“Survival was my opening bid.”
This statement sounds like something written into a movie script: idealistic, overinflated, impractical, and frustrating from a certain angle. I went through this thinking when evaluating my cancer experience and remembering how this became a deep truth for me after my treatment was complete.
Please allow me a few minutes to unwrap this through the optics I used, the ones that served me well and may also be of service to you.
Have you ever looked back and noticed the story of your life? I can’t help but gaze back to see the progression of circumstances that led me to any of my major crossroads. All the events leading up to the moment of diagnosis that didn’t feel like they fit together suddenly began to make more sense. When I was 18 years old, I held my mother’s hand as she slipped away from the same diagnosis I had now. It was late spring, graduation season, when my doctor called me with the news; my mind automatically flashed to that time with my mom 20 years ago. Suddenly, every twist and turn in our journey together came into sharp focus again.
The natural response in any challenging situation is to recall and lean into your lived experiences. My lived experience in this area did not support what I wanted for myself now. What happens if the experiences I need to lean on for support show up as loss and confusion? That’s what I felt 20 years ago: loss, confusion, adrift, and powerlessness. I experienced all of that again the day I heard my diagnosis. My answer to this was instinctive: turn it 180 degrees, but HOW!
We all remember our own stories and the stories of others that touch our lives. When my mother was diagnosed, I was 16. I remember this overwhelming feeling of “fight for your life,”- the silent striving, her brave face, the courage, the exhaustion, the disappointment, and the loss despite all that effort and hope. The truth is, we all have stories of someone in our lives who walked the road of cancer before. Somehow, the stories of loss tend to stick like velcro, and the stories of growth and life through difficulties slip off our radar. Would you believe that on the day of my diagnosis, I could not come up with a single image of the face of someone I knew who survived past a year or two? None of the faces I saw had what I wanted for my life going forward. Oh my, how this fact has changed today; I see so many faces of vibrant health and beautiful lives after cancer. It’s fascinating to notice this now. It’s not that the breast cancer statistics changed drastically… it is me that changed. So, how did I go about flipping that movie script?
Here, I need to “set the stage” with some assumptions I take for granted. I say this because these may differ from yours, and I want you to see where you could explore your own and still arrive at conclusions that are the right fit for you.
I see my life through the lens of purpose; my presence here and being alive, by definition, requires action from me that changes how the world is and makes the world better, even on a tiny micro-scale.
With this as a base, simply surviving was not enough for me. It’s interesting how I discovered this about myself!
I noticed a dismayed reaction to the phrase, “At least you’re alive.”
My definition of “aliveness” has to include my ability to carry out my purpose and do those things that make the world better than I found it. The proverbial quality of life has to include a level of physical function that supports me in all the activities I deem necessary for my purpose. Nobody can decide what those are but myself. This is where a biological definition of being alive and simply breathing fell short for me. I encourage you to consider this as you tune in to and pay close attention to how you react to certain phrases and language people use in the realm of breast cancer. What words and concepts feel “prickly” to you? Those are the places to contemplate.
At one point, I sat down with my pen and paper and wrote a paragraph about what I wanted in the following four areas of life:
- Health
- Relationships
- Freedom
- Contribution to the world
Allow me to share a few words from the “health” paragraph: “I waterski, zip-line, climb mountains (I meant hiking here LOL) because my bones and muscles are strong.” Strong enough to support the activities I want to do, all that ties into my relationships, sense of freedom, and ability to contribute to the world.
You may not want to do these exact things, but I wrote them because, for reasons I won’t delve into here, they fit into the overall picture of the life I wanted to live. I encourage you to think about what would go into that paragraph for YOU.
Now, I also had to be realistic and expect to make necessary adjustments to realities; the difference here is that I was unwilling to concede any adjustments in advance. I refused to allow cancer to dictate what I thought was possible for me in the initial stages of setting my vision for the future.
It’s not over till it’s over, and for me, walking the path without assigning loss of functions in advance allowed for more life and possibility.
This is a pivotal point supported in the current scientific literature that allowed me to notice aligned options for my daily decisions. When you construct your vision clearly and intentionally, your brain notices different information in the world around you that fits that specific vision you set. It is a vector with two points: “where you are now” and “where you want to be.”
When you have chosen the definition of where you want to be and acknowledged where you are now, what you pay attention to and notice daily helps you fill in the path between them.
Let me give you an example here. I knew right away with my particulars of diagnosis that I was going to proceed with a double mastectomy. The audacious future vision I set for myself was, “I’m going to come out on the other side of this better than before.”
What was meant here is that this “better” applied to all aspects of me, even how I looked. I could truly get behind this as my wish, so I chose it as my “what I want” point.
This prompted me to think differently about my reconstruction options and the timing of the procedures I chose. I was not ready to make all the esthetic decisions while I was in chemotherapy, so I chose to go flat and make my decisions when this was the only thing left on my plate. I wanted time and space for at least one part of this process, I know this about myself, this is how I work best.
I also resolved that my reconstruction wasn’t about what others see; it’s all about how I see it in my circumstance. Giving myself time was what I needed to accept my current reality, release the hurt and disappointment, and move into the process of reconstruction with nothing but the upside in my expectations of the surgery. I believe that even my communication with the breast surgeon was made clearer from this place. In terms of my reconstructive surgery, what I ended up with fits what I wanted and how I feel about the result today.
I encourage you to consider what common words or phrases people use about cancer that resonate with you and which ones bother you. Use those hints to look at your baseline assumptions of how you see your life moving forward. We are all unique in how this lands for us. The key here is to give yourself space, notice how you think with curiosity, and make decisions for yourself in a way that fits your uniqueness.
I leave you with a question: What if we were clear, specific, and truthful about what we wanted, curious about the process, and not obsessed with specifics of the exact result?
