losing her nursing job during the COVID pandemic when she refused a job-mandated vaccine.

For a while, sips of wine helped wash away worries over paying bills and keeping the business afloat when she realized it was time for a change.

“I was drinking too much,” she admitted.

Still, Neidlinger remained conscious of her health with routine ultrasounds, mammograms and cancer screenings. But in September 2023, imaging showed the edges on a lifelong lump in her breast weren’t right.

A biopsy, she said, confirmed it was cancer.

The early days after the diagnosis were frantic.

“I was swept up in a whirlwind of opinions, appointments and urgency,” Neidlinger recalled.

“Everything happened very quickly,” she said, “which made the experience even more frightening.”

Neidlinger chose a holistic approach to her treatment, enrolling in an expensive seven-week program in Florida. Her goal was to detoxify her body and help it to heal itself.

She ate a strict organic, alkaline diet with no carbohydrates or sugar. She began oxygen therapy treatments and took intravenous vitamins. Other therapies worked to cleanse her body, including colonics to promote gut health and lymphatic massage to push out toxins.

“There was no conventional treatment associated with Florida. He didn’t do any of the traditional markers,” she said of her doctor. “And if he had, I would have been able to see that things were progressing.”

The doctor had been monitoring nagalase enzyme levels in the blood, she said, which had dropped well below the threshold secreted by invasive cancer cells.

“To me, that meant cancer free,” she said. “Now, I’m a lot smarter.”

Neidlinger went home in December 2023, believing she was OK.

Devastation

Two weeks after Christmas, the Buck Mountain home she shared with her son, Nathaniel, then a senior at MMI Preparatory School in Freeland, burned in the middle of the night.

They both made it out, but Neidlinger was briefly hospitalized.

Mother and son faced rebuilding their lives, having lost everything from important documents to precious family heirlooms.

Dealing with the trauma of the loss, she said she fought through grueling insurance paperwork to reestablish a home and restore personal possessions.

“You never really have any time to properly grieve,” Neidlinger said.

Then, her grandmother, Nanny Ruth, began having mini strokes. Her health began to decline, adding to the stress and trauma in her life, she said. Neidlinger lost Nanny Ruth in November 2024.

The loss behind her, she said she started to think about the cancer again, though she felt fine.

Still a degreed nurse, Neidlinger pushed for a definitive imaging test, such as a PET scan, to show she truly was cancer free, she said.

“I just wanted peace of mind” she said. “I wanted to know that this worked.”

Neidlinger convinced the doctor in Florida to order a PET scan, which was done in January.

“The PET scan showed there was cancer everywhere, from head to toe,” she said. “Everything came back hot ... lymph nodes, both breasts, lungs, all my girl parts. Everything came back hot.”

She prepared to die, and got her affairs in order.

Neidlinger also found a traditional doctor from one of the Lehigh Valley health systems, but he dismissed her pleas for additional tests and was unsupportive of holistic practices she learned and relied upon to stay strong, she said.

“I knew I wasn’t getting anywhere with him,” she said. “This is God shutting the door.”

New optimism

Determined to move forward, she found another doctor at Penn Medicine in Philadelphia who ordered another scan.

Her breast cancer had spread, but not as extensively as the scan at the beginning of the year indicated.

“It showed two areas on the hips, and it showed two areas on the thoracic vertebrae,” Neidlinger said.

Her cancer — considered stage 4 due to the spread to the bones — was treatable, her doctor told her.

Now, she had hope.

He also gave his blessing to the holistic therapies that she had incorporated into her life, Neidlinger said, and didn’t discount the physical activity, such as yoga and weight lifting.

It was only a month earlier when she returned to competitive powerlifting.

Neidlinger broke the world squat record three times in the 132-pound weight class, masters division in the International Powerlifting Association competition VIP Barbell Club in Newtown, Bucks County, in May.

She squatted 325 pounds, 340 pounds and then 350 pounds, breaking the record each time. The 5-foot, 2-inch tall Neidlinger then went on to bench 165-pounds and deadlift 350 pounds.

She was named overall Best Lifter in the competition, besting even the men.

Neidlinger continues to train as she undergoes cancer treatment, but for now, her doctor discouraged her from attempting any 350-pound lifts.

Treatment-wise she’s confident her care is moving in the right the direction. Side effects from chemotherapy and therapies to stop hormone production are minimal.

“I’m very pleased with Penn,” she said at the end of August. “They are attentive and have a solid plan for my health. The treatments are successful.”

Doctors closely monitoring her with blood work, EKGs and additional PET scans, she said.

Outlook

Neidlinger, 45, hopes to incorporate more holistic tools into her business, which she feels helped her stay strong through adversity and cancer.

“There are many studies showing that when the body is functioning optimally,” she said, “patients often require less chemotherapy, radiation or other conventional treatments.”

The body is better able to use conventional treatments effectively, Neidlinger said, crediting her own resilience and strength to simple movement through yoga, and of course, weight lifting.

“Without movement, I really think I would have went insane from all this,” she said. “Everybody can do this.

“Everybody can do something. Just make it a priority,” Neidlinger said “Some days will be harder than others, and that’s when you look within for strength.

“Every step forward matters,” she said, “no matter how small.”