What brings you here?

If you ask me about a day when my life changed forever, I could give you several dates that document people I met who would go on to enrich my life in innumerable ways, places I've been that changed my worldview, or events that I'll remember forever. Those dates all pale in comparison to March 31st, 2023, which was the day I heard the words, "This feels like breast cancer to me," at age 31. Those seven words created a schism between what life was before and what life would become. In a sense, it was the event that created my own BC (before cancer) and AD (after diagnosis), though the actual diagnosis would come 12 days later.

What brings me here, over 3.5 years later, is that I'm not over it. In the medical sense, I got "over it" in 7 arduous months, when they removed what was left of my tumors, as well as my breasts, from my body. You could even push that to 15 months, when I finished treatment and reconstructive surgery, but by all accounts, it's medically over. But I still feel much closer to the woman sitting on the exam table on March 31st than any version of her who existed before.

Survivorship is hard, and there isn't enough discussion about it, because you are told over and over that you "should" feel gratitude, and I do. But it's like there has been a tornado of epic proportions that tore down my house and displaced my belongings, and now it's over. Yes, I am grateful that we are no longer navigating a tornado, but I'm still standing in a pile of rubble, wondering how I'm supposed to rebuild my house, and since it's all destroyed anyway, what I want it to look like.

If you are going through cancer as a young person, navigating survivorship at any age, or a caregiver who wants a glimpse into your loved one's present or future, this space is for you.