6 Reasons Breast Cancer Was the Best Thing that Ever Happened to Me

Today I celebrate my fifth anniversary as a breast cancer survivor. On this day in 2010, after several tear-filled weeks of painful testing, a phone call exploded my new status all over my existence. I was 40 years old, married, with a 4 year old son and 2 year old daughter, living a fairly typical life: working at a job that I didn’t like, following a schedule that overwhelmed me, plodding along, day after day. I had yawned into the exhausting complacence of early motherhood.

In the five years since my diagnosis, I’ve profoundly changed, almost completely for the better. The physical and emotional pain I endured was all-consuming, but as it began to fade into memory, a new me was rising from the ashes. Today I celebrate my greatest trial with a list of the six most important lessons breast cancer has taught me. Six lessons, one for each year I’ve been gifted, plus one for the years to come, no matter how many or few there are.

1. I walk through fear.

Fear, I’ve come to find, is a signal of change. It is a way we can recognize that some aspect of our existence is holding onto the past, resisting the future. It tells us that we want to stay in the comfortable place we are, not venture into the unknown. However, fear is a disillusioning motivator, with many negative side effects. We often use fear unconsciously to tell us what to do (or, what not to do): for me, fear motivated virtually all the success I found before cancer. It was stubborn in refusing to let me be simply who I am. Fear told me I needed to be who everyone else thought I should be. And it was assisted in its mission by Success.

Cancer taught me that Fear isn’t really as big a deal as he claims to be. In person, he’s surprisingly small and mouselike, if you face him directly. He’s the bully on the playground that runs away when you stare him down. After that, Fear’s just a little voice that whispers, “I hope you’re awake for this, ‘cause it’s gonna be important.”

I spent five months getting only one to two hours of sleep a night through my diagnosis and treatment. Those nights, I sat with Fear and got to know him really well. In our conversations, I learned it’s ok to simply greet Fear, thank him for coming, and continue on my way, especially when I’m chasing Desire. Now sometimes Fear’ll come with me, linking arms, occasionally asking questions. Because we’re so close, I sometimes morph Fear into his alter-ego, Exhilaration. They’re almost twins, but Exhilaration is a far more pleasant companion. Either way, my job is to keep going exactly where Desire propels me, with alertness.

2. I live my values.

Before cancer, I’d have told you I was living my values. I was lying. I was pursuing what so many of us do: a better job, a bigger paycheck, a better title, the next degree. In reality, I was miserable and exhausted. I hated waking up to face another day. Values? Please! Priorities? Ha! My priority was making it through the day, only to sleep a while and do it again.

I really didn’t know what my values were before cancer. As a result, I prioritized whatever someone told me to: the grade, the degree, the oh-so-critical-last-minute meeting, the evening meeting, the work I had to finish over the weekend. All these seemed like priorities because I didn’t know what I valued. I rarely exercised; I ate whatever I could shove in my mouth between meetings. I rushed through my days bowing to the god situated inside my laptop screen. In whatever I might have considered “free time,” I’d collapse into a chair and stare at the wall.

It’s been some ridiculously hard work to figure out what I do truly value as an individual, complete and separate from the people I love. Yes, my family is certainly right at the top of my priority list. But so is doing work that matters, feeling the complete immersion of using my best skills to their greatest extent and treating my body like a worthy container for my soul.

Harder still has been aligning my daily life to those values. It’s one thing to say you value time with your kids, doing meaningful work and exercising, still another to actually carve up your time in accordance with their relative importance. It was excruciating to quit the big corporate job to make it all a reality. It’ll be a lifelong challenge to stay true. But the mere effort has made me a far better, far happier person.

3. I take risks.

I might have also told you before cancer I was a risk taker. I actually saw myself that way, erroneously, since it seemed like a “risk* to go to college, then graduate school twice, art school and eventually take a big corporate job. Actually, none of these were risky decisions. I had almost complete certainty of success. I’m an excellent student and outstanding at doing what I’m told. My decisions played to those strengths.

Far riskier are the things I’ve done since cancer. I embarked on two overseas philanthropic projects that took me away from my family for a month. I started my own business. I wrote a book. I transitioned my business to follow my changing passions. What makes all these far different from the risks I took before is that there’s no net: my book, my business, my projects might have failed. They still might. There’s no certainty. All of them have required putting myself out there, aware of the possibility of complete and utter failure. All have called on my full set of skills and coping mechanisms. All have challenged my deepest beliefs about what I can do. Yet, with the clear memory of possibly losing my life five years ago, truly jetting out on my own seems necessary, even demanded, by my survival. I walked away from cancer knowing that freedom is my goal and I’m willing to do almost anything to get it.

4. I honor my femininity.

Breast cancer bestows a particularly unique challenge: it steals the very thing we associate with being a woman. In our culture, breasts are the very definition of femininity: the bigger, rounder and more perky, the more feminine we appear to be. I remember wondering, in the haze of pain medication and reconstructive surgeries, Am I still a woman? How much reconstruction do I have to get to be a woman? How big do they need to be? I felt shame at imagining a post-cancer pregnancy and being unable to nurse the baby like I did before. I felt utter disgust whenever I was ogled by men. “You stupid shits,” I wanted to say, “These are plastic bags of silicon shoved under my skin. Move on.” And then, a particularly painful realization, after a career in a male-dominated industry: you tried to smother the fact you’re a woman just to fit in. Justice is served.

And so, I was forced to redefine what it really means to be feminine, with foreign-feeling, skin-covered humps reminding me daily why my old definitions don’t apply. I’m slowly mastering how to honor my femininity. It’s meant valuing the very skills and traits I ignored, deflected and rejected before cancer. It means tending to the parts that languished while I fought to get titles and degrees and paychecks. It means dressing to feel beautiful, not look beautiful. It means being open, accepting and loving, while letting the defensive corporate professional go. It means no longer buying the argument that my empathy, intuition, ability to listen are “soft skills.” They’re not. They’re the hardest, rarest, most valuable skills of all. These things make me feminine, even without real breasts.

5. I express gratitude, compassion and love freely.

Before cancer, I played a funny mind game with myself and others. I didn’t really show how much I cared about them. I’d play it cool, be a little coy, dance around it. Maybe it was protective, maybe it was fear of being hurt, but I didn’t fully or unconditionally show up in my relationships. They were weaker because of it.

I also didn’t show myself much gratitude, compassion or love either. I was my own abuser, with a loud voice of self-blame and judgement on endless repeat in my head. No one could possibly be as hard on me as I was on myself. I hated virtually everything I was as a person and everything I did in every role I occupied. I focused on my weaknesses, which only made me weaker.

Now, I give myself and others plenty of grace. It’s a difficult and trying life we live, an insight that snapped into the crystal clarity imposed by cancer. As a result, I’ve worked to hone my skills in creating safe spaces for friends and strangers. It’s far easier, and more instinctive, to be an intuitive, compassionate listener for others than to be that for myself. It’s a work in progress. But by being more self-compassionate, loving and grateful, I’ve deepened and improved my relationships as well.

6. I know I’m far stronger than I can possibly imagine.

Before and even during cancer, I kept hearing how strong I was. I didn’t believe it, not one little bit. I even felt like a fraud when people commented on my strength throughout treatment. I’d scoff and demur, feeling horribly exposed. My carefully constructed external armor had been ripped forcibly away.

The ironic thing about finding my strength is that it’s come through vulnerability. By being open about breast cancer and other challenging life circumstances, I’ve gathered more strength. It was in me all along. Today, I wonder if I’d ever have noticed it without the piercing spotlight of cancer. I learned how to breathe and slowly place one foot in front of the other, utterly terrified at the next step. I also learned when to simply lie still and wait, when to rest. I learned when to stop fighting and simply let go. Any option is a choice. All choices make me strong.

I was diagnosed with breast cancer five years ago today. It might have been the best thing that ever happened to me.